Crazy Quilter on a Bike!: It's MAGIC!

Monday, December 1, 2014

It's MAGIC!

On Saturday I taught a great class with the Brampton Quilter's Guild. As usual we had loads of fun! And boy this group kept me hopping. It was a technique class with loads of room for experimenting and they ran with it! I love when that happens. We also had several "teaching moments" which are always fun and brought to my attention things that I hadn't thought of so technically it was a teaching moment for both the teacher and the students!!! I LOVE those teaching moments!

The class was strongly advised to bring NON-PRECIOUS fabric for this class so don't think that they have bad taste - we weren't going for pretty - we just needed something to sew with.

This was the result of our first experimenting - the disappearing four patch. Fun to see what colours and value combinations work best. Also what happens when you switch up the fabrics and make it scrappy.

Then Bernice went wild and look at what she produced!!!!

Yes - even this teeny tiny one. So CUTE - but we all agree that the colours need to be completely independent of each other because the fabrics are bleeding into each other and we lose the pattern a bit. Again - we were going for technique in the class. All teaching moments were warmly welcome because we all learn from them.

Edie and Maria also did some experimenting

Barb

And Claudette also had fun experimenting.

Hard to believe those all started with a four patch!!!!!!!!

Then we moved to the next exercise - what to do with a nine patch.

I love this - Barb wrote on the back of her sample so she would remember how to do them

Barb

Claudette

Maria (a couple of teaching moments here with placement of the fabrics)

Edie (that strip became another teaching moment)

But LOOK - Edie went home and redid the block and see how much nicer the one on the right is - AWESOME Edie. I LOVE that and I LOVE that you went home and played some more.

Bernice

Andrea

Janice

Shoot - I did not get a picture from Arunda.

Then we moved on again - this time to something new. Which I won't tell you - but surely you can figure it out!!!!

Janice and Bernice - we loved this so much we all wanted to make a quilt out of this combination. But ALAS Bernice had used up the last of her stuff for this class!!!!

Edie

Claudette

Thanks ladies for making the class so much fun!!!! I am sure they went home with heads spinning. There are so many options for what we did and NO PATTERNS required - that is the nice part.

As Christmas approaches, I see three stores in the area are having the stocking stuffer sales. You sign up - they post a new item each day (starting tomorrow) and if you want the item - you can have it put in "your" stocking. At the end of the sale - you pay for the items (I know - does that mean there isn't a Santa Claus??) and they get shipped to you in time for Christmas.

Well I am not going to sell you anything, but I am going to make some suggestions as to what would be good items for stocking stuffers.

By the way - these are the stores - Country Concessions in Cookstown, Quilter's Cupboard in Uxbridge, and Sew Sisters in Toronto (but I think they had a sign up deadline of last Friday. Might be too late this year but get on the mailing list for next year!!!)

My first item is a NEW SEAM RIPPER!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I have many, but I think this one is about done in. I could still use it when I stuck the sharp end back in the handle, but I have to admit that it was getting DULL.

YES - did you know that seam rippers get dull!!!!! PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE get Santa to give you a new seam ripper this year. And PLEASE get a good one. This one by CLOVER is excellent. Not too big at the business end, easy to use and when it is SHARP - it works so much better. While we often get those little seam rippers from promotions - they are useless. You NEED a good seam ripper. I won't even ask my students for a seam ripper any more because many of them do not have good seam rippers. However - there are many converts out there. Just remember to do their job properly - they get DULL.

And how you dispose of those pointy things is also important.