Posts tagged ‘Kim Brunner’
Classes at Quilting with Machines 2011
I’m back from a whirlwind trip to Quilting with Machines in Huron, Ohio, and the quilting center of my brain is just vibrating with new ideas, skills, and motivation. Finishing Ronan’s Minkee Dragons quilt was a real confidence booster going into it, and I’ve got four quilt tops basted and ready to quilt while I’ve got some good momentum going. We’ll see how it all shakes out!
"I'm on vacation!"
Dan and Ronan came to Ohio with me, and at first that seemed like a mistake. We left Wednesday evening after I got home from work, planning to spend the night in a motel in Hermitage, PA, which would get us most of the way to the resort and leave us just two hours yet to drive in the morning to get me to my 11:00 am Thursday class. Easy, right? As you faithful readers know, I tend not to do so well with the whole “best laid plans” concept, and adding a 10-month-old baby into the mix doesn’t exactly improve my batting average. We left a little later than we’d planned, but still thought we were doing OK until Ronan decided he wasn’t going to sleep. Ever. I got about 3 hours of very intermittent sleep, with Dan doing a little better (he was driving in the morning) but we managed to get me to class with 20 minutes to spare.
Fortunately, it was Sue Patten’s class, and anyone who could sleep through one of her classes probably needs to have a physical. The class was “Zen-Sue-dled in Fabric and Thread,” Sue’s version of the ZenTangles idea. I’ve been a fan of her Three Textures concept for quilting ever since I first heard it in one of her classes two years ago, namely that every quilt needs to contain Puffy, Medium, and Stipple-ish textures of quilting the same way the quilt top needs to contain light, medium, and dark values in order to have depth. In this class, she extends the concept to an idea for designing a wholecloth quilt in a very randomized, artistic, no-rules manner to create a framework for creative play. “Put your favorite part of quilting into this,” is what she told us.
A Zen-Sue-dle wholecloth in progress
I think I could use a piece like this as an opportunity to try some threads, filler patterns, and techniques without the stress that comes from worrying about “ruining” a pieced top, while still finishing something I could call a quilt rather than just creating yet another doodle cloth. Plus, it’s always worth the price of admission to watch her quilt, and she always makes me laugh. After all, this is the banner she had up in her booth:
Next up was Dawn Cavanaugh’s “Quilting Feathers When You’re a Chicken.” Dawn writes the machine quilting column for Fons & Porter’s Love of Quilting magazine, and I had taken her continuous curve class at last year’s QwM. I unfortunately missed the first half-hour of class because my poor sleepless brain somehow thought there was an hour between my 11-1 class and my 1-5 class! Hopefully I didn’t miss anything life-altering, but Dawn graciously welcomed my apologetic breathless disoriented self into class, and I spent the next 3 1/2 hours happily drawing feathers on a whiteboard as she talked us through different feather styles and techniques. I definitely understand Kim Brunner’s “Twirly Whirly Feathers” better now, and I think I know how I’m going to quilt the setting triangles on my Shop Hop sampler quilt.
My favorite of my whiteboard designs
Thank heaven (and more locally, Dan,) Ronan took a good afternoon nap and then slept well Thursday night, so Friday morning I felt like a human being again and was prepared for class. My morning class was initially a letdown through no one’s fault but my own: I had accidentally registered for the exact same Pam Clarke class, “Fabulous Block to Block Custom Quilting,” that I had taken from her 2 years ago! My heart sank when I flipped through the all-too-familiar handout. But not only was this a great topic for review, but Pam emphasized slightly different aspects of the material, especially as she responded to class questions. Also, since Matt and Alyssa’s wedding quilt and the double pinwheel table runner, two of the only projects I’ve finished in the last year, relied almost exclusively on her concepts and designs, it would have seemed wrong not to take a class from her when attending a seminar where she was teaching, even if it was review.
I had a three-hour break until my next class, and while I did go see the quilt show (future post) and shop at the vendors (future post), my top priority was to go swimming with my family. So I did, and it was great! The Sawmill Creek Resort has this crazy pool:
Yes, Dan is holding Ronan up, but he didn't want to be in the picture so is underwater.
We had a lovely time swimming before my next class, which loosened up my back and neck before sitting at my machine all afternoon, and completely justified the decision to make this a family vacation. At only ten months since Ronan’s birth, I would not have been ready to go away for four days, nearly 400 miles away, for “just” a hobby trip. I’m already feeling some pangs over my desire to attend the guild retreat in December. But thanks to Dan’s generosity of spirit, we managed to make it work together. He may not be a quilter, but he totally gets it.
And this post got really long, so the second half of classes will be in Part II!
Quilting with Machines 2010, Part I: The Classes
It was such a great experience to attend Quilting with Machines again this year. Going last year was fantastic, and I learned an incredible amount, but I hadn’t really had much idea what to expect. This year, attending as a veteran of last year’s event, I felt fully prepared to soak in the knowledge. And soak I did, as if Madge from the old Palmolive dish soap commercials were facilitating:
Upon registration, along with a lovely and well-designed tote bag and badge holder, we each received a name badge that listed all our class numbers on it. I was interested to see that Diane and I were definitely on the upper end of the curve for having filled up our badges, taking nine and ten classes respectively over the course of the three days. While some other attendees may have been just as busy as we were, since all-day classes would have been represented as single numbers just like the more common 2-3 hour ones, I definitely got the impression that most of the other registrants had left themselves a lot more free time than we did. However, to my way of thinking, if I’m going to take time away from work, family, and other obligations; if I’m going to go all the way to Sandusky, Ohio, incurring all the travel time and expense that involves; if I’m going to pay to stay at the resort; then darn it, I’m going to pack as much into that experience as I possibly can. Not to mention, with the ample selection of excellent classes to choose from, I certainly wasn’t stretching to fill my days; if anything, I had to make some very hard decisions as I haven’t yet figured out how to be two places at once!
