Serendipity

In June, while in the middle of completing another work in progress, the realization hit me that I didn't know how I was going to quilt it. I didn't want to just do a stitch in ditch or the simple meandering. Not to allow this to an obstacle, I placed this problem on a back burner of my brain, as I made progress toward my goal of a completed top.

I am a novice to the world of long arm quilting, and know very little other than I want to get one, someday. A more immediate concern is to get a frame that I can use with my Brother 1500. But as part of my "someday" Long Arm research, I became a member of a Long Arm Yahoo group. Mainly I lurk, with an occasional click to a website to look at photos of newly posted work, or pick up an occasional tip that I can use with my domestic machine. However, as my quilt top problem fermented in my background memory, the was a post about someone named Nichole Webb was doing a workshop in GA.

To make a long story short, I signed up. What a fun day I had! Somehow when reading the class description, the only thing I remember was something about domestic sewing machine, which in my mind qualified me to sign up. I arrived to see a room full of Long Arms AND everyone assigned to a machine. Not a problem except for the fact that if you add up my rental time at a quilt shop (Jan 2005), the test drive at a quilt expo (March 2006), I have maybe 2 ours of sewing time on a long arm. To say I had a case of nerves would be a bit of an understatement.

Nichole is a fantastic teacher, who doesn't allow any one to say "I don't know how," and showed us all her "Beautimous Blocks". I worked through my dual learning curves of how to maneuver the long arm plus how to create feathers. I came home very pleased with myself & my newly acquired skill. The next morning, when I got up, I knew exactly what I was going to work on.



I wanted to make a postcard(s) donation to Fibers For A Cause (FFAC - see link on side for more information. I had two unfinished postcards that I could now finish. I am happy to say that I was able to "scale down" from the 10" blocks that I was doing on Friday to a postcard. I've attached photos of the 99% (I have got to add another bead or two more) finished cards before I send them to FFAC.

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Something Old, Something New

One of the things that appeals to me about quilting is the taking of something old and turning it into something new. I'm currently on a mission to finish the old works in progress to clean/organize my studio.

Some time back I had quilted some fabric to make 18" pillows for a family member. There was two 18" squares left over. One square I turned into a fabric bowl. That left this orphan square that has been bouncing around for the last two years, until two weeks ago.

I'm toying with a"concept" or maybe theme would be a better word to design a line of handbags. Well, one thing lead to another with result being that the 18" square became some small pyramid shaped coin purses. These might make some cute stocking stuffers.