Back to the past

During January I took all of you through the start of my quilting.  That covered 2008 and 2009.  Overall I was quite happy with my progress.  I went from very little sewing experience, I believe I sewed some placements in 2nd grade, to feeling pretty comfortable with the sewing machine.

2010 started with quite a few changes around the house.  In February my sewing room turned into a storage room and then into a guest bedroom.  Quilting slowed down from quite a hurried pace toward the end of 2009 to barely any.  November 2009 I signed up for a couple of guild workshops. March 2010 was the first.  It was Topsy Turvy Nine Patch by Judy Laquidara.  I had fun picking out the fabrics for this one.  It had been awhile since I had been to Quilt Quarters and had fun going through  the batiks.  I really saw the "curves" as water so I wanted some sorta blue color.  For the nine patches I thought a gold/orange would be great.  It didn't take too long to pick out some great ones.

Before class we had some work to do including getting the nine patches all done.  This was crazy for me I was still not great at sewing quickly so I got to work.  The workshop was on Saturday so I went to Friday Night Finishers and sewed as quick as I could.  By the end of Friday night I had them all done and was feeling great.

Saturday morning I headed out for the workshop.  I had been to workshops here twice before so I knew exactly which room I thought I needed to go.  Get to that room, the one the website said to go to, and it is black and no tables set up.  Okay I knew I was a little bit early but really this made no sense.  I start asking around if anyone know where the quilt guild workshop is being held and no one knows anything about it.  I run into another lady looking for the workshop as well.  It was about 20 minutes before one lady at the church thinks maybe they are on the other side of the building.  That is it we are both about 5 minutes late.  I hate showing up to really anything late but esp. workshops.  The class is just starting so I didn't miss too much.  It doesn't take long to find out not only should we have made all the nine patches but also cut all the other fabric.  So not only was I late but I also didn't do all my homework.  This was an awful start.  While others being sewing I start cutting then as quick as I could I got to sewing.  It didn't take too long for me to settle back in.  Judy was great and didn't seem too bothered with me.  She showed us the good and the "bad" in her award winning quilts.  She was nice and really after this workshop is when I started thinking about starting a blog myself.

 
That is the top, it still needs a border.  I hope really soon to decide on the border or maybe just not put a border on.  I really love the way it moves from light to dark even though I only used 5 or 6 fabrics.  I really like how the orange pops against the blue and I think the "curves" really turned out nice.  The lay out was helped by really everyone at Friday night finishers but especially T. and J.  with J. coming in and moving a few pieces around and really letting the transition from light to dark really work.

These are fabrics  I have picked out for the back.  They are Robert Kauffman the gallery basics collection.
Overall this is another quilt I really love.  And, was my first quilt with half square triangles and well other triangles!  Still learning lots of course.

Happy Quilting 

CDC 

Another class and workshop

I can't remember which of these came first but both were classes I did while finishing Grandma's quilt.  Both were taken last year and tons of fun.

I'll start with the quilt shop class. 

While at FNF (Friday Night Finishers) I see a really fun quilt hanging.  The design was quite modern and the class would be coming up soon.  Since attending FNF at Quilts Plus I had been wanting to take some classes.  The always have amazing quilts hanging up.  For some reason this one seemed like a good one to start with.  The pattern is Town Square and very modern and clean.  It matches the way we live much better than my first quilt.  So I decide to make it and it could hang downstairs.  At FNF T. and I go out to the shop for fabric for the class.  I find this really great purple floral piece.  We go find some great batiks that really match this focus fabric.  I go to class with these great fabrics, which are really all quite medium tones.  The pattern is very clear about having a light, a medium and a dark.  If you look at the pattern you can see the light serves as a great background to the medium and the dark, letting those squares really pop.  The instructor was great and taught us to make the quilt using strip piecing, which was different the pattern directions.  It was amazing how quick it went together.  By the end of the 2 or maybe 3 hour class I had nearly all the 12 blocks complete.  Once home I was able to finish the unfinished block very quickly.  Looking over the size I decided I only needed 6 of the block to hang the quilt where I thought it would look best.  I gave the other 6 blocks to my sister.  

