Flowers on Friday

A few pictures of the gardens at the Sidney library. They always have a wonderful display. 

Suprise Note

My husband came home and found this 'note' from our daughter last week. Amazing what you can do with pens and pencils and a couple of elastic bands.

Mystery SOLVED

You remember those bricks that were on a pallet during setup for Quilt Market...all 2000 pounds of them?  Well, I found the booth where they are installed. 

This is Jill of Jillily Studio (booth 936 if you are here in Portland). 

Jill told me they wanted the bricks for,the floor because one if the fabrics in her new line has bricks on it.  Great idea and a lovely booth display, Jill!

A 'Curiosity'

I am in Portland, Oregon for International Quilt Market. That is everything quilts, and I mean EVERYTHING!  Fabric, patterns, thread, sewing machines, hand sewing supplies, batting, every tool you could possibly use and more!  

This pallet of bricks was moved along the aisle beside the Northcott Fabrics booth where I am helping with setting up the booth. Stay tuned over the next few days. I'll be searching the entire convention centre to see which booth is using them and how. Should be an interesting conversation. 

Online Learning - Quilt University

Quilt University was one of the first websites created for online learning for quilters. I was thrilled when Carol Miller invited me to be one of the first faculty members and through 'QU' I have met thousands of quilters all over the world. 

Carol passed away earlier this year and the quilting world lost a great innovator. Her husband, Roger, has been working 'behind the scenes' so Quilt University has continued to provide a superb learning opportunity.  

 Here is a notice from Roger sent is the current newsletter:

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IMPORTANT NOTICE

Quilt U will close at the end of 2013. Carol's sudden death took the wind out of our sails. It's just not the same without her. The teachers and I agree that an orderly shutdown is the best way to honor her memory. Because Quilt U normally goes on hiatus for the holidays, the end of the year is a natural stopping place.

 

It also gives everyone one last chance to take those classes they were putting off for whatever reason. You won't be able to "catch it next time". To plan ahead, print out our Calendar and mark what you missed. Registration opens six weeks before a class starts. 

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The last offerings of my classes are: 

• June 7:   Too Easy Stained Glass
• July 5:   Attic Windows
• August 2:   Ripless Paper Piecing
• September 27:   Fun with Paintstiks

This will be your last chance to join me in the QU classroom. I hope you will consider joining me.

Paints and Paintsiks in Yorkton

Thirteen enthusiastic students joined me for a play day. They learned about painting on fabric with acrylic paints in the morning and then created more unique fabrics using Shiva Paintsiks in the  afternoon. 

Here are a few pictures from the class at Colette's Sewing Plus

Painted fabrics. 

Paintsiks on fabric. 

A Tuesday 'Time Out'

The Monday Night Quilters (MNQ) (aka Loose Threads Sew-ciety) decided to have our meeting on Tuesday, during the day, and we were blessed with a spectacular day!  We gathered at Jennifer's new home, brought our projects and a pot-luck lunch.  Here are Peggy, Jennifer, Darlene, Marg, Sandy and Rose at lunchtime. All that sewing, review pattern instructions, and hand sewing binding makes hungry quilters!  We missed having Anne, Irene and Jill join us.
 

We sat outside in the sunshine for lunch and enjoyed this view. Jennifer's sewing room overlooks this scene.  We are so very fortunate to live on Vancouver Island. This view is looking west over Patricia Bay. Isn't it beautiful!

We had a visitor in the afternoon. A heron walked ever so slowly into the shallows - and then caught a fish. Unfortunately I didn't get that 'on camera'.

Seam Ripper Review

I had the good fortune to travel to Hawaii in February to teach at Pat Yamin's ComeQuilt With Me Retreat. Of course, I combined the trip with a vacation after the retreat and my husband and I had a marvelous time touring the Big Island, golfing and relaxing. Each attendee and teacher at the retreat received a 'goody bag' filled with products for quilters. A ruler, rotary cutter, fabric, marking tools and more were in the bag. One of the products was new to me – Dritz Quilting Folding Seam Ripper. I wondered if it was a 'good' one. You see, I'm very particular about my seam ripper. We all need one – even the best sewers among us!

 

I own two seam rippers. A short one came with my Bernina sewing machine and I bought the other one when I thought I had lost the first one. Both have a fine 'prong'. I use the longer one most often. The shorter one is the one I take to classes since the handle can be removed and it becomes the cover. I use a soft zipper bag for my class tools and it is safer to have a seam ripper with a cover. I've lost the cover for the longer one! One good thing about the folding ripper is there is no cover to lose. It also has a fine prong and I tried it recently and it works as well as my others.

 

You may wonder about the rippers I do not like. I took a picture of my seam rippers along with the one that I think is more difficult to use. You'll see that the prong on that one is much larger. It is difficult to slip it underneath a single stitch. So, if you have one like this, you might find a finer one makes your stitch ripping much easier.

Bitterroot Quilters, Montana

Last week I travelled to the Bitterroot Valley in Montana to visit the Bitterroot Quilters Guild. I presented a lecture on Wednesday evening and students joined me for Give & Take Applique Design Discoveries on Thursday.

