BabyLock Tech and the New Machine

BabyLock Tech is held every year in St. Louis. It’s a convention for BabyLock dealers to see the new machines, get a lot of really great education (I often hear from multiple line dealers that the BabyLock classes are the best available in the sewing industry) and, of course, shop the vendors.

 

Michelle and I were there for a week setting up the Mettler USA booth, manning the booth and tearing it down on the last day. After a more than satisfactory conclusion — Michelle sold cabinets and I booked 4 workshop sessions — we did some sight seeing.  And we got to see the new Solaris machine, sister to the Brother Lumiere. Haven’t gotten my hands on one of them yet, but I’m teaching at Hokema’s in Redding CA next week, September 13-15, and they will have one for me to play with! Of course, I’m immediately attracted to the 13” throat space — biggest in the market and exciting for quilters and machine embroiderers!

Of course, if you are in St. Louis, pics have to include the arch; this was taken at St. Louis the King Basicilica. For some reason, my blogging program will only allow me to type above a pic, but not below it, so I guess this is the end!

Coburg, Oregon Quilt Show

This show is going to be so much fun! I have been working with the Sew Steady company for several years now. Promoting their extension tables was the first thing and then I moved right along with them when the Westalee template line came out. Now probably 60% of my teaching is the Westalee ruler/template workshops that I have developed. The rest is my machine quilting classes because we still have a lot of beginner/intermediate quilters who want to learn how to quilt their tops on a domestic machine.

So I get to do both at this show! I’ll actually start teaching the day before the show starts.  

Thursday and Friday, July 19-20, I’ll teach my Fluff & Stuff two day machine quilting class. There will be a description and supply list in the Coburg Quilt Show information and also here. 

Then on Saturday, July 21, I’ll be teaching Feathers Both Ways, presenting feathers with and without templates. We’ll be doing feathers with stencils, freehand feathers and template (ruler) feathers – all good! Who doesn’t want to play with feathers? Again, there will be a description and supply list in the Coburg Quilt Show information, or you can click here.

Just a Normal Starbucks Run

I’m teaching in Salt Lake for a few days and after class sometimes like to run in to Starbucks for a venti iced sugar free vanilla latte with whole milk — I tell myself it’s for the calcium!

This was a back window sticker on a car parked right in front — had to get this picture!

My last day of teaching was today so I’m headed home tomorrow for a couple of weeks to get some sewing done — I’ll keep you posted!

Patches & Scraps, Midland TX

This is either my third or fourth visit to Patches & Scraps; owner Lisa Graham and I were trying to figure it out the other day and didn’t come up with an answer. The store has been open for four years and I came to them for the first time shortly after their opening and almost every year since. Every year they have even more merchandise and since pushing the walls of the building out is impractical, the aisles just get narrower!

This is the view to the left of the front door....

...and this is the view to the right! Lots of fabric and thoughtfully arranged groupings of notions make this a really fun store to shop. Lisa has six daughters and a son and all of the daughters work in the business, five of them in the store. So since there is Mom and five daughters all fabric shopping at Market and with the vendors who call on the store, you can imaging that there is a LOT of fabric being bought!

Nice Judy Niemeyer and other larger format patterns display right in front of the door along with some shopping totes to fill up — easy to do here!

I said “Smile” to Grace and Tara, two of Lisa’s daughters — Grace looked directly at me and smiled; Tara said “oh, no” and looked the other way.

This quilt is right outside the classroom door and I love it! It’s got that whole modern vibe going on. It takes over 5 yards of background fabric and we had a lively discussion at dinner last night about how many bolts a store had to buy of good backgrounds like this one. A 15 yard bolt may only be enough for 2 or 3 customers, so Lisa and April (store manager daughter) have found that they can go through a 4 bolt order very quickly. It was a very interesting insight about inventory management and the things a store has to think about when placing orders.

One of the most fun things about traveling is learning from the shop owners!

For the first two days, I taught my Fluff & Stuff machine quilting class; my last class here before I fly to Houston for Quilt Market is a feathers class using the Westalee rulers. I’m also going to demonstrate circles on quilts in a Baptist fan design and a few other of the template sets so that students can see some of the variety available.

Even though it’s just short demonstrations, I get to sew — and any day we get to sew is a good day, right?

