Friday and Saturday, Sandy, my quilting buddy from Henderson Nevada, attended Destination Creativity. The 2 day event, hosted by the Bernina Connection, included four 3 hour classes. All the class kits and supplies were provided as well as the Bernina machine. Friday morning I made a small bag using the Bernina 1150 MDA overlocker. The bag was constructed entirely with the overlocker.



Friday afternoon I learned curved piecing while piecing blocks for a table runner.

Saturday morning, I made a large project bag.



The last class was machine embroidery taught by Claudia Dinnell. Claudia was a fabulous teacher and I really learned some great new machine embroidery techniques. The class project was a double eyeglass case which is almost finished, I just have to sew on the binding.

Today, I decided to do some machine embroidery, not my most favorite thing to do. I usually do my embroidery design using Floriani Total Control software. The software is great but it is PC based, since I have been a Mac user since 1986 using PC software can be a chore. I can use Floriani Total Control because I have Parallels 9 installed which allows my Mac to act like a PC. So I deal with the stress of “using” a PC and get my design exported to my Bernina thumb drive. Now, it is time to go to my sewing room. My new Horn electric lift got my Bernina 780 to the proper height effortlessly and I now store my embroidery module in the new Koala cabinet, so now it is easy to get my embroidery module. Just to make things interesting, I decided to try 2 new products. When I was at the Houston Quilt Festival, I stopped at the Wonderful booth and I learned a new use for Wonder Guards. I was told you can use Wonder Guards on the embroidery thread spool, so I tried them and they worked great. The second new thing I tried was the Snap Hoop Monster. The Snap Hoop made hooping my fabric quite easy, sure did not have to deal with tightening the screw on the Bernina hoop. So my embroidery is now finished, just have to put all the embroidered units together to make a wall hanging.

Today, my new Koala Bernina Studio Rollabout was delivered and I am so excited to have a drawer especially designed for the larger Bernina embroidery module. My local Bernina dealer, Bernina Connection, was able to order the rollabout for me. The Bernina Studio Rollabout is 32” wide, 25” deep and 29” high. I decided to get the white finish which would go with my new white Horn Super Quilter’s Dream electric lift cabinet. My Bernina 780 machine is quite a bit larger and heavier than my Bernina 630 and I decided upgrading my older Horn Quilter’s Dream cabinet was really necessary. The top drawer of the rollabout has special latches that allow the front of the drawer to lie flat so the embroidery module can easily slip in and out of the drawer.
Pictures of the rollabout and with the special top drawer open


My Bernina embroidery module inside the top drawer and a close up the drawer latches.

I flew to Houston last Wednesday and spent 5 wonderful days at the Houston International Quilt Festival with Sandy, my quilt buddy from Henderson Nevada. This year was the 40th year anniversary of the festival which was celebrated with a special red and white quilt exhibit "Ruby Jubilee!"



I took a class with Nancy Eha, Bead-Dazzling Embroidery Interpretations. Nancy is an excellent teacher and I learned many beading techniques.
We used printed stitch templates which are carefully removed after stitching. I did not remove paper on my stitching sample.


Of course, Sandy and I spent many enjoyable hours walking the 20 long aisle of vendors, 1000 vendors in one place is quilter's paradise. There were so many unique products, many not available at local quilt shops. I was especially happy to find some beautiful variegated size 5 pearl cotton threads made in South Africa imported by akonye ken and some beautiful linen fabric and hand made buttons from l'Atelier d'Isabelle These are just some of the things I purchased.

My new mailbox flag just got installed today. Wasn't easy, as the flag was designed to be installed on a metal mailbox and I needed to install my flag on stucco. My flag was designed by Mark Alan Designs.
I don't think there is any doubt that I support the University of Arizona Wildcats.

Saturday, I want to a kaleidoscope clinic at Quitz, a local quilt store. In 2007, I had took a class with Bethany Reynolds, but I need a refresher on the stack and whack technique. I purchased the Arizona centennial fabric in 2011 with the intention of making kaleidoscope blocks from the fabric. Saturday, using the Stack-n-Whack 45 degree Triangle tool, I cut out wedges from the Arizona centennial fabric. Today, I began sewing the wedges into kaleidoscope blocks. I was able to sew 20 of the 24 blocks I wanted for the quilt. I pinned the blocks on some black fabric that I think I will be using for the sashing and borders for the quilt.
This is a picture of the completed blocks a small piece of the centennial fabric.

This week has not been the best. 11:30 Monday night I was at the emergency room after noticing the beginnings of a rash. Yes, I have shingles and yes, I did have a shingles shot 2 years ago. Sometimes life is just not fair. I am doing much much better, I firmly believe that starting anti-viral medication so quickly has definitely ease the course of the infection. Friday afternoon I received a small package in the mail from my quilting buddy, Sandy which did wonders for lifting my spirits.
The poodle magnet

I also should thank Katie and Molly for their excellent nursing care this last week. They definitely deserve some time to rest after some non-stop nursing care.

I just returned from The Rocky Mountain Quilting Adventure held in Steamboat Springs Colorado. RMQA is sponsored by David Taylor and this year Sue Spargo was the guest teacher. The focus of Sue's class was to create a fabric journal quilt. For the last year, I have wanted to create a wool appliqué quilt which would incorporate silk fabric purchased in Japan by my parents in 1963 along with some Japanese silk ties. Other fabrics I wanted to included were some llama print cottons purchased in Peru in 1971 which were made into some ties for my Dad, fabric from a wool sport coat and ties belonging to my brother in law, John Protz. I also have velveteens that Lucie and I made skirts or dresses. The working title of my quilt is Fabric and Ties of My Life.
This is a picture of my quilt so far, I still have to add wool appliqué borders. The center section is about 20" by 23".


These are few the fabric and ties I have used and some that will be used in my quilt.

This quilt was inspired by Right Slice quilt published in Quiltmaker Magazine, November/December 2013. I used 3 batik fabrics, 2 batiks for the nine patch blocks and the remaining batik was inserted into the slashed nice patch blocks. Machine quilted by Jessica Jones Gamez. Finished quilt is 96" by 96". The label was designed using Floriani Total Control U software, the machine embroidery was done on my Bernina 780.

I finally finished the pillow shams for Lucie's Pineapple Star Quilt, only took me 8 years since I finished the quilt. I put the quilt on the guest room bed but covering the pillows made the overhang too short on the end of the bed. Something jogged in my memory, I think something was made for pillow shams. Amazing, I was able to find the quilts and extra fabric in a drawer in my sewing room. Constructing the pillow shams was really quite easy, not sure why it took me 8 years to get them done. I also realized that I never made a quilt label, drat, another thing to put on my To Do list.

I also spent the morning working on my web site. August 2013, I completely redid my web site using RapidWeaver software. My house remodel and knee replacement sort of hindered my actually finishing the transfer of all the quilts to my new web site. This morning I just stopped all the procrastination and did it.