Time for another catch-up post, about my Decorative Stitch Applique class on Friday at Quilt Festival.   I’m on a yahoo group for Janome 6600-7700-8900 owners, and a discussion cropped up about using the decorative stitches and I realized I had yet to post this information, so here goes!

The Funky Chicken, from Sarah’s Decorative Stitch Applique class in Houston.  Right click to enlarge image.  I’ve stacked (grouped) stitches on this one.  For example, the checkerboard (in yellow upper left) is two passes of a satin stitch that has two columns of small alternating squares.  To the lower right of the green square, a scroll stitch is bracketed with scallops.  The center square is appliqued, stitched with the “V” stapes, then outlined with a bold straight stitch.  Done on a Janome 8900.

Ya know how we all have these fancy machines that do a bazillion things, and pretty much 98 percent of the time (or more) all we do is use the straight stitch and sometimes the zigzag?   Well, when I wrote my book, Threadwork Unraveled, I included a section to teach folks how to play with their fancy stitches. This is the project in the book and the regular class project.

Decorative Stitch sampler for my Decorative Stitch Class.

I teach that section as a class which was offered this year at Quilt Festival.  This year I came up with a couple new projects as class options for students. Most of the students did the usual tossed leaves project for this class, but one loved my Funky Chicken.   Here she is early in the day, filling the background with fun stitch combinations in fun colors:

This student used the same colors as my sample. We were luckily in the Janome classroom with the FABULOUS 15000 machines. I’ve never been a fan of computer-screen sewing machine models, as I prefer visual knobs and buttons. Well, let me tell that has changed! I have severe sewing machine lust for one of these babies! And they have even more (!!!) stitches than the already fabulous 8900!

Other students put their own spin on the leaves:

A student is making sample blocks with decorative stitches.  This is a great way to test out pattern combinations–here she has a practice square to toss out and her “real” piece on the left.  If you have a practice square, that means you don’t have to pick out the stitches if you don’t like them!

Close up of decorative stitching on an aspen leaf.

This student tried a very bold, wide multi-stitch zigzag.  You can see this is her practice bit–see how she has tested the appearance of various stitches in the strip on the right?

I made a smaller (about 9 inches square) quiltlet with the sampler leaf and the background stitching. If you right click on this image, you can see more detail. Notice how I layered up stitches to applique the green patch and how I used a decorative stitch on the binding. On the latter, I used matching thread to machine stitch down the binding, then went over that with a decorative stitch.

And a happy student with her nearly-done funky chicken:

Thank you, Barb Brown of Colorado, for taking my class! I love your chicken!

The day ended with one of my favorite things at Festival:  FRIENDS!  This evening was the Dinner@8 artists.  Jamie Fingal and Leslie Tucker Jenison curate an exhibit each year for several years now, and I am thrilled to have been both invited to submit pieces and accepted in the exhibit!   My orca quilt, seen in earlier blogposts on Festival 2013, was in this year’s Exquisite Moment exhibit.  Here a bunch of us who were at Festival enjoy dinner and friendship and art!

One of the two tables of folks in the Dinner@8 exhibit. Leslie is at the head of the table, next to Diane Rusin Doran (in pink), Susan Brubaker Knapp (glasses) and Lyric Kinard

And too much fun not to include, Susan and I taking pictures of each other taking pictures!

As with many of the participants in this bloghop, I first met Daphne Greig online (through the QuiltArt list tho it has been so long now I forget!).  She lives in one of the most beautiful places on the planet:  Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada, and it shows in her work.  Thank you, Daphne, for being part of the final Holiday Giveaway to celebrate the release of my video workshop, Art Quilt Design From Photo to Threadwork!  You can see her review of the video workshop here.

To order a DVD, visit my Store page here.

Or to order either the DVD or a digital download, visit Quilting Arts’ Interweave Store, here    and see all my products there here.  And, of course, you can enter the various giveaways thanks to the generous quilt artists who are helping me give away copies!

Blue Ocean, Turquoise Sea, by Daphne Greig. It is no surprise that I love this quilt–the colors are SO me, but they are also so representative of the Pacific Northwest and Western Canada.

