Festival 2012 - first posting

whew!!  Ogallala quilt festival is over and I am back to school life.  One of the reasons I have been absent from the blog world is due to the fact that I was teaching two classes and giving a lecture at the festival and I really needed to get some things finished or at least partly finished for those three things.  Here I am getting ready for the lecture portion of the weekend.  The quilt top folded up right in front of me is one of those things I needed to finish for this weekend.  I have a full picture of it, but not on this camera.  I will have to find my other camera and download it to the blog.  It is a basket quilt that I started in a Gwen Marston class. 

My first class of the festival was a lot of fun, but really, really small.  It only had one student!  Actually it had three, but two of them didn't show up.  They missed out!!  I went to my car and got my machine and my friend Liz and my mother - who came all the way from Arkansas to be my helper - thank Mom - were my students in this "Liberate Yourself" class based on two Gwen Marston classes I took last year.  It really felt like a normal quilt-in weekend.  Sitting around sewing up a storm.  It was great and here is what they finished.  Liz actually finished three blocks and I thought I got a picture of all three of them together, but I don't know what happened, I can't find it. 

Mom got a completed top finished, but she had a little help with me cutting and handing her pieces to sew together.  If I had been doing that for Liz, also, she would have completed her top, as well.  Now, it will be a great surprise to see the entire top or quilt finished. 

Day two - actually it's day three of the festival - brought my "Come Play with Me" quilt class and my mother played photographer while I show some of my projects.  Below is the first quadrant of my intuition quilt. 

After showing some of my work, I sat down at the sewing machine - with the camera pointed at the throat plate and shining it up on the wall so all could see - I started our first project.  My students followed along wonderfully!  Of course, I forgot to ask them if they would mind being a star on the blog, so I have had to crop some pictures to show you what they accomplished. 

They made snaggle toothed star blocks using "made" fabric the 15 minute play way.  This was all done within the first 45 minutes of class!!  They caught on fast and I think enjoyed pushing their box out just a little bit. 

The second thing we made in class was free form houses.  I didn't get pictures of those, but they were really cute.  Then I challenged them to use their houses and create and add to it.  Below, you can see what the lady with the yellow background star made.  I absolutely love her tree.  She also took an old block, cut it up and added it to two borders.  She was having a great time playing with her fabric and loved the liberation of being able to cut up old blocks. 

I thought I took a picture of the blue background star block and house.  I know that didn't make any sense, but just read my mind and it will be okay.  She really didn't like her finished star block so she cut it up and used it in the border around her house and it was wonderful.  She liked it better that way I think.  They all did a great job and I really had fun teaching my classes this year.  My students were wonderful and even though it was a stretch for a couple of them, they did an excellent job.  I can't wait to see what these ladies come up with next. 

Liberated logs and baskets

I have been wondering and trying to decide what and how I was going to  teach my scholarship class at Ogallala this year.  I took two classes from Gwen Marston - Liberated log cabins and Liberated Baskets.  When I was discussing this with my mother, she came up with the wonderful idea of using the log cabins for the basket.  ding, ding, ding we have a winner!!!   I made two log cabins with orange strips (different fabrics in each) and made one yellow cabin.  These were all from the scrap pile that I use to make "fabric" with for my intuition quilt.  I pulled some brown fabric from a stack of fabric that has finally graduated from the pile by the sofa and made it up the stairs and into my quilt studio.  I had thought I was going to use it for squares in the 6 inch square swap from a couple of weeks ago and decided that I didn't want a solid brown.  It's no really solid, but kind of muddled.  I used a different teal fabric for the handles on each of the baskets and sashed it with a brown/orange/yellow/green fabric that for some reason I really, really like.  (I have been on a brown/orange kick for a little over a year now).  I was going to make the border a large strip of that fabric, but decided that it needed a kick.  So, I went through my teal drawer and pulled a fabric that has little bitty silver strips in it.  The selvage says the fabric was made in 1999 so it is a bit on the old side, but I am so glad that I have it because it works perfectly here.  Now to decide how to quilt this baby.  I want to have a completed quilt for my project instead of just a top like last year.   Now that I think about it, the year before I had three - count them - three completed (that means quilted and bound!!)  quilts for my solids class.  Last years wasn't quilted because I couldn't decide . . . . okay, I won't lie, it wasn't quilted because most of my tops aren't quilted. 

Classes - both quilting and school

Just finished typing out 3 - count them - 3 proposals for teaching at the Ogallala quilt festival. One is to teach how to make a simple bag like this one:



One is for this quilt, divide and conquer.



And the last one is for the spider web quilt.




All of them would make good classes and I might just propose them for the Andrews store, also. They weren't the ones I was thinking about for Andrews, but any one of them would be great. I think I can make the divide and conquer quilt with a jelly roll and a charm pack. I just need to sit down and do it. I know the bags can be made with a jelly roll, since most of my bags are made up of left over jelly rolls.

I got a lot accomplished this weekend, but there is still a whole lot more to do. (like lesson plans for tomorrow, yikes! gotta get busy)