Borders & Bindings at Nuttall's, Salt Lake City UT

These pictures were taken at the Ivy Place location of Nuttall's Bernina in Salt Lake; all four days of classes were held at Ivy Place this time....

There were stations set up for pressing and cutting; each person had a Bernina 830 to sew on during class.

Mary and Marie, who are sisters, shared a lot of stories about their quilting, friends and travels -- very funny ladies! They kept us all laughing most of the day......

Karla is pressing....

Inez is measuring and preparing to cut....

Do you think Kitty was maybe contemplating what she was going to do next?

Group mug shot, left to right: Helen, Mary, Marie, Karla, Karla (what are the chances of that, spelled the same and everything?), Inez, Anne and Kitty. As a class kit, they were each given a fat quarter of the center fabric and four long quarters of coordinating fabrics. All the kits are identical; it is their fabric placement choices that make the little quilts look different.

A fun day was had by all!

A Star Quilt for Alex

I finished up this quilt for Alex Anderson and FedEx'd it off to her last week. It's going to be in a future issue of The Quilt Life, so I can only give you sneak peaks!


Alex absolutely nailed the piecing of these stars -- look at that center! And she did it every single time!

For all of the quilting, I used the pale blue (color #749) Mettler 100% cotton silk finish thread in the bobbin; for the freehand quilting in the stars, I used the blue Sulky rayon, color #2202.

The same thread combination was used for the quilting in the diamond shapes.

Here's a closeup of the freehand quilting in the star blocks.

I used this stencil for quite a bit of the quilting in the interior of the quilt.

All of the marking was done with air soluble marker so that Alex doesn't have to wash the quilt before she has it photographed for the magazine.

This is the stencil used for the border quilting.....

....and this is what it looks like stitched in that pretty blue rayon!

The photography and the paper quality of The Quilt Life magazine are superb, so when this quilt is published, it will be beautimous!!

Fabric, Notions & More -- Ridgecrest CA

Before my lecture at the Hi Desert Quilt Guild in Ridgecrest CA, my friend Terry Wojciehowski took me to the new quilt shop and Bernina dealer, opened last spring. I hadn't been there yet, so had to go and see all the goodies!


I loved the painting on the walls and all of the beautiful quilts that were hanging in the store...

There was a quilt in progress on one of the classroom walls.....

...and inspiring words on the wall above the design area.

Pretty quilts everywhere!

Debbie is the shop owner -- she was showing us some work that she had completed recently....

Another gorgeous quilt!

I live about 80 miles away from this shop, so it's an easy hop to come and teach here -- Debbie and I talked about it, so those of you who live in the high desert area and are interested in taking a class might keep an eye on my schedule.....As I book events with dealers across the country, Dan posts them on my website. To see the schedule as it stands now, click here.

Nuttall's Bernina -- Salt Lake City UT

I've been in Salt Lake City this week teaching at Nuttall's Bernina. For the past few years, I have been coming here twice a year for a week to ten days to teach a series of workshops at the Nuttall's stores. Salt Lake is a pretty big city -- Nuttall's has four locations so that many stitchers will have a local Bernina/Brother dealer to visit.

Monday and Tuesday was the Fluff & Stuff class, my two day workshop on machine quilting on a domestic machine. We had a full class of 20 people, half on Bernina 830s and half on top of the line Brother machines. By "top of the line", I mean machines with lots of convenient features and accessories; I'm very impressed by the performance of these machines.

At the beginning of the first day, we were getting set up and ready to go; to decorate the classroom, Joyce and Joni hung my quilts over the bolts of fabric lining the walls....


More quilts -- Tequila Sunrise on the left, Make Mine Neapolitan on the right....


This picture is from yesterday's workshop, Positive/Negative: Adding Color to Trapunto by Machine. We had all Bernina 830's in the classroom as well as cutting and pressing stations.

Another picture from yesterday....in the left hand corner, Karla is sewing away while, on the right, Marie is engrossed in her project. The bright pink and yellow quilt hanging above Marie is a Hoop Sisters design....

Kits were provided for this class by Nuttall's; there were equal amounts of orange and purple fabrics -- Kitty chose the orange fabric for her sashings and used the purple to "shadow through" the white squares. She got hers all pinned up and ready to quilt!