Daphne’s work ranges widely from pictorial, to applique, to pieced, to abstract!  She has an astonishing five (yes, 5!!!) books to her credit, and she still finds time to make art and teach!  I’m tired just thinking about it! You can find her books and patterns for sale here (and <blush> thank you for including my book on your sale page, Daphne!).  Daphne’s most recent book, Give and Take Applique, also has a companion DVD to help you create a class right in your own home!

Daphne’s Give and Take bundle with the book, DVD and supplies!

I’ve had the good fortune to run into Daphne several times at various shows where we have both been teaching.  Ironically, although I used to live less than 40 miles from her as the crow flies when we lived in Friday Harbor, Washington, and I had “met” her online, I didn’t actually meet her in person until after I moved to Maine!

Daphne also has a book on stained glass window quilts. The two on the top left look so much like the lush gardens you find on Vancouver Island!

And of course, anyone who has ever lived in or visited the Pacific Northwest can’t help but love the enormous cedar and fir trees that define the region.  Daphne captured it perfectly here:

Daphne Greig’s “Looking West.”

I love quilts that incorporate traditional with contemporary, as with the on-point squares that create the beautifully backlit sky and sea in this piece.

And what tour of the West Coast would be complete without Kelp!

Daphne Greig’s Kelp I. Aren’t the beads PERFECT?

So please surf on over to Daphne’s website, here, and leave a comment to win a video download of my video workshop, Art Quilt Design From Photo to Threadwork.

THANK YOU so much, Daphne, for being part of this giveaway!

Next up is Lisa Walton of Australia, then the final grand giveaway will happen right here!

If it was Tuesday, that meant I was teaching Tame Fussy, Fiddly Threads! As always, the students were brilliant!

Tuesday is the “down” day between Market (the trade show, which is only open to industry professionals, not the general public, ends on Monday) and Festival (which opens with a Preview night on Wednesday evening, then is open Thursday-Sunday).  Folks who attend Market often stay to take a class, and folks who attend Festival come early so they can take classes, then be free to enjoy the show and vendors on Thursday.  This year, I got to teach one of my favorite classes, Tame Fussy, Fiddly Threads, which is all about using metallics, holographics, and heavy threads (the kind that go through the needle, not bobbin work).

A student plays with heavy 30-wt So Fine thread from Superior Threads early in the day.

Since so many of my classes are fusing, I thought I’d mix it up when I formulated this class.  Instead, we make a stencil out of freezer paper and paint with Lumiere and ProFab textile paints.  Students can use my model or do their own thing (which I LOVE when they do that!).

This student chose gingko leaves pointing away from the center on the north-south/east-west axes. She then penciled in quilting guidelines on the black background.

In the supply list, I suggest a black background fabric.  I love this small black and charcoal check!  Her quilting is great…love the nestled-in quilted-only leaf next to the stenciled leaf, as well as the shading on her leaves, and how she alternated painted and not in the spray of leaves on the right.

This student was having fun!  Her background of black and gold fabric is somewhat visually busy, so she is wise to concentrate her stitching on the painted leaves as the print could obscure the lovely stitching.

Then in mid-morning a fun surprise!  The best thing about Festival is seeing folks you know from (mostly) the internet…the quilts are great too, but the quilters are the bestest!

Luana Rubin, founder with her husband Paul of eQuilter, was at Festival and popped in to the classroom to say hi! We are both members of a small online group–there are not so many of us and we are VERY tight! We respect everyone’s privacy closely, so we can share and be sure that we will support each other and keep mum. I also got to see Luana AND her daughter Sophie later on the show floor (photo in a future post).

Practicing on a sample sandwich before working on the stenciled piece. (Note her shirt, from Lopez Island Resort; Lopez is the island next door to San Juan Island where I used to live.  I swear everyone on the planet has either been to the islands or knows someone who lives or lived there!)

Another set of gingko leaves, this time on the diagonals, partially quilted.

And the same leaves at the end of class. Fabulous!

Oak leaves are popular, too, and easy to draw! notice how she varied the thread for the leaves.  Would love to see how she quilts the acorns; we talked about doing a dense zigzaggy thing for the caps!

Love the quilted border!

A happy student–the maker of those wonderful gingkos– in a happy and talented classroom. We got to use the Janome 9900s in class, which is similar to the machine I use at home. FAB!

And those glorious gingkos from above at the end of the day. LOVE THIS!

