it helps to have a good imagination

For months and months I’ve been thinking about my home office. Remember this post? I talked about the colors for that space. Well, this girls, dream is coming true! My Sweetie painted the Behr Marquee Showstopper Purple

See:

We have commitments over the next little bit so it’ll be next week before he’ll be able to paint the rest of the room. I’m so flipping happy. I’ve been imagining how this would look for months! and it’s even better than I thought.
I’m still going to paint one wall in my studio pumpkin orange. I just saw a Sunset color on the Behr website that I’m excited about.

The other day I had an idea for a new class – Liberated Free Motion Quilting. More than once my forehead and either the front of the sewing machine or the nearest wall met in sheer frustration. There’s a reason that, “a seam ripper is a quilters’ best friend is my motto” and, I have more than one, and I have a favorite. Getting to where I am with free motion stitching is hard-won.

But with every single one of those frustrations there is a bonus of getting something that I can share with my friends, quilters, and students. Like needle and thread pairings, and an understanding of tension. I may have shared this before so, if you’ve read this bear with me.

When I first tried machine quilting on my BERNINA 1080, I’d just figured out one component of tension. Feel free to laugh because I do now. The numbers actually mean something. Duh! A higher number is a tighter tension, a lower number is a looser tension. There is something that I had to learn through experience, or someone might have shared this tasty tidbit of information, the tension will not change unless the presser foot lift is in the highest position. One afternoon while I  was quilting, I’m thinking this tension changing this is a lot of horse poop because no matter what I did NOTHING Changed! I was still getting pokies on the top of my quilt. Bleep! Now I make sure I offer this bit of information to most of the classes I teach. (The 7 Series and 8 Series the tension can be changed on the fly.)

So this new class will have some reminders of the basics and we’ll move on into some serious stitching. I’m also thinking this is the class that has retreat potential. This and Go With the Flow. Its that place to take the time to explore free motion quilting and take on those bits and pieces that completely freak you out. I can help because at one time, they completely freaked me out. I’ll have thread and suggestions and most importantly I’ll have a calming, you can do this presence. Because you can. Because you have an imagination. You can see quilterly things. Like I saw how awesome the Showstopper Purple and Pistachio would be in my office.

So, quilters, take me up on this class and let’s get stitching.

Happy Quilting!

Teri