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Archive for the ‘Mancuso quilt shows’ Category

Teaching Online this August! Join me!

Monday, June 21st, 2021

Guess what I’m teaching online again! in August at the Mancuso World Quilt Fest!  Enjoy the video below– and then go sign up for my workshops here:  https://www.quiltfest.com/register/world-quilt-show-online/workshops-by-instructor/sarah-ann-smith-bindings-facings/    For more info, you can also visit my workshop page here

Here’s the hotlink to sign up again: https://www.quiltfest.com/register/world-quilt-show-online/workshops-by-instructor/sarah-ann-smith-bindings-facings/

These are three of my favorite workshops, and in consideration of SUMMER and being able to get back out into the world (WOOOOOT!), I chose half-day workshops so you can learn then go play and actually smile at people–all of their faces–in person!

This is the LAST TIME I’ll be teaching online win a public venue (there are two guild jobs I’m doing online) this year, and I don’t know if I will be teaching online next year or not. For sure, I am cutting back on my teaching schedule, so get these while you can! Hope you’ll join me!

PLEASE feel free to comment and ask questions!

Take an online class with me while you can!

Tuesday, January 5th, 2021

Now is the time to take an online class with me because I’ve got six great classes coming up in January and February, AND because I have decided I won’t be teaching online again for at least six months and possibly not until early 2022! So sign up NOW so you don’t miss the chance!

Come play and learn with me online!

First up is January at Road@Home (the online Road 2 California event). Go here to register or find more information.

This is a sampling of the fun bags I teach in the Easy-Peasy Inside-Out Class…. if you think you’d like me to teach this for your guild–including LIVE ONLINE workshops, leave me a comment!

T207 – Hawaiian Applique By Machine on Thursday January 21 2021 from 8 am to 4:30 pm PACIFIC (California) time, so 11 am to 7:30 pm East coast time in the US.

F137 – Easy Peasy Inside Out Bag on Friday, January 22nd 2021 from 1:30-4:30 PM PACIFIC (California) time, so 4:30-7:30 East coast time in the US.

S204 – Collage The Garden: From Photo To Flower on Saturday, January 23rd, 2021, from 8 am to 4:30 pm PACIFIC (California) time, so 11 am to 7:30 pm East coast time in the US. Although the class image is a flower, my technique works on ANY imagery you choose from people to pets to buildings to landscapes.

Here’s the goodies! Go here to see my class listings in full. Go here to register! Students rave about how much they learn in these workshops.

I so hope you’ll join me! Once February is over, I am taking time for creating art, taking care of family and taking care of home. I’ll still be teaching in person later in the year (we all hope) as well as in 2022. After that, who knows? I may well teach live and online in about year, but until then… this is your only chance! See you in class!

August online class offerings!

Friday, July 17th, 2020
Sign up here!

I’m thrilled to share that I will be teaching online again in mid August, and for the first time ever you can take my most popular class, Collage the Garden, LIVE ONLINE! Sign ups are open NOW and are here. One of the best things is you will be home, so you can get whatever it is you wish you had brought to class, because you are at home and sewing on your machine!

I’ll be offering:
Wednesday, August 12, 2020: Collage the Garden: From Photo to Flower (6 hours) from 10-4 Eastern daylight (there will be a lunch break)
Thursday, August 13, 2020: Mastering Metallics (3 hours) from 2-5 Eastern daylight. Kit is optional.
Saturday, August 15, 2020: Easy-Peasy Inside-Out Bags and spin off projects from 2-5 Eastern daylight.

You can find complete class descriptions and PDF supply lists on my Workshops page (classes are listed in alphabetical order). When available, there are also hotlines to blogposts so you can see previous student work. If you have ANY questions, please don’t hesitate to write to me! I’ve done a recap of each of the workshops below as well.

The two images are this orange lily which grows wild along the roadsides in Maine this time of year and the following small quilt.
Pink water lily

Collage the Garden is all about my process. I teach you how to interpret a photo in class, then you will know how to use YOUR photos to create your own original artwork. We talk about selecting a good image, selecting fabric, fusing, tricks for working with cloth and, time permitting, introduce how to quilt (this is a who second follow-on workshop).