My next Houston post will share quilt pics, then I’ll do more on classes I taught, then more quilts, then even MORE quilts!

What a concept…I’m making an art quilt!  Not a very large one, but still!   I’ve been wanting to teach a series of workshops called Quilting the Good Life.  Part of it will be Quilting the Garden.  I figured everyone loves flowers, they aren’t as fiddly as getting a face right, and it is easy enough to change the colors to one that suits the student.   And lilies only have six petals, so easy enough to fuse up in a class and get right to quilting–especially compared to something like a dahlia or peony or rose!

Fused applique lily, in progress.  Cropped section of original photo on the left, fused top on the right with only the yellow-green in the centers stitched.

On Saturday at International Quilt Festival I’ll be participating in the Saturday Sampler and talking about Thread-Coloring, how I use thread like a colored pencil to tint or shade the fabrics underneath, to bring the fused applique to life.   I made this piece to help illustrate that demonstraiton, and hope to begin teaching it as a class.

Let me know if you ‘d be interested in a class like that, either in person or on line….would you rather fuse up the lily, or have me supply (for the cost of printing) the photo printed onto cloth which students would then quilt in class.  By quilting a photo (maybe printed by Spoonflower?), we could skip the fusing step (which can take a lot of time) and get straight to learning the thread-coloring bit.  Would that interest anyone?

I’m also thinking about doing some online teaching.  Should I?  I’d love to teach more QUILTING, not just the fusing part but the actual stitching.  And maybe my Edge Finishes / Binding class.   If you could pick which class(es) of mine you’d take online, what would that be?  THANKS!  Feedback is good!

To cap a wonderful bloghop, I would first and foremost like to thank the amazing artists and bloggers who made this possible:  Jamie Fingal, Deborah Boschert, Vicki Welsh, Leslie Tucker Jenison, Terry Grant, Gloria Hansen and Diane Perin Hock.  To all of you who left comments, THANK YOU!  And to Quilting Arts/Interweave, Mistyfuse and Havel’s Scissors, thank you for your generous donations that make this grand prize possible!  Here is one more chance to win, and read to the bottom for a bit more news!  Please note, this giveaway is for those residing in the United States only due to postage costs.  However, if you live outside the US and win and are willing to share postage costs, you can enter also. Leave comments before 8 a.m. Eastern Time, October 10th.  I’ll do the drawing that morning and post/contact the winner.DRUM ROLL please:  the Winner is number 42, Gail Myrhodosky!  I’ve emailed you, Gail, to get your snail mail address.  This giveaway is now over, but I’ll do one more in mid November–come back on November 10th—well, come back before then please, but for more on the Holiday giveaway, visit here on November 10th.

There is now a video clip available on YouTube which you can watch here or over on YouTube, here.

The grand prize is grand indeed:

Huge thanks to Quilting Arts/Interweave, Mistyfuse and Havel’s for their generous donations to this bloghop!

• A copy of the DVD!
• A selection of products from MistyFuse! I show you how I use these products in the Video workshop.
• A huge donation from Havel’s Scissors including a generous giftbag that includes long scissors, short scissors, snips, seam ripper, AND the non-stick scissors too!
• And a copy of Quilting Arts Gifts magazine from this year, with a project by me!

Here’s a photo of the stencilled ornaments project I did; I will also be demonstrating this project at the Christmas Delights Sampler (Class 765, and it still has openings…sign up at Festival!) from 2 to 5 Saturday afternoon at International Quilt Festival!

My project in the Quilting Arts Gifts 2013-14 issue is Stenciled Ornaments.

If you’d like to win this GRAND PRIZE, please leave me a comment and tell me something you learned these past two weeks from one of the blogs you visited on the bloghop!    And if you can’t wait, or don’t win, do remember you can order my DVD from me here or the download (or DVD) from Interweave, here.  Leave comments before 8 a.m. Eastern Time, October 10th.  I’ll do the drawing that morning and post/contact the winner.

NOTE:  this giveaway is for those residing in the United States due to postage costs.  However, if you live outside the US and win and are willing to share postage costs, you can enter also.

And….. just when you thought the bloghop was over, NOPE!  I’m doing a SECOND bloghop in early-to-mid-November to kick off the holiday season.  So on November 10th, make sure you come back (well, come back and read my blogposts before then, but you know what I mean) to join the second and final round of fun!