So let's chat

about the Sherry Lynn Wood workshop that I attended over the weekend. I had great fun seeing so many of my quilty friends. Marty of Marty's Fiber Musings was there. As were Lori, Marquita, Glen (of Quilts and Dogs blog), Joyce, Stephanie, and Yvonne from BRMQG. They were there for the long haul--Friday through Sunday and staying overnight, which means they had dinner together at local restaurants.

Of course, I had the pleasure of meeting other quilters, mostly from Quilters Guild Acadienne, which is a guild in Lafayette. QGA and BRMQG have fearless leaders willing to combine efforts and resources so that Louisiana quilters can learn from national teachers.

On Sunday we had a slightly larger crowd as more friends joined us. Unable to come on Saturday, Kelly and Sharon quickly caught up with us on Sunday. And look at what Kelly managed! She's a natural quilter able to blend color and design beautifully.

Saturday's Ruler Free Mashup took care of straight line piecing. Sunday was a day of curves. All curves. All the time.  So after this weekend we can, essentially, make an entire quilt without touching a ruler.

But, oh, how I missed my ruler! I just wanted to straighten the edges a little. Only when I had a big block that needed to match another big block. If you know me, though, you know I follow the rules. So there was no ruler in my bag of tricks. And it was a good thing, because I absolutely, positively, would have cheated. In this picture I am pondering how to put four pieces of different sizes together to create one piece. In the end, the four separate pieces were packed up and carried home to be dealt with. Ruler or ruler-free, I need a design wall. 

Sherri would asked "what did you learn, what surprised you, what would you do differently" anytime we showed our work. I could fill a book answering those questions.

Sunday Quilt Inspiration: Sherri Lynn Wood workshop

I attended a two-day workshop with author Sherri Lynn Wood thanks to the Baton Rouge Modern Quilt Guild and Quilt Guild Acadienne. Held at A&A Sewing Center, this workshop could not have been more. Class fees paid for everything, and I mean everything. That included more delicious food than we could eat. (South Louisiana, y'all. We know how to eat!)

Sherri Lynn Wood (center) with our fearless
leaders, Torch (left) and Lori (right)
Thanks, ladies, for a wonderful weekend!

And now to inspire you, just a few pictures of some of the pieces we worked on. No one felt compelled to complete any one work. There simply isn't enough time. 
Day 1: Ruler Free Mashup--sewing without rulers.

Follow Sherri Lynn Wood on Instagram

Day 2: Template-free curves--cutting and sewing curves freehand. 

GSQA Pursuit of Excellence class

Meet Paula (in the pink shirt)
POE teacher

On Saturday I spent my day in Lafayette with the members of Quilter's Guild Acadienne (QGA) and ladies from the Gulf States Quilt Association (GSQA) who had promised to come, learn and return with new techniques, information and associations to their home guilds. 

As a new circuit teacher, I've been wanting to meet some of the members of GSQA. I had planned to attend a meeting last month but there was that whole "spend 13 days in Cabrini hospital" episode and missed my opportunity. Since I'd also hedged my bets a little and signed up for the Pursuit of Excellence (POE) class, I decided to go for it. 

Meet Renee, great helper  and quick notes presenter

I saw and met several people, but there was little time for meet and greet, except during lunch. But I'd been foolish and brought that &^$#% new Singer (purchased for traveling to classes) and we fought I struggled all morning. I won but was quite far behind the crowd and that's never the way I roll. I decided had to catch up first, then wolfed down ate most of my salad so I could move on with the class.

In the end I came home with one finished project, this little trash bag, and some blocks. The other project is a Cathedral Window shortcut that is really cute. I hope to find time to make a large bag using this shortcut. The idea was not necessarily to finish anything but to learn the techniques and practice enough that we could demonstrate the process to our own guilds. 

Also, I won a door prize, which is always fun. It's these books and a pack of the cards, which will make great thank you notes. 

Sewing curved seams should have been no biggie as I've sewn lots of those. However, it's been a long while and I discovered that there's a way to sew Drunkard's Path block so that they lie down without clipping the curves. The trick (I hate to admit) is to SLOW DOWN. I scream those two words because it's what I had to do in my head the entire time. Oh yes, I dialed down the machine speed, but my hands and head were not in sync. Anyway that's another story. 

I have decided that I like this crew of quilters. (Who has met a quilty bunch and NOT liked them? Impossible, I say!) Someone please give them warning that they will see more of me. And they will be my friends. Honestly, Saturday was much too soon.

So what about you? When and where was your last quilt class? What did you learn? 

Lots of quilty love...

A New Venture: GSQA ~~ and a finish

The Gulf States Quilting Association (GSQA) is accepting applications for circuit teachers, making this a good time to expand my quilt teaching. I miss the classroom and hope that this will fill some of that need. I truly hope that this pans out and I am able to give more lectures and workshops in our region.  Although I understand they are difficult to get into, I think I'd like to eventually teach at a show like AQS or QuiltCon. 

Years ago (back in the late 1990's) I gave presentations at conferences around the state and country and loved every minute. Until I burned out. Teaching, you see, takes lots of preparation if it's done correctly. It's also difficult to teach high school English, raise three teenage boys and fly around the country to present at conferences. Ah, decisions!