Now to the workshop.  

It was another wonderful guild workshop this time by Debbie Bowles.  I know this happened in October 2009 because it was the same month as the guild's quilt show.  So with that I really think this was the second of these two quilt tops.  We did her pattern Eureka, which you can find on her website.  It was a fun class, not nearly as packed as the 1st workshop I attended.  Debbie Bowles was really nice and had some great tips on curved piecing.  At lunch since the class was small we all sat around one large circle table and ate and chatted together.  The fabric I used was Chasing Rainbows by Robert Kaufman.  This fabric was probably the first bit of fabric I brought after getting the ones for the first quilt top.  I loved these fabric.  While taking the workshop, nearly everyone else was using very soft colors and I had these bold, dark ones,I felt like I was making the darkest, ugliest quilt ever.  Once everything was put together I started loving the fabric again.  

Now both of these tops still need borders.  With the town square quilt I really thought I would use the floral fabric but now that doesn't seem like a good choice.  The eureka quilt I finally did pick out fabric for it and it's more chasing rainbows fabric.  Hopefully soon I'll be able to post these quilts as finished quilts and not just tops but for now it's fun to look back at 2 classes that happened just a little over 1 year ago. 

First QGI workshop

I can't remember exactly the date of this workshop.  What I do know is it was certainly while I was working on my first quilt top.  I imagine I had finished the middle nine patch.  Once though that section I learned quite a lot.  My nine patches were improving and I was feeling quite good about things.  My quilt teacher, I've been calling her S.B. and I'll now use T. (S.B. just looks mean to me), says we should take the Billie Lauder workshop.  Of course not knowing any better I agree.  It was a 60 degree diamond class.  Not having any idea what I was getting into I took my supply list to the quilt store and picked out some great batiks.  It is the first time I have worked with batiks and also my first real chance to pick out the light, medium and dark she called for.  I walk into class with my little brother sewing machine, which I got at Costco because the box said it came with a quilting package and since I would be learning to quilt that was the right machine for me.  I still to this very day love this sewing machine.  Anyway once in the classroom I see the class is full of all these very fancy Bernina sewing machine with all these wonderful ladies, many of which teach at the quilt stores.  Here I am still learning to sew a quarter inch seam, really hoping I don't run out of bobbin and as much as T. is trying to get it in my head press gently not the hard iron that I love so much and all around me are these quilt professionals.  Billie was so nice and fun and thought it I was crazy to choose the 60 degree diamond as my first workshop.  What she didn't know not only was it my first workshop but I was a complete beginner.  I sat there and just hoped I could keep up.  She gave great lessons on rotary cutting and setting up the sewing machine.  The first set of diamonds were cut and over all I did pretty good.  I was one of the first one's finished and Billie complimented my work.  At that point I finally relaxed a bit and thought hey I can do this.
Here is that first star.

     From there we moved onto the tumbling block.  I loved the tumbling block and any of the optical illusion patterns.  I was so excited to see if I could learn this one and I did.  Certainly some of the others in class looked better but overall I was happy with my fabric choice.  

After the tumbling blocks we moved onto a bigger star more lone star like.  We used striped piecing and a few more colors than the first star.  Once again I was pretty happy with my result. 

The last thing we did in class was work on basically 60 degree log cabin blocks.  At this point we have been sewing for about 5 hours and I had not at this point in my quilting worked that long or that hard.  My brain was overloaded, I had been working so hard to just keep up.  I cut 45 degree angles instead of 60 so of course it was all wrong.  I was too tired to re cut it so now I have some great 45 degree stripes waiting for a home and no 60 degree log cabins.  Overall I couldn't be happier that I took the workshop.  I still have very great memories from that day and my loud, slow brother machine kept up just fine.

Happy Quilting

CDC