Mastering Metallics half day workshop will teach students to use metallic in both the needle and the bobbin. The workshop will debut at the Mancuso Online QuiltFest in August!, and is the half-day version of my Tame Fussy Fiddly Threads class. A kit with my original snowflake fabric, a 12×42 strip to make a table runner (custom printed at Spoonflower) and 2/3 yard coordinating blue for backing and binding is available when you sign up–only 15 kits available. BUT you don’t have to do this exact project if you prefer to do your own thing. (PS–if I have leftover kits they will be for sale on my website after August 15, or I’m making placemats to match my table runner!)
Pennants in the wind is a new class sample. You can paint as I did, piece a similar sample (I’m thinking of doing a landscape…same idea, rotate 90 degrees, with one line of trees), or use solid or semi-solid and draw shapes and quilting zones on your cloth to practice and learn.
Easy Peasy Inside Out bags is one of my favorite classes to teach…in a half day in person class students go home with a nearly-finished bag or even one or two finished bags depending on their experience. These are SO FAST and easy, and there are a ton of variations.
I’ve used this notebook cover for years and just love it!
You can customize many ways, and you’ll LOVE my rick for perfect pockets for pens and pencils. I’m going to make myself a double-pointed knitting needle holder using this process between now and the workshop. You can adapt the techniques to all sorts of goodies!

I’d love to have you in one of my workshops at the Mancuso Online Quiltfest here. If something you want to take isn’t offered, let me know what and I’d be happy to schedule an online class offered directly from me later in the year.

Making an overhead camera stand for online teaching

Monday, June 22nd, 2020

As I transition to holding online classes to supplement live and in person classes, I needed an overhead view of my work table. The traditional way to do this (outside of a fancy filming studio) is with a “C-stand” that is sturdy/heavy, stands on the floor next to your work table and has a boom arm that extends over the table. Then you hang the camera/iPad/iPhone from the boom arm. Cue COVID delays in shipping. I tried the one I could get in time for this week’s Perfect Bindings class at the first ever Mancuso online shows. The accessories didn’t fit the boom arm. Back they went!

Cue: Mama’s brainstorming, Mama and son’s (Joshua) creativity, and Joshua’s awesome tools (Band saw! drill! Random bits and bobs) and construction experience and help, and a stand using leftover stuff and $5 in supplies.

A DIY overhead camera stand

The wooden “light stands” were built based on information from Holly Knott’s wonderful “Shoot That Quilt” section on her website about taking great photos yourself of your quilts to enter in shows and magazines: two pieces of 2×4 lumber and four cheap shelf brackets for each stand.

Ignore the dust, cat hair, pug hair and thread. Please. Sorry. Here’s the link to Holly’s useful webpage on quilt photography.

Joshua, our older son, did some electrical work for Mom and Dad (us) a while back, and introduced us to something called Unistrut. Link here. It is a bit heavy, which is why I looked at C-stands to begin with, but that is also its virtue: it is totally rigid. Rigid helps keep your camera (in my case my iPad) stable.

The upper brackets were from something else that was modified. Knew they’d be handy! I bought two small black brackets with one hole on each side. Joshua said I needed two holes to prevent the small L brackets from wobbling, so using his awesome power tools (tool envy!), he just drilled an extra hole. He cut the Unistrut in about 8 seconds with his band saw. It would have taken me the better part of an hour with a manual hacksaw! The length is the width of my table plus an extra inch or so to help maneuver the stand into place.
The ruler is serving as my iPad’s stunt double because I was too lazy to run upstairs and get the iPad while taking photos. Can you tell from the clutter how chaotic it has been?
I CAN’T WAIT to have a MASSIVE TIDY ATTACK!
I wanted the iPad above the bar for added stability and so I could have full access to the screen while teaching live online workshops.
A close up view of the stand attaching to the unistrut. Here’s a link to the iPad holder on Amazon. It isn’t the most rigid thing and the little grip thingies that hold the iPad in place aren’t huge, so that’s another reason to have the iPad on top supported by the cross bar and not just those four little pads.

SO if you are wondering what your teachers does to get ready for you, this is just one small but vital component. If you are going to TEACH online, I hope this helps you–please feel free to ask questions! MASSIVELY HUGE thanks to Lyric Kinard for her help on so many things on the technical side over the years, and to Lee Chappell who gave us newbie online teachers for the Mancuso show a studio tour by Zoom to share with us how she set things up. And THANK YOU to my wonderful, creative son who comes home and always wants to do some sort of “fix up” something for his mom and dad. Joshua, you ROCK!

Busy during Lockdown!

Monday, April 27th, 2020

I’ll be teaching at the Mancuso quilt shows later this year and next! They asked teachers to do a brief 1-minute video. To no one’s surprise, my first attempt ran long…at least it was only 3 minutes and not 10 LOL! But I decided to upload the longer version here. I hope you’ll enjoy this peek at what I’ve been doing and maybe take a workshop with me at one of the Mancuso shows–I’ll be in Massachusetts in August of 2020–or at International Quilt Festival Houston in Fall.