Crabapple Party in Plano!

 Another day to play in the great state of Texas!

We had a great time playing with 1 1/2’’ strips in the morning, and moving on to our paper-pieced tree bases in the afternoon so that we could get these trees together.

There are always some newer quilters who haven’t had any paper piecing experience, or maybe they have and never really learned to enjoy it.  There are only 3 seams that bring this tree base together, and it is a great way to learn some hints and tricks, and fine tune some common issues that quilters have when just getting going in paper piecing.

Let’s face it, you’ve got to make some doozies before we finally get this dance down!

I went along explaining how one earlier time while giving this class, a student had managed to sew her checkerboard tree tops to the wrong end of the tree --

Being quick witted, she qiuckly added “It’s an Authmn tree!  All the leaves are down!”  I used this example as a warning so that those in this class might miss that un-stitching pitfall.

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My 2016 Word of the Year is…

This is the time of year when everyone gets all gung ho about their “Word of the Year” and what they are going to do with it.

There is great anticipation of good things to come, and how lives and life styles are going to change if we just put this magic word into practice for 12 months of concentrated effort.

It’s as if one word can create miracles, and all of the puzzle pieces in the chaos of our day to day activity will fall into place if we just heed that one word of the year.

I have spent a lot of time over the past month in deep study of myself, including friends, family and online relationships with others through this thing we call social media.

My past year was all Hurry Hurry Hurry, get it done, deadlines loom, there is no time to slow down, there is no time for more than a short concise answer.

2015 was a year of many changes and challenges, many of which have taken me to my knees.

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A Mad City Mama kind of Day!

How fun is it for mothers and daughters, sisters and friends to come together to sew on New Year’s Day?

We pulled out our bins of 1 1/2’’ strips to quickly sew strip sets, destined for rail blocks and 25 patches without rhyme or reason – we were playing on the random side of the fence this day!

The main focus of our class was to sew in the new year by clearing out some space in our stashes….including the ugliest of the ugly strips, proving that really, truly, in this quilt EVERYTHING GOES!

Before class started, I did get a big surprise:

Allion came in with one corner of her Allietare put together:

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Talkin’ Turkey All Day Long!

It was a fabolous day in Plano, Texas for meeting and greeting and reconnecting with the best quilters that Texas can offer!

Even folks you meet for the first time feel like “Mi Familia” when we start chatting and discover that we lived in nearly the same place growing up, and remember certain things about that area that we hadn’t thought about in many many years!

Those of you in the California Bay Area, please think of me next time you pop by a Togos eatery and enjoy a #9 with the works for me, will ya?

It was a wonderful day for sewing up a bunch of scrappy string blocks, and adding some easily pieced flying geese units to make Talkin’ Turkey blocks, with not a turkey in the bunch!

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