I received this photo from Gretchen at Threads, LLC in Charlottesville, VA (http://www.threadsinva.com/) – she took Color Delights “Shamrock” and modified and enlarged the design by repeating it and changing the colors. I think she made it fabulous. She told me they’re also stitching it in a jewel tone colorway and will be offering it as a future class. I love what she did with it – it made me think “Shamrock Garden”! I can’t wait to see the jewel tone version!
Before I went left for National Seminar, my mom made a quick visit and brought some finishing she’d done for Marilyn H. in Texas to show me. She made BlackJack into a fabulous tote bag and here are a few photos of it. I wish I could have kept it!
She also had finished Spring Logs and Summer Logs into pillows – this is the best photo of Spring I’ve been able to get…
Below is a photo of Winter Logs stitched by Marilyn – she added a border with Ticking Watercolours – mom has to make it into a pillow as well! I saw this while visiting my mom in NC between my Knoxville and Louisville excursions!
I stayed with my friend Donna in Knoxville on my way to Louisville while I was taking a class from Gary Clarke and she showed me the Rainforest Crunch she’d finished in the Winter colorway. The seasonal colorways I developed especially for the Rainforest Crunch class two summers ago led to my designing the seasonal log series just completed with Autumn’s release. Very serendipitous indeed! Several years ago, I took a quilting class from Karen Stone (a national quilt teacher) and one of the things she said was a good palette of fabric would work for any design or pattern. You don’t have to know what design you’re going to quilt (or stitch!) before you choose fabrics (or threads). If the choices work well together, whatever you do with them will probably look great. I’d never quite thought of it that way before but it was definitely a light bulb moment for me and has served me well!
I had great fun at National Seminar – spent just a day there and shopped in the boutique, viewed the exhibits, and perused next year’s class offerings – they are wonderful and I am looking forward to registering and going to Phoenix next year! I’ll actually be visiting Phoenix twice as I’m in the process of finalizing a contract to teach in March.
Merchandise Night at seminar was a wild blur – most fun was meeting people in person who have stitched my designs and are taking my online classes. I had a lot of help from great friends and couldn’t have done it without them and the wonderfully helpful bellhop who got everything safely from the car and back into the car after the event – he was most pleased (as was I!) to not have as much to load back into the car!
I’m happy to be home for a couple of weeks and then off to San Francisco to teach. I’m most excited to be getting together with a college friend in San Fran after I teach – we haven’t seen each other in over 20 years. I then go straight to Houston for the International Quilt Festival – I’ve only been once before and I’m looking forward to what seems to be a special treat! Friends from here are meeting me there and it should be a blast.
There’s more travel scheduled for November but I’ll save it for another day. I have instructions to proof!
Kathy
