Everywhere and Nowhere?

I rather left you hanging back in October… more than three weeks ago… so let’s start with the arrival of Caroline Jo in the evening of October 12th.

Here she is, safe in the arms of her dad.

Congratulations to proud parents, James and Sarah and big brother Christopher 🙂

After a little extra care and attention everybody is doing well. I’m not sure when we will meet in person but we have had several FaceTime visits and I did manage to get a blanket and cardigan/hat combo in the mail. I’m not the best grandma… the better one is currently visiting her grandchildren and doing all the helpful things. Good job Deb!

I have been struggling with writing a new blog post. I had a busy week teaching that week and then I sort of sat around doing not a lot, and then it got to this week and doubts crept in as to what I should be writing about and is it too flippant to be posting all the pretty quiltie things? Well, I’m thinking it’s this afternoon or I’m not sure when, so I’m just going to post all the pretty things and what will be will be and there we go…

I delivered two lectures, taught three classes and gave a studio tour. I managed to get a few pictures.

Here’s the Walking Foot Quilting Class at Pacific International Quilt Festival (usually in Santa Clara, CA)

I’m so encouraged by what the students achieve. Nancy made a super spiral that she was happy to share with the class!

Here’s the Wrapped in Scraps class. Students came from coast to coast and beyond, with Patty joining us from Guatemala!On the Saturday I gave a lecture to the New Braunfels Area Quilt Guild. They are down in Texas. That would not have happened in the pre-Zoom days! The guild photo doesn’t do them justice but here you are anyway…

I cleaned up my sewing space for the studio tour. If you want to take a look at my tidy room you can find it at the Quiltfest page here on Facebook. Enjoy!

I have been trying to keep it tidy. This picture was taken this morning…

I am finding that Zoom teaching makes me tired. There might not be any traveling involved but all the concentrating and being nice wears me out by the end of the day! It’s a good sort of tired so I’m not complaining… just making an observation?

It took me a while after all that excitement to put myself back together again but then I decided I needed to make something. I watched a segment of The Quilt Show with Sujata Shah talking to Alex Anderson. She was showing quilts from her book and they seemed familiar… A quick search on Amazon showed that I had actually purchased Cultural Fusion Quilts four years ago and there it was on the book shelf!

Maybe it was time to take a look inside and try something new?

I started with one block. A neutral palette and then a quilted grid and some hand stitching.Let’s try some brights?

I found some 10″ squares of Kaffe Fasset fabrics and put them together with Kona solids. This time I remembered to take pictures along the way.

Just the piecing…

And then quilted and embellished…Let’s try another one?A half inch grid,Some bold stitches,and a closer look.The embroidery is mostly just through the top and the batting. When it goes to the back it’s hidden in the patterned fabric I used!

Each piece is about 14″ square, depending on how hard I concentrated when I was trimming my pieces. Sometimes I used the wrong line on my ruler and then everything got an extra trim to match 🙁

I kept on stitching. I tried a different arrangement of half square triangles.Quilted and embellished!Time for a change.

Last month I had bought a piece of Marcia Derse designed fabric (A Cabinet of Curiosities from Windham Fabrics) from Bernina of Naperville. I thought it would be good for stitching some butterflies. I needed to resize the designs to fit so I reduced them to 70% of the original size they are printed in my book. I used white transfer paper to draw them onto the fabric and started stitching.

Just simple chain stitch outlines in twelve different shades of hand dyed thread, they were quick and easy to sew. I added batting and backing, a little quilting and here we are, ready to bind!A closeup picture shows the subtle colors of the House of Embroidery hand dyed threads from Global Artisans.

What else?

I received notification of a scheduled delivery from UPS. It turned out to be the return of my secret sewing from a few months ago. A few days later a large envelope arrived with two copies of Quick and Easy Quilts.

Yes, that is my name on the cover!Inside are a pattern and an article I wrote 🙂

Time for a posed picture or two.

I enjoyed sewing my project with a fat quarter stack of Solstice by Sally Kelly for Windham Fabrics. The good people sent me the fabrics before they were available in the shops so they are really brand new, just released to retail stores this week. It’s a lovely collection of different scale and values that really work well together.

That brings me more or less up to date. I have several more blocks inspired by Sujata’s book stitched ready to embellish. I have signed a few more contracts to teach in the next few months with more in the works. Please check my calendar from time to time if you are interested in taking a class with me. The shows are open to everybody, it doesn’t matter where in the world you are these days!

The first polls are about to close so it seems like a good time to stop but let’s do it back where we started?

Pictures of grandchildren…

Ruby and Benjamin came to visit at the weekend. I made Ruby a new hat for the winter.

(I bought Benjamin’s tee-shirt a few years ago. Yes, I would have been in Houston last weekend in another year.)