MQX Quilt Festival New England

This week was full and busy. Yiyiyi it was busy and so much fun.

Saturday I took a class with Jackie Kunkel of Canton Village Quilt Works is a certified Judy Niemeyer pattern teacher.  I, of course, had to be the worst student ever.  Well, not quite, ok not even.  I’ve paper pieced before but I wanted to learn a different method.  In the craziness of getting all my stuff together I left the pattern at home.  I had most of the supplies with me.  Jackie very kindly brought another pattern with her and by the end of the day I was fairly well caught up.  By Saturday a wonderful tiredness set in and I had a couple of blond moments in the process – one cutting mistake and one stitching mistake.  At that point I packed my stuff up, turned the machine off and chatted with a few people.  Jackie is a very, very good teacher.  She’s patient, clear and prepared.  If you have the opportunity to take a class with her, even if you don’t see yourself paper piecing long term I’d heartily encourage you to do so.  As an aside Judy’s patterns are well done.  As a teacher and as a student I’m more convinced the better we’re prepared the better our experience.  I know that’s not always easy with our full-to-the-brim lives.

Friday I taught Beginner Free Motion Machine Quilting (on a Janome’s provided by Bittersweet Fabric Shop in Boscawen, NH.)  I am always grateful for machines provided by the shops and companies!  Dave Lavalley and the Janome Educators provided great machines for the students and were there for them every step of the way.  THANK YOU!  Class went well, my students relaxed.  I love to see my students relax into the process of machine quilting.  Since we were in New England and most of my students are fans of the Red Sox I did take the opportunity to thank them for Kevin Youkilis.

Thursday afternoon I worked in the BERNINA booth for about 2 hours or so.  The gals from Sanford Sewing were warm and welcoming and we’re going to plan a machine quilting class in the fall.  Yay!  (There’s one other shop in another part of ME that I’m going to work with as well).  As soon as we have dates and times I’ll let you know.

Wednesday was quilt show hanging day.  Kudos to Janet-Lee, Mary and their entire staff for getting this all organized.    Oh my!!  With whatever I was doing Wednesday night I missed the awards ceremony.  Congratulations to all of the winners, the quilts are absolutely amazing!  Quilters are really upping the quilting artistry and skill level on all types of machines and winning is going to get more challenging.

With only one class to teach I spent a lot of time volunteering around the show and helping out where ever help was needed.  I had intentions of doing some stitching and my prep work for Jackie Kunkel’s class.

Wednesday night I sat and stitched on the new Gammill Charm – the 20″ sit down long arm and I’m smitten.  Oh am I smitten.  The foot pedal is responsive the stitch quality is outstanding and the throat space.  Oh I like the throat space.  Like with anything else this is worth giving a try.

I didn’t get the opportunity to purchase much of anything – well I did get 3 yards of Radiance.  Oh that fabric is sweet!

After searching and searching I finally realized which quilt I wanted to give my Teacher Ribbon to, this Storm at Sea by Rose Orr of Colchester VT.  Most teachers will tell you we have criteria for awarding our ribbons.  I like to award the ribbon to someone who has machine quilted on their home sewing machine, although I really look for something that makes my heart sing.  Rose Orr’s Storm at Sea really caught my attention.  I’ve been fascinated with MC Escher for a long time, this quilt has Escher qualities and it caught my attention and in capturing my attention and chatting with Jeffrey Lomicka I decided this is it, this is the quilt.  Thanks Rose for entering this quilt and sharing your skills with quilting world.

Happy Quilting!

Teri

I have a few more photos that I’ll share later.