Mary chose the purple sashing and orange shadowing through. It's a bright orange, but when it shows through the white, it mutes almost to a deep peach. All of the quilts were gorgeous!

Today is Borders & Bindings -- can't wait!

When Life Gives You Lemons.....and a Halloween Dessert!

Dan and I went to a really fun party for our friend Chris Spicher's 60th birthday last Monday night, but the attention wasn't all on Chris -- a lot of people had questions for one of the party attendees, Nicole McCracken. Questions being: Oh, my gosh, what did you do to get that cast on your foot? And -- WOW -- look at all that bling!

Answer to the first question? Tripped over the dog while going down a flight of stairs....ouch!!!


We invited Nicole and her husband Lon to dinner last night at the house; a early evening dinner so that she wouldn't have to cook, she could put her foot up when she needed to rest it and still get home and tucked in nice and early. Had to show you the comment-inducing cast!

Evidently you get to choose your cast colors these days and then Nicole added lots of bling and a pretty pedicure! If you have to look at a cast for several weeks, this is the imaginative way to do it!

We had a couple of bottles of red wine, ribeye steaks that Dan grilled, roasted asparagus and baked potatoes, both done in the oven. Dessert is the above Halloween funfetti brownies from a Pillsbury mix with whipped cream swirled right out of the can to make a ghost and tiny chocolate chips for eyes. The only difficult part was balancing the dessert plates on their way to the table so the little ghosts wouldn't slump over!

It was good to catch up with friends and cheer Nicole on -- the cast comes off November 16!

International Mystery Quilt of the Month -- Bolts in the Bathtub, Lancaster CA

Last month was the first meeting of the International Mystery Quilt of the Month club, which is somewhat like block of the month, only bigger! Last month took participants to Australia and there were three fabric colorways to choose from. I think Dawna will be especially fond of this program in that she doesn't have to make up a sample -- it's a mystery!

Four people brought back completed quilt tops for the Streak of Lightening pattern; it was interesting that they were all set a little bit differently....
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Three of them were the same colorway, which was neutrals.....

..the fourth top shown was the second colorway, pinks and blues, and there was not a quilt shown from the third colorway, which was greens.


I was traveling last month during the meeting, so I'm somewhat behind!

Dawna also likes to show us what's new, like the quilt and pillow made from Moda's Santorini line. Dawna pieced the quilt top and Peggy, who works at the shop, made the pillow. The tiny ball trim on the pillow is really cute!

This month's theme is Italy and there were three colorway choices: Cappuccino (browns and tans), Lasagna (reds/creams/greens) and Spumoni (which was described as pastels, but is really pink/cream/brown/mint green).


This is a four-hour workshop, so after Show & Share, we all got out our rotary cutting equipment and started slicing away. Cheryl had all of her cutting done first as well as neatly displayed to decorative effect on her ruler!

I had chosen the Spumoni colorway, so at left are 1-1/2" strips cut from the 12 fabrics provided.

At right are the additional fabrics that I purchased: the frozen treat print for the outer border, brown for the inner border and, since I will probably put the blocks on point, the pink polka dot will be the setting and corner triangles.

This particular block involved sewing a diagonal seam across fabric squares and I am terribly inaccurate with this type of seam without marking. Even though the seams were short, I decided to improve the chances of getting the block the right size, so I Scotch-taped the Angler 2 to the tray of the machine and -- voila! -- it worked! Straight seams without taking the time to mark....

Won't get back to this project for at least a few days, but at least this month's is already further along than last!

After the Storm -- and Dinner....

We had a huge storm here in Southern California last week -- wind, rain, hail(!!) -- resulting in property and landscape damage for a lot of people as well as a career's worth of dents on some cars. After the storm, the clouds were so beautiful that I had to take some pictures...

These were taken off the back deck of my house; couldn't make up my mind which I liked best, so included both.....

It seems like whenever we have bad weather, it triggers the urge to cook -- maybe it's because you want to stay inside, light a fire and some candles and smell good things in the house?


Started with some baby bella mushrooms, which I quartered; then I sliced up some boneless skinless chicken thighs and reached for the standby in my kitchen -- Pasolivo lemon olive oil.

The Texmati rice and butter for a side dish....

This is probably the last of the fresh basil to come out of the garden; it's looking pretty spindly. My friend Charlene has been growing hers indoors, so I'll probably have to offer to trim her basil for her pretty soon -- do you think she'll fall for that one?

