A Visit With the Mary's River Quilt Guild

One of the very best things about traveling for my "quilt life" is getting to meet the extremely nice people in the guilds where I teach or lecture.  This week I was down in Philomath, Oregon, near Corvallis addressing the April meeting of the Mary's River Quilt Guild at the Benton County Historical Museum.

It was a great venue for giving my talk!  You can see a slide show of the evening here...

Thanks to  LuAnn Kessi for the photos!

As my lecture didn't end until around 9:30 p.m. and it is a 2 hour drive from Philomath to Washougal, it was arranged that I spend the night at a guild member's home.

Sharon and Lyle Fries gave me such a warm welcome and made me so comfortable.  By the time I left we had become good friends.

Lyle had been a software engineer for HP for over 40 years before retiring...and one of the things he does now is exquisite cross stitching.  I just have to share the fabulous Christmas stocking Lyle made for his wife Sharon...

It was his first ever project, and that is the truth!
Here are some detail shots...

He listens to audio books while he stitches.
I find this absolutely extraordinary and so wonderful!  I was very privileged to be their guest, and appreciated their kindness so much. Thank you, Lyle and Sharon!

One of the guild members also shared some great stitching work with me.  Her name is Linda Brown, and she makes wedding dresses and other fine clothes...which translates into her quilt work.  She had bought my book and was inspired by the flat doll project to make her very own take on it, creating a CQ bodice with full skirt....I just love what she did with it...

Complete with tiny handbag with teenier tassle!
Linda made me so happy, creating something original and her own from her experience perusing my book.  A quilt author could ask for nothing more...

Thanks to everyone at the guild in Philomath for making my experience there very special..  ;-)

"Wee Farmscape"

Before anything else, I want to thank Everyone for their kind congratulatory comments on my last post.  The best part of the Saga of the Lost Quilt was hearing from you all and feeling first your sympathy when my book's cover quilt was lost, then your shared happiness with me when it was found, and that is the truth!  It is a story with a very happy ending...my hope is that all lost quilts can find their way home too.

I've been traveling a lot this month...and also--I think I can say this--working on some projects that are under wraps, with the goal of them being published one day--so I haven't been able to put them here on the blog, much as I would love to!

But I can share a class sample that I made for this coming November's Victorian Stitchery Retreat, hosted by Valorie Bothell of the Pink Bunny. 

It is called a "Wee Farmscape"--inspired by the Kansas heartland where the retreat is.  ;-)

It measures about 7" x 7".
In this 6 hour class, I want to combine and cover two subjects:
The first is how to add applique to a crazy quilt block, by introducing some new supplies that make it very easy and accurate.  (At least, these supplies are new to me.) I think applique is totally underused in crazy quilting!
The second subject in this class is how to use waste canvas in your block, whether in a free form style or along a seam treatment.

I have Pamela Kellogg to thank for learning this approach to waste canvas, and she has most graciously and generously agreed to let me use some of her charted seam designs in class as well.  Pam, you are the very best! 

I hope I will see some of you in Wichita next November...  ;-)  Judith Baker Montano and Candace Kling will be returning yet again, and it is going to be a very special gathering....

Class at New Pieces, Berkeley

New Pieces is a great quilt store in Berkeley, CA, owned by one of my very favorite people, Sharona Fischrup.

A more positive and warm-hearted gal you will never meet.

She's invited me to teach at her store and I will be there for two days in September, the 25th and 26th. Read about the class here.

Some of you may remember this post where I was working on the class sample. The finished quilt looks like this:

This quilt is 16" X 16".
I plan on covering a whole lot of ground in these two classes, with even some homework during the evening between class days. There is so much I want to impart....

If you're in the area and you want to learn curved block construction and basic crazy quilt embroidery stitches, I'd love to see you in class.

Embellishment Class

In February we had a day of piecing, then in March we covered basic embroidery, and a month after that (which was yesterday) my seven students and I spent a day exploring silk ribbon embroidery. We also tried out some embellishment techniques.
I'm so proud of how well they all did!

Because this was a techniques-oriented class series, they did not walk away with finished projects. My goal was to give them the "building blocks" of basic stitches and familiarity with some new materials to work with on their own when our classes were done. So after piecing blocks during the first class, we made samplers for the second two classes. But a few students got pretty far with the 4-block project I had suggested they do.....

Valarie completed all four blocks using the curved piecing method she learned, and put her embroidery skills to use right away.

Gloria is understandably happy with her four block square.


Lisa showed us how she organizes her crazy quilt project to be efficiently portable. She has pulled the supplies she wants to work with and photographed them placed over the seams she will embroider with them.

She says this eliminates the distraction of too much choice, though of course she can change her mind along the way.

She brings the print-out of the photo with her so that when she catches an hour's stitching time during her lunch break at work, she can get right with it. Very clever, Lisa!

Joyce is a consummate weaver, but she has wanted to learn embroidery for crazy quilting and she bravely dove right in. Here is her sampler from yesterday:

That herringbone was giving her fits at first but she got it in the end.
As a teacher introducing SRE to first time students, I was very concerned that they learn how to keep the ribbon flat and untwisted as they made their stitches. Hopefully, that will stay with them!

Marge's sampler will hopefully remind her of some of the choices she has for using the fun supplies that are available to us all these days....

...like this Glitter Hologram thread from Superior that Lisa was showing Marlys.

I am really enjoying teaching. What they say is true: you learn so much from your students, and quilters are the nicest people in the world.

Thank you so much, ladies!!!!