Home Again -- For a Few Days, Anyway!

The trip to Yucaipa was a lot of fun! I stayed with Susan Wamsley, the Program V.P. of the Pass Patchers Quilt Guild. Susan is also President of another guild in the area, Citrus Belt, and knows all the ins and outs of hosting a teacher.

I was hoping that the guild's opportunity quilt would be at the Wednesday morning guild meeting so that I could get a picture, but it wasn't. Susan was kind enough to e-mail a picture so that I could share this quilt with you. It's amazing! The quilt layout was designed by Francine Landau of the guild and the patchwork blocks (designed by Ellen Hopkins) were made by about 30 guild members. The applique borders and medallion (designed by Sharon Schamber) were done by nine members of the guild. Lynette Harlan of Bluewavequilts.com did the machine quilting.

If you would like to own this quilt, you can buy tickets from Pass Patcher guild members at Road to California 2010 (for more info on Road, you can go to http://www.road2ca.com/) on Saturday, January 16, at the Ontario Convention Center in Ontario CA. Road to CA does the guilds a great service by providing them space to display their opportunity quilts and sell tickets at a venue that attracts a lot of people. It's always an excellent quilt show -- I have had the opportunity to teach there, in the Bernina classroom, several times in the past and I'll be there again for three days in 2010. I'm definitely looking forward to that!

For more information on Pass Patchers Quilt Guild, as well as other guilds in California, I found a very cool blog. Here is a web address to her page on guilds and what is going on with them: sewcalgal.blogspot.com/2009/08/quilt-guilds-for-opportunities-to-learn.html

Yesterday, I taught Intro to Machine Quilting and these pictures were taken as I was demonstrating my fluff and stuff technique for moving big quilts through the machine. I had brought my Bernina Artista 730 to show the class that -- yes -- you really CAN quilt those "big ones" through a regular home machine! We had a full class yesterday and a lot of fun!

Now I'm home for a week until next Thursday when I fly to Salt Lake City to take a class rather than teach one...more on that to come!