Back Home and Busy…

It’s all very well going shopping and buying stuff but that’s the easy bit…

We had a good journey home and all our bags arrived in one piece. I wasn’t at all surprised that my bag got opened by security but I was very impressed that they managed to get everything back in it so neatly. One suitcase weighed forty nine and a half pounds and the other was over forty eight… I am glad Southwest hasn’t changed its luggage policy.

It has taken a while to unpack everything and find places for it all. I now have even more “project piles” in my studio…

What to do first? A good question. There have been so many demands on my time that it has been difficult to spend time at my sewing machine. I have completed the ” Japanese Puzzle” quilt top. My next project will be to piece a backing out of the fabric leftovers. No pictures yet.

I couldn’t resist the African embroidery giraffe…

It was fun to do while catching up on all those important TV programs… Now I need to decide what to do with my picture. I’m thinking a bag, but maybe a pillow. I just happen to have some African fabrics in my stash. We’ll have to wait and see.

Yesterday was Riverwalk Quilters Guild monthly meeting day. Cindy Needham came to talk about “Thread Facts and Fiction”. She is an educator for Superior threads who happen to be one of my favorite thread manufacturers. She gave us a very informative lecture on solving thread problems encountered when sewing and quilting.

Then today I went to her workshop where she talked a little more about the different types of decorative thread available in the stores today and then let us loose on her “thread bar”.

Here’s Cindy extolling the excellence of one of her threads.

She had a vast array of Superior’s threads which we could use to stitch out a sampler, try thread painting or make a small wholecloth quilt. Cindy also had some of her beautiful quilts to show us.

So we spent a happy four hours sewing, with just a brief break to grab something to eat. I gave up on the sampler pretty quickly and had some fun with the thread painting. Cindy had brought a selection of large print fabrics for us to use.

First I chose a lily from the Benartex Flower Show collection. I outlined it with RazzleDazzle sewn from the back and then filled in the petals with various Metallic and Highlight threads. Last I put the stamens in with a nice Bryte lime green.

That didn’t take very long so I changed course and came back from the table with a fishy fabric. This time I set out to cover the whole piece with thread. I used several colors of Rainbow, a King Tut, more Highlights, then glammed it up with Halo and Glitter.

There are some fishes as yet unembellished… another project to finish or maybe not?

Near the end of our class time we gathered together for show-and-tell. Some people had never tried free motion quilting before but everyone had something to show.