I was the quilter with potty mouth...

at the wonderful class I took last weekend. There you see Freddy Moran showing us Gwen Marston's little house in the big woods. They brought almost every single quilt in their book Collaborative Quilting. I cannot say how wonderful it was to see and touch the huge pile of quilts. No white glove ladies- we were allowed to rummage at will. The class was fast paced and covered a lot of ground, but always in the format of lecture- show and tell- sewing- discussion. I had been sewing parts of quilts as per the book for about a month, and so I was able to finish a quilt top. The teachers both took individual time with ever single student and had a nice balance between giving constructive criticism and finding something to praise. It was the kind of experience where the hours flew by, we ate lunch at our machines, and we lingered after class was over.

I am beyond happy that I went. I learned quite a bit. The potty mouth part was this: I had spilled a whole new box of pins, and said, with my usual abandon "oh, shit" A student who had traveled here from Texas to take the class admonished me" watch the potty mouth! This is a quilting class, not a bar!" My response: "well, damn, that explains why my drink order never came. I just thought I had a shitty waitress". Not mature but satisfying.

More Dyeing

Here is a nice little stack of dyed fabric. They are all nice, but none of them extraordinary. Al of these are of a lower thread count than I will be using in the future, and so there is no lively sheen. However, they are perfectly respectable yellows and oranges, and will fit into some kind of scrap quilt just fine.

Crazy Block

So, I'm gearing up for a quilting class based on premade parts. I am sewing a lot of blocks. This was the random red bits with some of the fancy stitches from the machine. It needed a little corrective creasing to lay flat, which I camouflaged with said stitching.

I have also been dyeing fabric as well. I finally realized that high thread count cotton looks much glossier than rougher fabric. Oh, duh- I already knew that from dyeing fiber. Glossy fiber comes out, well, glossier. Same thing, only different, and I'm glad I discovered this (rediscovered) before I bought fabric specifically for dyeing. I have just been playing around with left over muslin from I'm not sure what.

Knitting is also quite amusing. I have some of that new Noro sock yarn that is fun. Still slogging on the top down raglan thing. No pictures, because it still looks like a half done sweater.