Browned the chicken & mushrooms in the olive oil, then added a splash -- well, maybe more than a splash -- of white wine.

This is a Sauvignon Blanc from Justin Vineyards, one of my very favorite Paso Robles wineries.

Rounded out the meal with a quick salad: bagged veggie lovers lettuce, some halved grape tomatoes from Cherub and our favorite not-homemade salad dressing. There's something about those Cherub tomatoes -- we've tried other kinds and brands, but keep coming back to these for their pure tomato-y flavor.

The Girard's dressing is the one that Dan buys whenever I'm out of town and fresh dressing isn't on hand. We like the Light Champagne; it's not as oily as full fat dressings, but isn't sweet either, like so many "light" products.

Pour out another glass of that wine and we have a quick, easy weeknight dinner!

Alex Anderson Quilt Retreats -- Session I

AAQ Retreats started ten years ago when cyber quilting friends from a message board on Alex Anderson's website wanted to find a time to meet and sew together. That first retreat, in November 2001, lasted four days and had about 25 people attending. Most of their time was spent in independent study with both Alex and I on hand to answer questions and give opinions about fabrics, etc. Alex did a "breakout session" on hand quilting and I did one on machine quilting. Both of us would occasionally do impromptu demonstrations when someone asked a question about a technique that we thought everyone might like to know.

In 2003, the third year of AAQ Retreats, the waiting list was so long that Alex decided to open a second session and there are still two sessions: this year, Session I opened Thurday and will run through noon on Sunday; the second session starts Sunday afternoon and ends Wednesday at noon.

This year, Alex is teaching some curved piecing techniques and she has two auxiliary teachers: I am spending a day at each retreat teaching how to choose quilting designs, including a demonstration on marking and spacing border stencils, and Dale Fleming will be teaching pieced circles on the second full day of each retreat.

On Friday, I did my 1-1/2 hour demonstration and then walked around the room talking to all of my friends (many Session I retreaters have been coming here for years and years; we only had 3 new people this session) and taking pictures.....


Sylvia has been with us all ten years; here she is piecing two quilts at once out of her scrap bags. Not a bad idea -- think of all the things we could work on simultaneously out of our strip buckets!

Definition of "Strip Bucket": Whenever I finish piecing a quilt, I piece whatever fabrics were used on the front of the quilt into the back. Whatever is left over after that either gets put back on the shelf, if it is at least 1/2 yard, or if it is smaller, it gets cut into 2-1/2" strips and tossed in either the light, medium or dark strip bucket. That way, when I'm ready to make an easy quilt, there are all the strips already cut and waiting!


Sitting across the table from Sylvia, Carol is working on her fall applique quilt; I took a picture of the pattern cover, too, so you could see it the whole thing....

Alex giving one of her curved piecing demonstrations; that's Carolie Hensley of The Cotton Patch looking over her shoulder. Carolie brings a selection of goodies and sets up a store right here in the hotel for the retreaters. They also have Friday evening on their own to visit local shops, but you can't beat the convenience when you gotta have something right now!

Julie with the basket quilt she was working on last year -- she's ready to choose border fabrics now. I think it needs a narrow stripe to stop all the action before the final border....

Cindy's project is also an ongoing one -- she's appliquing Christmas tree lights on the border of her tree quilt from last year. Last year Alex taught isoceles triangles using her method; I taught scalloped bias binding which, of course, I do totally differently than she does. It's kind of a joke at the retreat: Since Alex and I do everything almost totally opposite, if someone asks one of us a question and doesn't like the answer, they go ask the other one and they'll probably get the answer they want!

Natalie and Jackie are a daughter/mom team that comes to sew with us every year...

Lynda works on very small, intricate designs -- we always love to see what she is doing!

At right is the center block of an appliqued quilt; she also had the borders done...all beautifully hand appliqued...

Danelle and the circles blocks that she brought to have fun with this session.....

I'm off to teach "Free Motion Boot Camp" at The Cotton Patch today and then will drive back to the Hilton Garden Inn in Livermore where the retreat is held and spend the night there. I'm not teaching tomorrow so will most likely be going to the Pacific International Quilt Festival which is being held this weekend in Santa Clara, about a half hour drive from Livermore. PIQF is always a good show and I should be able to get some good pictures if there aren't 50 people between my camera and each quilt!