Friday Classes...

After a long full night, we went straight to bed and then got up bright and shiny for our second day of classes..Sue Spargo! I had really been looking forward to this class for months and Sue didn't disappoint. In fact, I learned more about wool than I ever thought possible. How it's better to cut tiny thin stems on the bias, and the best wool for leaves and small things. Not to mention all the great ways to embellish a quilt...but I am getting ahead of myself.

I had gone into class thinking that I would probably buy the kit if offered from Sue because I had no wool at all until I arrived in Missouri. I had picked up a nice sample packet at Quilter's Station and I'd done quite a lot of shopping with Sharon and Carolyn, but I still knew those pieces weren't right for the backgrounds of 12 blocks. Sue hadn't made kits, but had instead packed her suitcase with the best supply of wool, silks, velvets, cottons, beads, threads, buttons, rickrack, cording, etc. More than I could stand to resist. She told us to grab what we liked and start cutting the sizes we wanted. I decided on a purple and green quilt with punches of color from all over...mostly very shocking colors. More like Sue's signature style. Chartreuse is one of my favorite colors!

These are the colors I have picked for my backgrounds: After looking I think a few more purples might wander in and remove a few greens, and the brownish one is supposed to be a bit lighter...but I'm not promising to stick a dark orange block in there too! My block is laying there with only half done...as it was when I left class at the end of the day.

After we had all picked our backgrounds and Sue had come around to each of us to make sure we loved our selections, she started us off on one block and gave us tips to getting that block done. The stems on my block are all cut attached and cut on the bias from a very tight weave wool. She then sat down with her ongoing quilt and showed us how to do each one of the embellishment stitches! How to couch under a tiny zig zag, do intricate bead work, how to vary your stitches so they don't appear boring. She was so gracious and shared everything she could think of that we might enjoy learning.

Once I had gotten my back I started picking up a few extra things for pop! Like fabulous teal, orange, bright claret maroon, chartreuse velvet, 2 funky cottons, and a nice green silk. Plus these bags of beads...enough that will last me the entire quilt and then some. The pictures isn't the greatest because of the reflection, but the colors are what I really wanted you to get. Those are the colors of my Flower Bed quilt. Now, I'll be on the look out for just the right funky fabric to fill in some blocks!

I also wanted to give you an idea of how fabulous out space was at the Baptist Church. I took this shot looking out of our classroom with Sue and onto the big main gymnasium where most of the classes were taking place. It was huge and plenty roomy for all the ironing stations, cutting stations, and sewing machines

Last but not least is my almost finished first block for the Flowerbed Quilt. I am waiting to find just the right color for the leaves to sew those down and then I have to sew the purple circles on the top. Who knows what I will do to embellish it further...beads around the blue centers of the flowers, rick rack and stitching down the leaves. Don't you just love them? Sue's idea. It's a very large plaid and you can get all sorts of color combinations with one piece of wool! Too Cool! Dinner at the Outback and we finally relaxed in our hotel and sewed a bit before passing out, we both needed it