Time for another catch-up post, about my Decorative Stitch Applique class on Friday at Quilt Festival.   I’m on a yahoo group for Janome 6600-7700-8900 owners, and a discussion cropped up about using the decorative stitches and I realized I had yet to post this information, so here goes!

The Funky Chicken, from Sarah’s Decorative Stitch Applique class in Houston.  Right click to enlarge image.  I’ve stacked (grouped) stitches on this one.  For example, the checkerboard (in yellow upper left) is two passes of a satin stitch that has two columns of small alternating squares.  To the lower right of the green square, a scroll stitch is bracketed with scallops.  The center square is appliqued, stitched with the “V” stapes, then outlined with a bold straight stitch.  Done on a Janome 8900.

Ya know how we all have these fancy machines that do a bazillion things, and pretty much 98 percent of the time (or more) all we do is use the straight stitch and sometimes the zigzag?   Well, when I wrote my book, Threadwork Unraveled, I included a section to teach folks how to play with their fancy stitches. This is the project in the book and the regular class project.

Decorative Stitch sampler for my Decorative Stitch Class.

I teach that section as a class which was offered this year at Quilt Festival.  This year I came up with a couple new projects as class options for students. Most of the students did the usual tossed leaves project for this class, but one loved my Funky Chicken.   Here she is early in the day, filling the background with fun stitch combinations in fun colors:

This student used the same colors as my sample. We were luckily in the Janome classroom with the FABULOUS 15000 machines. I’ve never been a fan of computer-screen sewing machine models, as I prefer visual knobs and buttons. Well, let me tell that has changed! I have severe sewing machine lust for one of these babies! And they have even more (!!!) stitches than the already fabulous 8900!

Other students put their own spin on the leaves:

A student is making sample blocks with decorative stitches.  This is a great way to test out pattern combinations–here she has a practice square to toss out and her “real” piece on the left.  If you have a practice square, that means you don’t have to pick out the stitches if you don’t like them!

Close up of decorative stitching on an aspen leaf.

This student tried a very bold, wide multi-stitch zigzag.  You can see this is her practice bit–see how she has tested the appearance of various stitches in the strip on the right?

I made a smaller (about 9 inches square) quiltlet with the sampler leaf and the background stitching. If you right click on this image, you can see more detail. Notice how I layered up stitches to applique the green patch and how I used a decorative stitch on the binding. On the latter, I used matching thread to machine stitch down the binding, then went over that with a decorative stitch.

And a happy student with her nearly-done funky chicken:

Thank you, Barb Brown of Colorado, for taking my class! I love your chicken!

The day ended with one of my favorite things at Festival:  FRIENDS!  This evening was the Dinner@8 artists.  Jamie Fingal and Leslie Tucker Jenison curate an exhibit each year for several years now, and I am thrilled to have been both invited to submit pieces and accepted in the exhibit!   My orca quilt, seen in earlier blogposts on Festival 2013, was in this year’s Exquisite Moment exhibit.  Here a bunch of us who were at Festival enjoy dinner and friendship and art!

One of the two tables of folks in the Dinner@8 exhibit. Leslie is at the head of the table, next to Diane Rusin Doran (in pink), Susan Brubaker Knapp (glasses) and Lyric Kinard

And too much fun not to include, Susan and I taking pictures of each other taking pictures!

Woot! The January/February 2014 issue of Machine Quilting Unlimited is just out and includes my article on machine quilting feet.  Somehow the title (I submitted it without a title..ooops!) ended up being very similar to Barbara Hollinger’s article from last October, but we cover fairly different territory.  Anyway, I am THRILLED with how the article turned out.  The layout is superb!  MQU was great to begin with, but the formatting and layout is even better–if you haven’t picked up a copy, do!  And then subscribe!

Here’s the first two pages of my article, where I use one of my quilts as a teaching moment (that means I did something not so great, then explain how I could have done it differently and better since I didn’t actually rip out the stitches and do it over. Ahem.)

I haven’t read the whole issue yet, but I learn from each and every issue. And if you’re looking for a copy on the newsstands, here’s the cover:

Cover of the Jan/Feb 2014 MQU magazine.

Thank you to Kit Robinson (editor) and Vicki Anderson (publisher) for inviting me to do the article and for doing such a superb job presenting it.  This may be my best article yet!

To cap a wonderful bloghop, I would first and foremost like to thank the amazing artists and bloggers who made this possible:  Jamie Fingal, Deborah Boschert, Vicki Welsh, Leslie Tucker Jenison, Terry Grant, Gloria Hansen and Diane Perin Hock.  To all of you who left comments, THANK YOU!  And to Quilting Arts/Interweave, Mistyfuse and Havel’s Scissors, thank you for your generous donations that make this grand prize possible!  Here is one more chance to win, and read to the bottom for a bit more news!  Please note, this giveaway is for those residing in the United States only due to postage costs.  However, if you live outside the US and win and are willing to share postage costs, you can enter also. Leave comments before 8 a.m. Eastern Time, October 10th.  I’ll do the drawing that morning and post/contact the winner.DRUM ROLL please:  the Winner is number 42, Gail Myrhodosky!  I’ve emailed you, Gail, to get your snail mail address.  This giveaway is now over, but I’ll do one more in mid November–come back on November 10th—well, come back before then please, but for more on the Holiday giveaway, visit here on November 10th.

