Tuesday, September 9, 2014

Hands on Longarm classes at Island Quilter on Vashon Island and a little eye candy!

Saying goodbye to summer is always hard for this California girl.  With fall in the air, kids back in school and a new long arm machine in one of my favorite Quilt shops I may be able to happily face the fact that I no longer live in a coastal climate that stays 70 degrees year round. Sigh. I miss you SLO town. 

I have been focusing my business away from quilting for customers and in the direction of teaching and lecturing. This is a huge but exciting change for me and I am looking forward to sharing everything I have learned over the last ten years with students.
Before I go into a lot of detail about my teaching ventures I am going to fill you with some eye candy. These are some of the gorgeous quilts I have had the privilege of quilting for friends and customers over the last few months....err...year.

This quilt was made by my good friend Noelle, it is an improv beauty, I love her bright pops of color, compositionally it flows so flawlessly and has so much depth and visual texture.



This next quilt was made by Heather Bostic with Melody Miller's amazing Bee fabric, it is her Hotel California quilt and I was able to squeeze some lyrics in there for her.



The Quilting on both of those Quilts may look complicated but in reality the designs I chose stem from a rather simple formula I have developed which creates a path working you across the quilt with as few starts and stops as possible.
I affectionately refer to this method of quilting as "Compositional Quilting".  In addition to teaching this at Quiltcon2015 I will be teaching locally at Island Quilter on beautiful Vashon Island. Workshops will be hands on working on an HQ18 Avante.

The next few quilts I am going to share with you I quilted for Angela Pingel's book,
 A Quilters Mixology. This girl knows her curves and I highly recommend her book if you are looking for some great designs and instruction working with curves.





One of the brightest spots in my career so far was being asked by Karen McTavish to contribute to her most recent book, Mastering the Art of McTavishing 2nd Edition.  I collaborated with my bestie namesake,  Krista who worked with me to piece the quilt that we submitted for the book.




I'm looking forward to seeing some of you this fall in class as I reluctantly pull on my boots, fold away my summer tank tops and resign myself to the truth that fall, is in fact real. I will continue my slow.... slow knitting on a scarf I hope to finish this life time and fill my soul with lots of fabric sunshine at Island Quilter! Hope to see you there!!xo