Making Something for Me

I took a break from my usual charity quilting to make a little something for me.  Well, actually, it is a Monster-size something for me!

I signed up for a class last week to learn how to make a Mat Carrier Tote and Ruler Caddy so I could easily drag all of my supplies to classes and group meetings.

This thing really is huge since my large 17 x 24 inch mat fits into the pocket inside.

And the Ruler Caddy fits my 6 x 24 inch ruler easily.

I picked a whimsical owl fabric for the Caddy and the Tote has eyeballs (hiding in the aspen leaves quilting) and cute owls quilted across the bottom.

I love how it turned out and it will be very useful and protect my supplies.

Oh, and while we’re doing cute things, these are the new birdhouses in my neighbor’s backyard.  Since I regularly feed the birds (and inadvertently the squirrels), we were laughing that together we were now running a Bed and Breakfast!

Too cute …

I Took a Great Class

Back sometime in Jan or Feb, I signed up for a class with DeLoa Jones, a longarm quilt instructor from Michigan.  Here is her Bio: http://www.deloasquiltshop.com/bio/bio.html

She actually offered several classes on different subjects during her visit here in Florida, and it was the Borders class that I enrolled in.  DeLoa and her husband Dave had set up four longarm machines on two frames in the LQS classroom and there were only 8 people in the class so the instruction was very personal.  There were various levels of abilities in the room and l was lucky to be paired up with a relatively new longarmer (like me!) - we were 2 people to a longarm machine and that was nice.  The two on the machine next to us were very experienced quilters and their work was quite different from ours, but we got the most bang for our buck, so to speak.  It was great fun.

This was the classroom setup:

And these are some of the samples and what we practiced.  These are DeLoa’s works, not ours – lol…

And this is a row of ours – see the difference to DeLoa’s – I guess we need practice!  Of course, it didn’t help that we were on a new-to-us machine and it went w-a-y too fast for use to accurately control it.

Some more of DeLoa’s free motion work that I liked:

I will make up an easy strippy quilt to practice on and donate it to one of my charity groups.  These are DeLoa’s samples:

And this is a close-up of one of DeLoa’s famous chickens – with free-hand thread painting: 

 

oops - he's sideways!  sorry ...

This one's right side up - and yes, those are crystals all over!

The entire quilt was these fancy chickens!  It was fabulous, but didn’t show up well on my goofy little camera.  Oh well.

Check out this YouTube on ideas Deloa had for easy Block designs.  I wish I’d have remembered some of these techniques when I did Beth’s quilts (in a previous post), but sometimes things go in one ear and out the other.  I’ll have to remember to get out of my rut and use some of my new found skills!

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHnqsJxWrYU