What A Great Weekend!

This past weekend I went to Quiltfest in Johnson City, Tn. This is an event that is held each year with classes from national and regional teachers. I'll have to admit that I have been disppointed with most of the classes that I've taken in recent years, but I absolutely was not diasppointed at Quiltfest. I took two classes--Quilting Feathers with Sue Nickels and Hot Piping with Susan Cleveland. I had never heard of Susan Cleveland before but she is a real hoot! And you come out of that class with many new tips about using piping in your quilts and doing it properly. (Unfortunately, my pictures of that class were not good). This picture on the left is of the Feathers Class. Sue Nickels is in the center. We had a wonderful classroom space and there weren't many of us in the class so we all received plenty of feedback on our progress. And she had a camera that she kept aimed at her quilting demos and the picture would be projected on the screen so we could easily see what she was doing without crowding around the desk. This small quilt on the right is the class project that I finished yesterday. It's not the clearest picture in the the world, but I think you can see that I got a pretty good relief effect with the feathers. She gave us all kinds of tips about this kind of quilting--position of hands, type of thread, etc-- and it was just what I needed to hear. You might be able to also see the piping that I put in along the borders--thanks to the techniques that I learned in Susan Cleveland's class. I got the label on it this morning and turned it in for the Small Quilt Auction at the Asheville Quilt Show in a couple of weeks.
So, put Quiltfest on your calendars for next year if you can. You won't be disappointed. (And come to the Asheville Quilt Show this year! It's August 7th-9th at the North Carolina Arboretum. I was there today and the flowers were incredible.

Country Come To Town

This past week, we took our 14 year-old grandson on a vacation trip to Washington, D.C. and other points of interest that related to WWII. He is interested in that time frame at the moment. We started off with a stop at Wilmington, NC at the battleship North Carolina. If you're ever there and have the time, it really is a great opportunity to see that type of ship--in great detail. I thought the Tour Arrows would NEVER stop and I really did enjoy most of it except when we were in the lower reaches of the ship and were walking on open grates looking DOWN into the further depths--that was definitely not for me.

The remainder of our trip centered around the D.C. area--the Air & Space Museum at Dulles, Mount Vernon, The National Archives, the Smithsonian and the WWII Memorial--all of it greatly interesting and well worth the visit.

One other thing I wanted to show my grandson was the town where I grew up--Herndon, VA--and the house(s) that I lived in. Thomas Wolfe was oh-so-right when he said you can't go home again. I, of course, knew that having gone back before both to Herndon and then to Mt. Pleasant, SC, after a twelve year absence. But I REALLY wanted to give my grandson something to hold on to as far as the roots of a part of his family. Those of you who have been in Northern Virginia know that it was mostly a fruitless task but I WAS able to show him both houses that I grew up in and where things USED to be. I had to decide that it was better than no mental picture at all, I guess.

After Herndon, I decided to try to rescue another memory and in this one I was not disappointed. As a child, we would go to Great Falls Park where we would picnic, ride the merry-go-round and watch the Potomac River rush (and sometimes rage) over the rocks on its way to the Chesapeake Bay. Of course, the merry-go-round is gone and it is now a National Park, but it was beautiful and mostly an improvement. There are now well-built overlooks that discourage adventurers from climbing on the rocks and, thereby, falling into the waters (as happened one time when I was there as a child). And, for me, this was the highlight of the trip--with the WWII Memorial coming in at a close second.

And lest you think that I have completely forgotten about quilting, here is a quilt top that I finished just before we left. It is paper-pieced (HIGHLY unusual for me to do) and is from the February 2004 issue of American Patchwork & Quilting. I had had it cut out for quite a while and decided to go ahead and work on it while I'm waiting for inspiration to strike (and I think it's getting close!) I finished quilting it last night and will get the binding on soon. I think it's bright and cheery and it it will definitely be going on to a teenager that I know.