Red Pines Quilt Shop, Detroit Lakes MN

This is the second time I’ve taught for Nate and Joy Fetting of Red Pines Quilt Shop in Detroit Lakes MN. Last year, I came in September and the fall colors were just starting to pop; this year, I was there from October 11–15 and caught them just about at peak. This picture was one that I took from the car on the way from the Fargo ND airport to Detroit Lakes. We don’t have a lot of fall changes in the Southern California high desert, so it’s always a treat to go somewhere and enjoy the seasons!

Sunset from my room at The Lodge at Detroit Lakes — definitely a room with a view! Every room at the lodge has a lake view and the common area has a beautiful fireplace. There was an Octoberfest celebration on one of the nights and we were presented with German food, beer and a very accomplished accordion player. I really didn’t know if I would like accordion music or not, but this guy had a really good repertoire of songs and was very personable. It was a fun night!

This is Nate and Joy on our first night at dinner....

We just ordered some appetizers and shared. The plate in the middle of the table is waffle cut sweet potato fries with a topping of corn, black beans, beef and a bunch of other things. It was sort of a nacho type topping without the tortilla chips. Really good!

I commented to Joy that the quilts on the wall were different from last year; she said “They’d better be!” Red Pines is a big shop with a lot of fabric — 150 colors of Mona’s Basic Grey Grunge? And there’s grunge polka dots now? I liked the shots of color in the grey and white background fabrics in the quilt above.

I had been looking at this pattern from Jaybird Quilts for a couple of weeks and Joy had it in the shop, either to purchase separately or in a kit with the fabrics shown in the photo above.

I bought the kit and then took a closeup because I really liked the quilting and don’t want to forget what it looked like.

And of course there had to be rain!

On the drive back to Fargo on Sunday morning, I asked Nate to stop at a church that I had seen on the initial drive Thursday afternoon. It was such a pretty setting — the church building itself and all of the threes around it.

Another one of the trees on the church property.

I thoroughly enjoyed my few days with Nate, Joy and the students as well as the staff of the Lodge at Detroit Lakes who did their best to spoil me. We’re already mulling over ideas for what I might teach next fall. This year, just like last, we did my two day machine quilting class and Ruler Play on a Domestic Machine. We’re thinking of more advanced classes for next year. There’s always great new things to learn!

Speaking of which, this week I’ll be in Midland TX and then going on to Houston for Quilt Market. Lots of new things for me to learn so that I can teach them to others. I’ll be in the Amann-Mettler booth with all the beautiful, colorful threads; if you’re going to be at Market, stop by! I’ll be doing demonstrations with Mettler’s 28 weight cotton thread and using the Westalee rulers — I’d love to see you! 

Durchess Heritage Quilt Show

It was great to be invited by Sew and Vac in Poughkeepsie NY to demonstrate Westalee Ruler work in their booth at this quilt show. Met some great people who had heard of ruler work but not seen it demonstrated, so I was busy all day sewing and schmoozing — doesn’t get better than that!

My friend Teri Lucas was the featured artist at this show and she arranged a space for me to hang one of my quilts in the non-judged, non-competitive part of the show. It’s always fun to see a quilt hanging in a show and they always look a lot nicer to me than folded up and stuffed into a suitcase like they usually are!

 

 
I told Teri had no idea what to name the quilt, so she did it for me; here’s a picture of the card that explains the quilt’s story. Teri and I have had a running joke since we met several years ago in Knoxville when we were both teaching for an AQS show there. She calls me The Queen and I call her My Dear Princess; if you have met Teri, you know she has an infectious sense of humor and it was great to be able to hang out with her after show hours. Teri lives in the Bronx, so she didn’t have too far to drive to the show.

This was the 18th Dutchess Heritage Quilt Show; it is presented by the Dutchess Heritage Quilt Show Committee in cooperation with the First Dutchess Quilters Guild and the Dutchess Community College Foundation. Along with Teri, I was excited to see Debby Brown (of Handiquilter fame and cutie patterns, for two), who told me that First Dutchess is her home guild.

     

So I took a picture of Debby’s phone so I wouldn’t get lost on the way to dinner and met both Teri and Debby, along with a couple of other really nice ladies for a lot of laughter and some good food.

Somewhere under all that lettuce is buried a bison burger, which was excellent, along with really crispy yummy sweet potato fries. It’s kind of disappointing to me that the only way I like this healthy vegetable is prepared in the worst possible way!

When I got up the next morning, it was to find that my five year streak of driving rental cars in rain or snow remained unbroken! If you are having a drought in your area, just book me to teach, tell me to rent a car and your problems are over, at least for one day!

