Quilting is in my Blood

When I heard that a good friend’s daughter was getting married in June in California, I expressed my regrets that I would not be able to attend the wedding but offered to make a set of four placemats for the newlyweds and asked what colors they would like me to use. I was somewhat surprised with one of their color choices. The red, green, and purple jewel tones were in my stash, but their other choice was the color brown which perplexed me for awhile. I have finally decided that I will use an espresso brown for the binding and an attractive brown print for the placemat backings. I finished sewing the placemat tops this past weekend using fabrics that were predominately red, purple, a medium green, and a lime green and then added the neutral color of grey to balance the arrangement of colors.

I used Elizabeth Hartman’s Color Blocks Placemats pattern, and I would really like to make another set of these placemats using a different color palette for my dining room table. I am leaning toward using a serpentine decorative stitch to quilt these placemats with a bright canary yellow thread. I learned how to use this stitch at Jacquie Gering’s Walking Foot class last month in Albuquerque (see my July ’17 OMG Finish post for more information about this fabulous class). Below is my practice piece using this decorative stitch.

My August ’17 One Monthly Goal is to quilt and bind these placemats. Linking up to Elm Street Quilts: August ’17 OMG.

My July ’17 One Monthly Goal was to make a quilt top to take to Jacquie Gering’s Creative Quilting with the Walking Foot class at Hip Stitch in Albuquerque on 7/22/17. I used Brenda Ratliff’s Forest Daybreak pattern, and overall I’m happy with how this flimsy turned out. However, I learned that improv piecing can look easy, but with the best improv-pieced quilts, there’s obviously a lot of thought into design and composition. If I make another quilt like this (perhaps one with narrower strips), I will probably sketch out the lengths of my subcut pieces as well as the angles. I also underestimated how much fabric I would need for this 60″ x 72″ quilt top, but luckily I had enough complimentary fabrics in my stash to make this good-sized flimsy.

Jacquie’s Walking Foot class is my favorite quilting class that I have ever taken. She is such a good teacher who uses a lot of humor including laughing at herself, and it is obvious that she feels comfortable in her own skin. Jacquie will be teaching at QuiltCon 2018, but after that, she informed us that she plans to start doing small quilting workshops at her studio in Kansas City starting next year. She says some of them will be long weekends, and some may be as long as five days. She had me at “and I’ll bring the people back to my house, and we’ll have some wine and cheese.” I have found that smaller, more intimate classes/workshops are better for me than the bigger conferences, and I really hope that I can learn more from Jacquie in the future.

At the end of our class, we all sat around and took turns presenting our quilt tops to the class after first giving a short intro about our project. Jacquie and the group gave me a lot of positive feedback about my quilt top and some good suggestions for quilting. I will probably do diagonal straight lines in sections replicating some of the different angles in the quilt. Maybe it will be my September OMG? I have something else I need to finish in August. So many projects, so little time!

I’m really looking forward to experimenting more with my walking foot. And if you don’t have a copy of Jacquie’s book, WALK: Master Machine Quilting with Your Walking Foot, I highly recommend you treat yourself to this book. Below is a photo of one of Jacquie’s samples with a very cool design that I never would have thought could be done with a walking foot:

Linking up to Elm Street Quilts: OMG July ’17 Finishes.