AQS Quilt Expo wrap up

Posted by Nadine

Wow—what a bad blogger I have been! Time has gotten away from me, and ten whole days have gone by without a blog post, though I won’t admit to being a complete lazy slacker since there were extenuating (and exhausting) circumstances to contend with. And now that I’m home there’s so much to tell, I’m left wondering exactly where to start!

I headed toward Des Moines, Iowa for the AQS Quilt Expo on Monday, 26 October after visiting with family in Nevada and Utah since leaving Quilt Festival in Houston. I say “headed toward” since of course, American Airlines couldn’t quite get it together and get me where I needed to go on time and with luggage in hand (for the second time in 10 days, no less)! Those turkeys stranded me in Dallas overnight after flight delays caused me to miss my connecting flight by 10 minutes, and then they wouldn’t give me my stinkin’ luggage! Perhaps they didn’t understand that I’m not the wash’n’wear girl, and never have been. So off I went to some not-so-great hotel near the DFW airport without anything to wear and not even a toothbrush. Yeah, I used to carry all that “what if I get stranded” stuff when I flew, but after 9-11 it all got too painful and I never needed it anyway, so now I don’t. Lesson learned.

I did finally make it to Des Moines a day late, but still in plenty of time for the show. I met so many interesting and FUN people at the show, students, vendors and other quilting professionals alike, that it would be hard to share it all without spending days at it! There were happy students in my classes and they left good evaluations of the classes with AQS, so I think the workshops were pretty successful. Shame on me though: I had my camera with me, but never had time to take any pictures during my classes! Too busy teaching, I guess! Continue reading →

Machine Quilting–Master the Basics Online Workshop

Posted by Nadine

Just a quick note to let you know that I’ll be teaching Machine Quilting—Master the Basics at Quilt Campus starting this Saturday! This is a great beginning machine quilting workshop that you can take online from your own sewing studio. The workshop is presented in four lessons over four weeks, with plenty of opportunities for discussion and feedback with your fellow students and me in the online forum! See more about the workshop on the Workshops page, and then visit the registration page at Quilt Campus to sign up now!

Stay tuned for a post filled with info and FUN about the Des Moines AQS Quilt Expo!

Embellishments are a girl’s best friends

Posted by Nadine

I’m crazy busy at the moment getting ready for Quilt Market and the AQS Quilt Expo, but I did promise quilting content before the weekend is out, and I am loving this current project, so I couldn’t wait to share it! I wanted to make another sample for the Embellishment Dimension workshop, and this time I wanted to do something totally different than the other samples I’ll take with me. I found this luscious batik at the Army craft shop in Heidelberg, and it was just begging for embellishments! It was, I heard it!

I listened to this fabric speaking to me for a couple of weeks before I finally had some time to play. Here’s texture piece number one: Continue reading →

Accessories Mini Quilt with Silken Stitches

Posted by Nadine

Time for another show and tell! I’ve actually had this finished for a while now, I just didn’t get the pictures taken right away. I made this quilt as an example of what can be done with the postcard size accessory appliqué patterns for the Silken Stitches workshop. I love the way the quilt turned out, which is probably not surprising since I’m a little addicted to the shoe, bag and hat accessory motifs, and I suppose the same could be said for the fun Michael Miller prints that I used in the quilt.

I’m not sure that I’ve had my fill yet either, and I still have some yardage left, so at some point there may be another coordinating project coming. A lap quilt or pillows perhaps? Of course, none of this really fits into my house with it’s current decor, so any more quilts in this style or colorway might require some major redecorating…and shaking of the head and rolling of the eyes on ITMan’s part…

Here’s the crisp, colorful, summery-looking goodness (just in time for fall?): Continue reading →

Inchie Quilts: On the Road and YouTube

Posted by Nadine

This weekend, I’m deep in preparations for my trip to the US in October, as well as a couple of events that are on the calendar for September. Next weekend, I’ll be in Schönaich (near Stuttgart, about an hour south of where I live) for Patchcom’s 9th Annual Quiltfestle on Saturday. Birgit asked me to come to the Quiltfestle and bring my Inchie Quilts, talk about my book, and present some Inchie demos (more on the Quiltfestle later in the week!). I’m also scheduled to demo in the AQS booth at Quilt Market, and will probably need all of these step-by-step materials for workshops, lectures, etc.

So today I prepared step-by-step samples for making Inchies to use for demos, and then as I was edge stitching the Inchies, I got this crazy idea to make a video tutorial of the process! Talk about a complete derailment! Shooting the video was a piece of cake that took less time than writing this post will (despite the fact that it’s a brand new camcorder that I’d never used before), but the whole “how do I put this video on the web” thing took five hours! Seriously! Sheesh! Continue reading →

Zen Dimension

Posted by Nadine

Woohoo! A finish for me! I’ve finished this project with the linen border that I’ve shown peeks of here and here. I’m really, really pleased with the end result! I’ll mostly let the pictures tell the story, otherwise I’ll be here all day writing enthusiastic commentary and I have some other stuff I need to work on. So without too many more words, here is Zen Dimension: Continue reading →