The pictures in this post are of one of my class samples, Dresden Kaleidoscope, that I'll use to teach fabric repeats, fussy cutting, and repeating designs. There are different levels of difficulty built into the quilt so that students begin with an easy concept and move up to the most difficult.  

I'll leave you with a couple more photos of this fun quilt. What do you think? Would this be a class you'd consider taking?

 Your guild or shop could always contact me at mary.marcotte@gmail.com. (Just saying.)

IQA Houston ~~ part 1

Although I've attended probably eight IQS quilt shows in Houston, yesterday was my first time attending on day one. My goodness!  It's nothing short of insane!  

I can't imagine that it's possible to have more people in one place and expect them to accomplish anything.  

Every booth seemed about to burst open and every aisle of quilts had people crowding near the quilts.  Taking pictures?  Close to impossible without waiting for someone to move, stepping on toes (literally) or getting photo bombed by a stranger.  

Would I do it again?  Well, of course!!!  Who would miss such an opportunity?  Not this chick!

So the pictures here are all from yesterday's long day of driving, quilting gawking, and husband sitting.  Almost five hours of driving to get there, 10-3 of strolling through the quilts, and a sick husband who has a horrible chest cold.

Of course, it's easy to love everything you see when the quilts are all stunningly beautiful.  The details of some of the quilts were amazing and I could not help but think of the time and patience required to make such a work.  

Others, however, seem a bit more approachable, and I think there's a hope that one day I may see my own quilt in the show.  Not that the workmanship was lacking in any way, just that there were not as many tiny pieces or that the basic techniques are some that I may be able to achieve.  These are my favorites....if for no other reason than that they give me hope.

Sunday Quilt Inspiration: QuiltCon

I've been watching the QuiltCon lecture series on Craftsy,  It's interesting, inspiring, and free!  If you haven't seen it, give it a few minutes.  You'll love seeing your favorite designers and quilters speak about their craft and inspiration.

David Butler, Jacquie Gerhing, Amy Butler, Mary Fons, Angela Walters and many others are represented in this series.  Each artist has about 45 minutes to speak and take audience questions.  Those I seen so far stand in front of a full how and speak from the heart about what they do and how they do it.  

To find the lectures, go to Craftsy and enter QuiltCon in the search box.  

Oh, did I tell you? It's free!

You're welcome!

Modern Reclaimed

Remember the fickle quilter blocks that I worked on a few weeks ago?  I wrote about them here.  I set a few "rules," which I called a recipe and tried to stick to them, especially on this particular top because I wanted to see if I could, indeed, make them work.

The Recipe 

• 2 or more UFO projects
• 2-3 yards of solid for background
• fat quarters that coordinate with the UFO's

Ah, they did!  I started with pieces from two different projects: one was the Louisiana Bayou Quilt that eventually went to my son and dil: Rory and Meggan.  The second was from a project that I'd started and didn't finish.  The 2 and 1/2 inch strips worked really well with the left-over log cabin block.


I dug through the stash of red fabrics and found a bit of the red that's in the center of the log cabin and ripped apart some of the strips that were sewn, and I was ready to go!

For starters, I cut the log cabin block into four uneven pieces by cutting through the red center on angles.

The next step was to add some wide strips to the new pieces and then--the hard part--squaring up the block.  Since I have this great ruler (EZ Quilting Square Ruler by Marti Michell), I thought I'd put it to good use first squaring up the log cabin edges. 

 Then turning the block and squaring up the background sides.

It worked very well, so I did the same thing with the other three blocks.  On some of the blocks I added a large piece of background fabric.

Then I got creative and made a plus block using some of the other fabrics.  The more I played the more I liked what I had.  I've been reading Quilting Modern by Jacquie Gering and Katie Pedersen, and used a couple of their ideas for blocks so that I ended up with a sampler-like project.

I also happened to attend my guild's August meeting and thoroughly enjoyed the quick lesson on making flying geese blocks.  I used one of the techniques to make three geese and that gave me another block.  

Then I arranged, moved, turned and twisted blocks until, finally, I was satisfied.  Of course, I needed to fill in some of the open spaces with background fabric, but that was easy enough.

Although I didn't use up as much of the UFO blocks as I'd hoped, in the end I really like the top.  It was so much fun to play as I went along and to use everything I learned while learning it.  Can you see using this idea?  I hope so because it was a blast for me. I hope it looks great once it's quilted.  I have to wait a bit before quilting it, though.  

Pin It Wednesday #29

School is about to start again.  Friday is the first day for students.  In honor of their return--I never really left since I taught summer school--here are a few Pinterest.

Well, that wasn't such a good idea.  The jokes on Pinterest are a bit too raunchy for my taste.  All of them.  School jokes included.  English jokes are just as raunchy and they are tacky.  

Let's just move on, okay?  I found some really pretty modern quilts while looking for some ideas for the red chevron quilt, which happens to be loaded on the long arm machine.  I may even finish it in a few more days!  Yay!

Hope you're having a great week.  I'm in the process of moving classrooms and getting ready for students.  I'm looking forward to teaching this year.  I'll have some of the brightest students in my classes.  Seriously, the classes I teach this year are students that I taught last year and they are unbelievably bright.  Oh, they talk and are difficult to manage--gotta stay on my toes--but they are smart and funny and we've already build a pleasant relationship.  So, as they would say, "I'm stoked!"  (I think it means "I'm excited," although I always think of a stove pipe...you know, as in "stoking the fire.")