The Bitteroot Valley is a very wide valley that was once a glacial lake.  The valley is bordered by mountain ranges on both sides and there was a new dusting of snow on the closest ones.

 

 

The pond behind the hotel where I stayed.
Spring is just around the corner. I saw nesting ducks and Canada geese and a huge heron just waiting for breakfast.

My host, Jamie, told me about the history of the area and we visited the Daly Mansion, Riverside. A large amount of valley land was originally purchased by copper magnate Marcus Daly and the mansion was the summer residence of his widow.  The Georgian Revival style mansion is surrounded by a large arboretum featuring deciduous trees, some of which are over 100 years old.  The Guild's quilt show will be held at the mansion later this year.

 My students designed their own Give & Take Applique blocks after trying several designs with paper.  I am always amazed at the creativity of my students! There are plans for some exciting quilts from this group.

Quilts of Valour

I have created a new pattern. The National Tapestry is a row quilt that uses the Canadian images in Northcott's Stonehenge Oh Canada II fabrics.  The quilt is 50" x 68" - a great lap size to snuggle under. 

Northcott supports the Quilts of Valour program: for every metre that is sold, Northcott will donate a percentage of sales to Quilts of Valour-Canada

Fabrics will be arriving in your local quilt shops soon so BUY THE PATTERN NOW.

Professional Quilter 2013 Teacher of the Year

I am pleased to announce that I am a nominee for Teacher of the Year, sponsored by the International Association of Professional Quilters.

While I was not the winner of the 2013 award, I am in very good company with the other teachers who were nominated this year.  A special thank you to the students who nominated me. I truly appreciate your support. Teaching, sharing my knowledge and passion for quiltmaking is one of the joys of my life!

Subscribe to my blog and follow me on Facebook. I'll announce the winner of the award, the names of my fellow nominees and a CONTEST you can enter in the next few weeks!

Back in Business

Websites are back, email is dribbling in as the server tries to handle a massive amount of mail for all the people and businesses hosted by my ISP. If you received an 'undeliverable' message in response to an email to me, please send your email again. Thanks.

Web Outage

The company that hosts my personal website (www.daphnegreig.com) is currently having a major issue. A work crew cut a cable yesterday and they are working on the repair. The means that I can't receive or send email and my personal site can't be accessed.

The Patchworks Studio store, however, is hosted elsewhere and is still open for business.

Hope things return to normal soon!

Preparing for Quilt Market, Portland

I've been having a great time sewing new quilts to take to International Quilt Market in Portland. This is a wholesale trade show for the quilting industry. I have attended nearly every year since 1998 (I've only missed 3 spring markets and 2 fall markets). 

I thought you might like to see a couple of  'works in progress'.

First is Cobblestones & Stars (PS316) - just have to finish sewing the binding for this one. I used Northcott's Stonestrips (Everest colourway) for this fun quilt. I best thing about this design is how the star points 'float' over the background strips. Easy to sew and you'll NEVER have a chopped off star point!  Order this pattern here.  If you are interested in a kit, leave me a comment and I'll see what I can do.

Next is a new version of my Aztec Sun pattern (PS224 - available here). Northcott asked me to do new versions using Stonehenge fabrics - of course I couldn't resist those wonderful fabrics.  I made a small version using red, white and blue first.

Then I made the large quilt and just need to get this one bound too.  I think there will be some TV time this weekend - perhaps I'll watch The Masters golf tournament.

 

 

I normally quilt my own quilts but time is getting tight to get these quilts done in time for Market and I have a couple of teaching trips in the next month.....so I aksed my friend, Jennifer Watson, to quilt this quilt for me.  She did a SUPERB job.  Her creativity in deciding what to quilt and where is just MASTERFUL!!  Here's a closeup of an area of the quilt.

Jennifer's longarm business is Quilt As Desired.  I highly recommend Jennifer!

Ripless Paper Piecing

Registration is now open for my Ripless Paper Piecing online workshop at Quilt University. Class starts on April 12th

You may already have some experience with paper piecing, sometimes called foundation piecing since the usual way is to sew onto a foundation. This class will show you how you can achieve the accuracy that paper piecing gives without some of the extra steps. The steps you WILL NOT do are:

·create one foundation for every block you sew

·sew with a very small stitch length that is extremely difficult to rip out if you make a sewing mistake

·spend time removing the foundation from your blocks

·fill your recycling bin or garbage with the foundation removed from your blocks

I like to think of this method as the Green Alternative. I have made many paper pieced blocks and quilts. I shudder to think of all the paper I threw in the garbage over the last 25 years. At least in the last few years, it has gone to be recycled, but it still makes me feel wasteful!

A step that can cause difficulties when paper piecing is having the right sized piece of fabric to cover a section of your block. I will show you how to avoid this problem with some prepration steps.

In this class, you will learn how to

·select fabrics in a range of values in two color families; a very complete discussion of 'value' is included in this class.

·download a foundation piecing block

·set up your machine for ripless foundation piecing

·sew your blocks and add borders

·audition and test quilting designs before quilting and binding.

Along with the main project (pictured above) I have added a 'BONUS' project to the class. This Ripless Star Table Runner will be a great addition to your table.

Sign up TODAY.