There is now a video clip available on YouTube which you can watch here or over on YouTube, here.

The grand prize is grand indeed:

Huge thanks to Quilting Arts/Interweave, Mistyfuse and Havel’s for their generous donations to this bloghop!

• A copy of the DVD!
• A selection of products from MistyFuse! I show you how I use these products in the Video workshop.
• A huge donation from Havel’s Scissors including a generous giftbag that includes long scissors, short scissors, snips, seam ripper, AND the non-stick scissors too!
• And a copy of Quilting Arts Gifts magazine from this year, with a project by me!

Here’s a photo of the stencilled ornaments project I did; I will also be demonstrating this project at the Christmas Delights Sampler (Class 765, and it still has openings…sign up at Festival!) from 2 to 5 Saturday afternoon at International Quilt Festival!

My project in the Quilting Arts Gifts 2013-14 issue is Stenciled Ornaments.

If you’d like to win this GRAND PRIZE, please leave me a comment and tell me something you learned these past two weeks from one of the blogs you visited on the bloghop!    And if you can’t wait, or don’t win, do remember you can order my DVD from me here or the download (or DVD) from Interweave, here.  Leave comments before 8 a.m. Eastern Time, October 10th.  I’ll do the drawing that morning and post/contact the winner.

NOTE:  this giveaway is for those residing in the United States due to postage costs.  However, if you live outside the US and win and are willing to share postage costs, you can enter also.

And….. just when you thought the bloghop was over, NOPE!  I’m doing a SECOND bloghop in early-to-mid-November to kick off the holiday season.  So on November 10th, make sure you come back (well, come back and read my blogposts before then, but you know what I mean) to join the second and final round of fun!

What a thrill–another one!    Janome has featured my DVD giveaway on their blog today!   See it here (post dated September 25, 2013).

Visit Janome’s blog today to see the write up! Right click to see this larger.

I’ve been incredibly lucky to be sponsored by Janome and sew on one  of their fabulous machines for nearly a decade.  THANK YOU, Janome America!

And the good and bad news are the same news.  And you my be wondering WHY in heaven’s name would I show you a photo of our fridge decked out in white, gray, stainless steel, and coolers.

The fridge, draped in white and gray cloth and white board and stainless steel. Why? To figure out how a white or stainless steel fridge would look instead of the black we currently have. Stainless steel wins.

Ahem.  This moring I decided since it was rainy, damp and chilly to fix hot oatmeal and add some frozen raspberries.  The good AND bad news when I opened the bag from the freezer:  they were already defrosted.  Ooops.  Checked freezer.  Many items could be called “previously frozen.”  Called local appliance store, and no repairmen available until Tuesday, but the nice gal reminded me about defrosting the bottom, in case the condenser coils (behind a panel inside at the back) were crusted in ice, which can happen with the humid weather we’ve had, especially with a leaky gasket seal which we also have.   Bad news:  no ice buildup inside.   That meant a bigger problem.  On a thirteen year old fridge.

So, sigh, we went to the appliance store and bought a new fridge today.  KaCHING!   And we don’t yet have a water hook-up for an ice-maker and no time to schedule one before I leave for California to teach, so we’ll deal with that in August.   But we’ll now have a nice, reliable Maytag fridge as of about 8:30 tomorrow morning!

And the progress:  I’ve been beavering away for months and months on many assorted projects, hence the absence of posts here.   I’ll eventually get you caught up on my doings–oh yeah, other bad news:  I actually WORE OUT the track pad on my laptop!   It started acting up, so instead of having a entire week to quilt, I’ve either ferried teenage boys hither and yon (both of them) OR spent 8 hours (4 hours Weds., 4 hours Thurs.) driving to and from the Apple Store in Portland to get the issue diagnosed and repaired.  The good news is that the repair was $91 (plus gasoline), and not a new laptop needed.   So I’m still behind on work, but getting closer.   Now…back to projects:

As part of the Janome America artist/teacher program, I perodically do things / projects for them in exchange for their support / loan of a machine.  One biggie this year was being able to use a Janome 8900 on the set of my Quilting Arts DVD!   I was so happy to be able to demo on the machine I use at home and love, and they were happy to have it onscreen.  Then I’ve been wanting to do a special item for them since last fall, but good things (like articles and DVD) kept happening.  Finally, I am now able to give you a sneak peek at something I’m working on for them:

The quilting, as you can see, is partially done on this banner/tablerunner/long quilted thing!   I’m having a ton of fun and will share more when I can.

Having fun with a lovely floral, colorful thread, and quilting!

Now, back to hoping the frozen stuff doesn’t go bad by morning (yes, in cooler, with ice) and hoping no new calamity crops up tomorrow so that I can actually, what a concept, work in the studio!