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I’m excited to announce that I’ll be teaching in both Long Beach (July) and Houston (Oct/Nov) for the International Quilt Association! This is my dream, to teach in the larger venues to a diversified audience. They say be careful what you wish for…. They accepted all of my proposals so I’ll be busy and that’s what I wanted. Here’s what I’ll be doing at Long Beach: -You CAN Free-Motion Quilt-all-day Thursday Aug 1. -Friday Forum: Fabulous Free-Motion Feathers-The Easy Way!-Aug 2. -Lazy Daisy Reversible Table Topper-Saturday, Aug 3. And in Houston I’ll be teaching: -You CAN Free-Motion Quilt-all-day Tuesday Oct 29.…
Last Saturday I had the best class! One of the stores I teach at, Shared Stitches, is closing-sooo sad. I held my last “Fearless Curves ‘n Feathers” class with 4 students. Sometimes it’s really nice to have a small class. Saturday’s students were a gift. Everyone came prepared and jazzed-fearless and ready to tackle feathers! I just have to show off their work. Kim decided to try a wreath, experiment with filling some shapes and using stippling as a fill against the feathers. Karen used a variegated Superior Rainbow thread on her green fabric to make these fabulous feathers and…
This is the first thing you saw when you walked in the big room: The art quilt group of the guild, Quartz, had a Red Line Challenge and these 14 quilts are the result. A 1″ red line at the side edges connects all the quilts and each artist made the quilt of their choice. It was spectacular! All of my photos of the individual quilts or detail shots were miserable due to the location and lighting. The audience loved it and there was always someone examining the red line, looking for details, enjoying the beauty. We’re pretty proud of…
Wow what a weekend at my guild’s 28th annual show! The theme was “Generations of Stars” and we honored our founding members that are still active in the guild. Those founding members created something special and I get to enjoy the benefits from all their work and dedication. It was a spectacular show, by far our best and we had superb work from every genre. I was honored with a First Place and Best Machine Quilting Ribbon on “Emerge” as well as a Member’s Choice for “Mom’s Lily Bed” (unjudged) and I’m grateful for that. I think this will be a…
Since 2007 the NorCal/Nevada Region of Studio Art Quilt Associates has held a Whisper Challenge, based on the childhood game where you whisper a message in someone’s ear. That person repeats the message in the next person’s ear, and so on. The final message is usually quite different from the original. This meeting where the quilts are revealed is well attended because the outcomes are always entertaining, and sometimes funny, poignant or surprising. In our quilt version of the whisper game for 2012, the first person in each of 5 groups made a quilt inspired by the following photograph taken…
I’m excited-the Folsom Quilt and Fiber Guild Show is coming up this weekend, Feb 8-10 in the Folsom Community Center. It’s always a great show and this year has even more entries than last year. I’m especially excited to see a sizeable increase in Wearable Art entries with several new artists-yahoo! One significant way we raise money is with our Boutique. We will have over 150 baskets and items for raffle. I always have something to contribute and I also try to create some new item for raffle. This year’s raffle contribution item is directly tied to the Foothill Guild’s show.…
If there is a season for malfunction, I must be in it. I did finish my little 12″ square piece, “Jewel Box”, but not without trauma. I reached the point where I had finished the front, added backing, quilted it lightly, turned it for a clean-edge finish and had almost finished hand sewing the understitching. In the process I had poked myself with a needle, which left a bit of blood on the quilt. So I wet it to take out the blood. By now it was bedtime so I took it with me to fondle and admire in the moments…
I’ve started a new quilted piece that will be a mere 12 inches square and somehow I have already put in maybe 15 hours? There is definitely a learning curve involved. In this piece I wanted to try several things: two threads running through one needle to achieve color blending, two layers of wool batting to achieve uber puff, and using very thick threads to ramp up visual impact from afar. Given that I was going to experiment with all of these challenging techniques on one piece, I decided to work the piece with no backing-just the silk on the front,…