Quiltmaker's Block Party

Quiltmaker magazine is hosting a quilting retreat in 2013, and I'll be there as a teacher!


One of my workshops will be based on a block from Volume One of their 100 Blocks series, Lillebet's Bouquet. After the self imposed discipline of the now-tabled book projects, it was a total joy to create. All of the fabrics were pulled from my stash. Little projects require just snippets of fabric.

And I was free to embellish as my heart desired, in this case just a small amount of hand embroidery.





























Trying out placement and fabric choices, keeping some, tossing others. The project is designed to cover all the basics of Hand Applique by Machine, including curves, cleavages, points, and, of course, the ever illusive perfect circles.

 

I can't even follow my own instructions, and it's one of the joys of the technique. I can exactly recreate the planned design, or rearrange things to my heart's delight. While it's similar to the proposed design, I wandered off a bit with the placement of the leaves and circles. Since flat flower head pins are so sharp, and I rarely make it though an entire design without some bleeding, the circles and parts of the bow are held in place by a liberal swipe of glue.

 

 

Stitching those circles require strict attention (not), so my mp3 player is never far away. I'm listening to the second book in The Century Trilogy by Ken Follet.

 

I'll also be teaching the Simply Roses workshop. It's also a basic Hand Applique by Machine class, but it covers some other techniques, such as super skinny stems, and personalizing our applique. (I have no idea why blogger thinks this photo should be portrait instead of landscape.

I'll have one more class, Romancing the Stitch, an improvisational free motion quilting class, great for beginners and experienced machine quilters alike.

 

I haven't taught in Oregon in many years, so I'm looking forward to meeting a whole lot of new friends. Portland is such a beautiful city. The enrollment registration opens today at 6pm Eastern, and man-o-man, it's at a really good price! Pop over to here to get all the scoop. Hope to see you there.