These quilts weren’t in the show, but the vendor selling beautiful solid fabrics had no problem with my taking the pictures. I really liked the quilting on both of these.

After the show was over and the booth broken down, all of the goodies out of the booth were brought to the Sew and Vac, Inc. store in Poughkeepsie.  There are two locations; the Albany store carries Husqvarna Viking machines and the Poughkeepsie store carries those as well as Babylock and Janome machines.  Since I am a spokesperson for Mettler thread, I was also happy to see a goodly amount of Mettler in the pretty new fixtures!

Sew and Vac carries both garment and quilt fabrics with a lot of fun projects displayed on the walls. Of course, I LOVED the coffee cups hanging at the top of the wall and I think the office caddy — it definitely caught my eye, being orange and all — would be a really attractive and useful thing to have.

My eyes were riveted to the perfect points in the mariner’s compass quilt. Love looking at them, but have never had the nerve to make one.

Along the very top of the wall is a display of old to new Viking sewing machines. There were quite a few there — an impressive collection!

I had an hour and a half drive from Poughkeepsie back to the Albany airport and a little extra time to make that drive, so I had breakfast at the Cracker Barrel across the street from my hotel in Fishkill NY. I think I love Cracker Barrel as much for the eclectic shopping experience as the really good breakfasts. Had to take a picture of this cute sign!

Quick trip home, one day to get everything turned around and ready to take on the road to MN!

Ready for OKC!

Keeping me travel ready takes what my husband calls a "pit crew" and Tina Fox is a big part of that. She's the magician (and sometimes photographer; you can see her up in the right hand corner) responsible for all the fun colors in my hair.

This is the style she sent me off to Oklahoma City with. I'm flying this morning and will be teaching ruler classes at The Stitching Post tomorrow and Saturday. I'll also get to visit with my good friends, Phil and Mary Newton. Phil was the brand manager for Amann-Mettler for several years and I enjoyed working with him in my spokesperson role. I've missed them and will be very happy to spend some time catching up.

Almost boarding time -- happy to be a Southwest A-Lister. Get to be one of the first people to get on board and choose a seat!

Have a super quilty day!

Catching Up with Quilt Market Photos

If you haven't heard already, this picture will probably clue you in that Quilt Market was in St. Louis last week. Michelle is my partner in crime in the Mettler threads booth; in fact, she's the primary person at these events and I'm the tagalong. She knows everything about the cabinets, pricing and all the nitty gritty that dealers need to know to place orders; I help by explaining thread usages, weights and other facts to help them make their choices.

I also get to sew in the booth -- thank you, Cristen Jones of Quilt Sampler in Springfield MO and Tulsa OK -- for loaning me a Brother machine! Oh, and your car to haul it and myself all around both those states! I taught Ruler Play classes in both store locations on this trip, Springfield first, then Quilt Market, then Tulsa.

Even got to see the Mississippi River from my room on the 8th floor of the hotel!

As usual, I focused on the quilting rather than all the fabrics and notions and was happy to see some beautiful samples in the booths:

The Patrick Lose booth was so colorful with all the bright solids; I especially liked the quilting on the chevron quilt in the top photo on the right hand side. Interesting motifs scattered about and a lot of ribbon candy quilting in the stripes.

This was intriguing in the way that the space was divided up with the straight line quilting before the fill stitching was added. Very striking!

Totally straight line quilting; interesting how the quilting was deliberately done off-center in each block.

This was a fun surprise! I had already taken a picture of the quilt and then leaned in to read about it and found that my friend Sam Hunter of Hunter Design Studio had made it! I think if I were to do this circle quilting, I would use the Circles on Quilts rulers that I have from Westalee Designs. It's one of the templates I teach in my Ruler Play 2 class and gives me the best circles I've ever stitched.

I thought the quilting was spectacular on this modern quilt -- lots of negative space as a canvas and Cathy did a great creative job on it. She and I have taught at a couple of conferences at the same time before, but I've never met her -- love love love her work!

This quilt from In the Beginning caught my eye also, an interesting piecing design that drew me in to analyze the construction.

Another example of show quality quilting with a lot of tiny fills.

This cute applique quilt was made by Leonie West, designer of the Westalee rulers. She did her ruler work on the background fabric with applique fabric on top, then trimmed and fused. Is this so adorable or what? I think she told me she'd made it for her granddaughter -- what a great gift for a child's wall!

St. Louis was fun and inspiring and, of course, there were always good meals with friends, good wine to share and great quilts to check out!