Beginning Quilting

I teach a beginning quilting community college course a couple of times a year. The project I teach has all of the elements of traditional quilting, including strip piecing, applique, adding borders, quilting, binding and adding a hanging sleeve. This is one version of that project. In the first class, I talk about choosing fabric and the supplies each student will need. I also show my first quilt and point out there are almost no points on any of my stars. In addition, I show some of my more recent quilts but I want to make sure they know I was a beginner once, too. In a recent session of this course, I met a lady who was as passionate as myself about quilting and she inspired this design. The project I usually teach has a simpler applique design but as soon as Nancy learned how to piece the background she began making more backgrounds in different fabrics. Each background had a different theme so it needed a different applique design. So far, between the 2 of us, we have created 4 other applique designs. Our idea is to do seasonal banners and this rose is the banner for February. We have also finished designs for December, March, April and October. I will post pictures of those soon. Did you take a beginning class or are you self taught? What was your first project?

Busy, Busy, Busy

I am working on so many projects right now its hard to keep them straight! The ones I am most excited about are the designs chosen for publication by Arbee Designs. I've got 3 more in the works for them and I feel like a 10 year old waiting for Christmas! I wish I could give you a preview but I have to wait until Arbee is ready to publish so it will be a little while.

I got to spend last Saturday with a group of ladies from the Hearts and Hands Guild in Scottdale, PA, teaching them paper piecing. What a great group! Most of the ladies worked on my design called, Bubble Bath, pictured below, but I had a couple doing some other projects, too. One was working on my design called Cartwheeling Claus, also pictured.

A New Chapter

This is my newest design, called Star Crossed, just published by Arbee Designs! It is a small, paper pieced wall quilt and I had a lot of fun making it myself, so I hope others will, too. I am so excited to be working with Arbee Designs since I will have more of an opportunity to do the part of quilting that I love the most--DESIGNING! I love being able to create something that didn't exist before. So many people think quilts can only be made with half square triangles and squares. That is simply NOT true and I aim to prove it. Traditional quilts are beautiful and I admire them but today's quilters have so many tools and techniques that we aren't limited  (unless we want to be) to doing what our mothers and grandmothers did. Try something new, spread your wings and fly!

Ruth Blanchet and her team at Arbee Designs will do the part I like the least--printing, folding, marketing and selling. I've already got 2 more designs in the works with Arbee so its back to work for me.

Check out all of the other amazing quilt patterns available from Arbee Designs here: http://arbeedesigns.com/