Blog
Oh a lot has happened since my last post on my Houston Auction donation quilt. After I left you last week, I blocked my quilt and set it in the sun to dry, a mere 2 hours in the sun. And the baby blue silk faded into a putrid color, ugh. Also, I apparently did not wash out my blue wash out pen well enough – there were blue stains on the quilt! I showed the debacle on Facebook and the overwhelming response was it was not as bad as I made it out to be and they would be…
I was running behind on making a donation quilt for the International Quilt Association, the non-profit umbrella organization behind the Houston Int’l Quilt Festival. IQA asks teachers to volunteer a piece of their work for a fundraising silent auction held at Festival. I’ve donated each of the previous 5 years I’ve taught there and did not want to break the chain. My thought was to go with trapunto and silk, how could I go wrong? After a good bit of auditioning I selected this combination of silk Radiance and silk dupioni. I sprayed a layer of Terial Magic on all…
The trip to teach at AQS Grand Rapids gave me an opportunity to visit friends and family after the show. It left me (kinda sorta) in the vicinity of my hometown about 90 mi southwest of Chicago. I rented a mini-van and put in 1400 miles in four states in 3 days. I was thrilled to be traveling in August when the crops were more mature and the weather warm. As luck would have it, the temps were mild and the humidity low during my stay. I almost made me want to move back, but not quite! I still remember…
NOTE: I posted last week on Saturday. You may have missed this post. This was one of my best teaching trips yet! I love to clean up before I leave so that I walk back into a clean slate. Jealous? Getting there had some adventure involved. I haven’t flown out of O’Hare in decades – this was a huge improvement since the last time I was there. Um yeah, I was not in Sacramento! Growing up we had tornado drills regularly and seeing them was not particularly unusual. I forgot about that. There was an entire section of the…
It’s not surprising that it was hot in Bakersfield in August, but it was beyoooond hot! Most of my play was indoors so it all turned out well. Yeah, like THAT hot! It was 100 degrees at 9PM on Thursday. Given the high temps, this was not a visit where I went hiking! I left my luggage in the car during the lecture and a lovely dinner afterwards and when I unpacked, I found that all of my vitamins and supplements had melted together in one ball! Even for Bakersfield it was unseasonably hot. And wouldn’t you know, it cooled…
I accidentally sent off all my feathers examples ahead to Grand Rapids, so I spent some time this week making new ones. That is not a bad thing to do – the new samples are “fresh” and I changed them up to reflect the most recent changes I have made to teaching “Feathers Four Ways”. I was delighted that the Bakersfield guild, the Cotton Patch Quilters of Kern Co, had enough demand to ask for a second workshop and they chose feathers! Really ” getting” the shape of the feather into your head is key. So many videos I see…
I’ve been doing a lot of counting lately as I make kits for upcoming venues: counting fabric bolts, squares of fabric, squares of batting, finished quilt sandwiches, kits for students and more. I realized there is a lot of counting in my non kit-making life too: I count laps in the pool, my minutes on the rowing machine and reps with weights. I keep track of my steps and other fitness goals on my Fit Bit and I sometimes find myself counting random things: there are 10 people in line at the post office and 8 have on flip…
Great thread tension adds a level of beauty to your quilt: every stitch is a lovely arc in and out of the quilt, front and back. Poor tension distracts from the beauty of the quilt. I get so many questions about tension in class and there seems to be a lot of confusion and angst about tension. It’s really not that hard! I created a 4 min YouTube video last week to explain the process of getting good tension: I still have a few things to add about tension that were not in the video. Let’s start with what…
If you’re a long-time reader, you know I have to go to the California State Fair each year. It’s cheesy and filled with art, fiber, crops, rides, hawkers, horrific food and people from all walks of life. That is one of the things I like the best about it – it seems to attract a broad demographic swath. And I love the kid’s art and the stages where you can see groups or individuals doing all types of normal or odd things: baton, Polynesian Dance, ukeleles, singers, drama, tap and some things that I can’t even describe. And of course,…
Hubby and I needed a low-key get-away and Bend, OR was perfect. We had hoped that one or both of our boys would be able to join us but their real jobs kept them away. That is a Good Problem! We rented the same house we did 9 years ago when there were two boys plus my friend and her husband. To say the house was a little big for the two of us was an understatement. But it was such a beautiful home! Even the drive up and back was pretty: I set up my machine in the…