Way Tooooo Long!

I have been very busy lately - though that is no excuse for not posting new blogs. THAT, I promise, will not happen again. I have stuck to all my resolutions this year except that one and the time has come to make that last resolution good, too.

So that gorgeous bag above is what Dora made at her One on One Machine class last Saturday at Country Quilts and Bears in Clearwater. After I started teaching quilting classes, I quickly discovered that some of my burgeoning quilters hadn't had the time or the opportunity to take classes at the shops they bought their machines at, thus they weren't as comfortable with their machines as they could be. I saw a need, threw out a notice in the shop newsletter, and I was amazed at the response. I am doing machine embroidery classes and regular machine classes and I have had such fun with them all. How can you not have fun when you see someones face light up when they become comfortable with their machines and create such beautiful projects?
Dora has the Janome/Memory Craft 6600 Professional. What a fabulous machine that is. Next Saturday I am in Key West at the Seam Shoppe teaching a Jelly Patch Quilt Class and then the weekend after that I am back at Country Quilts and Bears teaching a Janome/Memory Craft 10000 class. I really love what I do!

Here is a link to a story about the class I am teaching this weekend. It's called A Cautionary Tale...

A Cautionary Tale...

This is my newest completed quilt. I'm going to call it "A Cautionary Tale." Really, I am.

The definition of a Cautionary Tale is as follows: A traditional narrative (e.g., a fable, proverb, urban legend, or quilt) with a moral message warning of the consequences of certain actions or character flaws.
Character flaw: Self confidence and arrogance so high as to encourage my NOT following the pattern designer’s directions
Consequence: Bias issues
The quilt you see here is made from the Jelly Patch pattern. It's one of the patterns from the "Straight to the Point" series, published by Make It Easy which is a QuiltWoman.com Company. When I saw this quilt hanging in my local quilt shop, Country Quilts and Bears, I knew instantly I had to make it. A dear friend, Carol McPherson Hemmingsen was going to be teaching it. She did a marvelous job teaching and the class was one of the most enjoyable I have ever attended. Sadly, I was only able to attend day one of the two day class. That left me to finish the quilt myself. No problem, right?

I must state, before I go any further with this tale, that I have made many, many quilts through the years and I have never had any bias issues with a finished quilt. Honestly, not even one wonky quilt. Oh, the arrogance this omission of tragedy can breed.... The creation of this wonderful on-point quilt is amazingly simple. The blocks are constructed using Jelly Roll strips and then the completed blocks are sewn into rows. Once this is completed, the quilt top is cut into three sections and re-sewn, resulting in an on-point setting. The directions in the pattern offer two VERY SIMPLE options for stabilizing the bias edges before cutting. I opted for neither. "Why would you do that," you ask? In short, I trace the roots of that decision to an over inflated sense of confidence and arrogance. Me? Bias issues? Never happen. HA! When I received "The Call" from my quilter, I was instantly humbled. I could feel my face flush, and knew instantly what had happened.

Because I have a fabulous quilter, Marlene Hooten of Lucky Sew and Sew, my Cautionary Tale looks (nearly) perfect! Marlene worked the wonkiness smooth by steaming and stretching until it is nearly invisible. Needless to say I am eternally grateful to her and I will be turning this into a teaching moment when I teach the Jelly Patch class next weekend in Key West at the Seam Shoppe....

And here is a shot of Carol holding up one of her finished Jelly Patch quilts. They really are gorgeous quilts!

Quilt Ingredients: I used the Berry Bliss Hoffman Bali Pops to make mine and Carol used an assortment of 2.5 inch batik strips to make hers. Both are the "throw" size. The only thing we changed was the outer border. The pattern called for a 4" border and Carol made hers 6". I then copied hers.