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Amoskeag Quilters, Manchester NH
This past weekend I was fortunate to be able to present my trunk show / lecture “With a Dash of Color” to the Amoskeag Quilters Guild, based in/near Manchester, New Hampshire, and teach a machine quilting class on Saturday. Alas, I have very few pictures! The talk is one I have done many times before, but I always have fun and hope to turn on a few lightbulbs for folks. Basically, we all respond to color, but not all of us (me included!) have an intuitive grasp of color. There are a number of ways to put together a color scheme for a quilt, and that’s what I talk about using my quilts as examples. (read to the end for info on that bit above!)
The next day I taught a class on machine quilting and decorative threads, but snafu seemed to be the order of the day (did you all know the origin of the word snafu? I am told it dates to World War 2, or perhaps earlier, and stands for—uh, well, I’m going to clean up the language, but substitute the expletive verb that seems appropriate: Situation Normal All Fouled Up). When I arrived at the venue, the power was out to the entire building! And for a machine class. Fortunately for me and the students, the morning is mostly lecture and there was a good window, so we moved tables and sat by the only natural light and went through the basics. By the time I was nearly done, the power returned!
For the class I tried something new. I had an assortment of Superior Threads re-wound onto bobbins (a service Superior provides for teachers). As a result, I could offer a kit with ten “micro-spools” that included three bobbins of Bottom Line (60wt. poly), and one each of metallic, Glitter (a holographic thread), Brytes (30-wt cotton), King Tut (variegated 35 or 40 wt cotton, forget how heavy), MasterPiece (50wt cotton), Rainbows (variegated 40 wt poly) and a solid 40-wt poly. The kit runs $15, and is seems students were OK with that…the same as buying two spools of “fancy” thread. I offered a choice of either silver or gold–photo above (for the metallics baggie) and warm (pink/red), cool (blues) or earthtone (greens and browns)–photo below, so students could pick one color and one metallic. To my surprise, earth was the most popular! Don’t these threads look like a color feast?
Let me know what you would like in a thread sampler? I’d love to refine this kit!
It must have been a nerve-wracking day for program chair Cary Flanagan (who was in the class…visit her website at Something Sew Fine) and guild president Sue Ann Walker, who were trying on a Saturday morning to find an alternate location…to use immediately! Thanks to both for their efforts!
Above are the two sections of the class….it was held in the cafeteria of an office building. The good news is that the students had PLENTY of table space, but it meant for a bit of “projecting my voice” (i.e. being even louder than I usually am) and getting some exercise getting around to all 18 students. Still, I’ve heard it went well. As always, if there is anything I can improve, I always want to know because I can’t make it better if I don’t know it needs improving! 
I met one of the students, Aline, on Friday evening and she told me about this miniature she is working on, which will FINISH at 7×7 inches. She brought in a quarter of it and let me photograph it…that’s what you see at the top of this post. Yes, that is inches on the ruler, Those itty bitty triangles of pink and green are half square triangles…smaller than a 1/4″ finished size. I took one look at it and said “you are FLIPPIN’ INSANE!” and I stand by it LOL! The tiny straight line is a “piece” 1/32 inch thick. I love looking at them, but I could never, EVER be that accurate! Beautifully done, Aline!