Plus, even though QwM had a bigger vendor mall this year than last (future post) and they held their first actual honest-to-goodness quilt show (further future post), it’s not like I needed additional time off during the day to investigate those more fully (better for the budget that way, too.) More free time during the day may have allowed us to explore more of the area quilt shops, or more of the area itself: right next to Cedar Point amusement park and right on the banks of Lake Erie, it’s apparently quite the tourist destination. But I was there to learn to be a better machine quilter, and we could have been on the nuclear test site at Alamo, Nevada as far as I was concerned, as long as I achieved that goal.
Only time will tell if I’m actually becoming a better machine quilter, but it won’t be for lack of a good education on the subject. My ten classes were almost uniformly excellent, and the few that fell somewhat short were still very good, just not quite up to the extremely high standard set by the others. Here was my schedule:
Thursday
8-10 a.m. Stunning Sashings, Sue Patten
11-1 p.m. Continuous Curve Quilting, Dawn Cavanaugh
1-2 p.m. Solutions for Quilting Star Quilts, Cheryl Barnes
2-4 p.m. Filling In the Fillers, DeLoa Jones
Friday
8-10 a.m. Design-O-Rama, Kim Brunner
11-1 p.m. Every Little Bit Counts, Sue Patten
2-4 p.m. Leaves, the Fun with Shapes Way, Diana Phillips
Saturday
8-10 a.m. Show Off!, Renae Haddadin
11-1 p.m. Echoed Puzzle Filler, Dusty Farrell
1-5 p.m. Feathers, Glorious Feathers Part 2, Patsy Thompson
Class sample, "Every little bit counts" by Sue Patten
Among the standouts was Sue Patten, of course. I had taken a class from her last year and found it to be not only extremely entertaining, but probably one of the most practically useful classes on any subject I’ve ever taken, as far as being able to go home and immediately implement what she’d taught. My strategy for class registration was to make a list of the teachers I absolutely had to take a class from, and make sure I had at least one with each of them before filling in the rest of the schedule. After last year’s experience, Sue was right at the top of that list. This year I took two classes from her, both lecture/demonstration classes during which she quilted on the longarm machine while explaining what she was doing in her own inimitable way. Each room with a longarm was also staffed by a young man with a high-quality video camera, so that what was happening at the machine was simultaneously projected onto a big screen, like at an arena rock concert. We followed along with her excellent handouts as she stitched, adding notes and occasional pattern variations, and leaving with a whole catalog of new, interesting, easily executable designs, as well as some very funny stories and one-liners, like ”We don’t handstitch in the church basement any more. It’s too cold down there, and there’s no more brownies.”
As if I weren’t enough of a fan already, I won the door prize drawing to take the class sample home from the sashings class:
Another high point was Kim Brunner, of the aforementioned Twirly Whirly Feathers book and DVD. The class was mainly about how to design the quilting for a quilt based on its intended purpose and cues from the design and fabrics, and was chock full of helpful content. However, the main thing I learned was exactly why she won the Machine Quilting Teacher of the Year award for 2009. She was absolutely in control of that room, overcoming administrative difficulties (our attendance sheet was MIA), technical difficulties (her portable graphics tablet stopped working partway through class), and student difficulties (you know how there are so often 1 or 2 students in a class of 30+ who think the class is just for them alone?) with astonishing grace and flexibility. She kept her cool and sense of humor no matter what, had a list of guidelines and procedures at the beginning of class that really laid out what we could expect from her and what she expected from us, and generally was just the apotheosis of friendly professionalism. And if that wasn’t enough, I won another door prize, this time a year’s subscription to Machine Quilting Unlimited magazine!
Kim was also our speaker for the Friday night banquet, which had already distinguished itself by having surprisingly good food for a big hotel sit-down dinner; none of the cliched rubber chicken there. She gave a talk entitled, “Grandma’s Girl,” about the quilting women in her family going back a century in rural Minnesota, that had us all laughing and crying at different points. I think my favorite moment was when she revealed her horror at learning she was descended from the dreaded Sunbonnet Sue (prompted by finding a photograph of an ancestor in a poke bonnet that hid her face), but there were many hilarious and poignant moments throughout the presentation.
Class sample of "Good feathers gone bad" by Dusty Farrell
I didn’t expect Dusty Farrell’s class to be one of the standouts, but I was pleasantly surprised. He’s the biker-looking guy you see at the Nolting longarm booth, quilting on the machine decorated with painted skulls. He’s heavily tattooed, including some quilting designs he drew for the tattooist to follow. Not only was the improvisational quilted filler design he taught gorgeous and inspiring, but I was really impressed by his whole attitude and philosophy about quilting. I took down lots of quotes in my class notes like, “You only get better if you play, and the only way to play is to make your quilting fun.” He owns a quilt shop in northwest Pennsylvania with his wife and his mother-in-law, made a total career shift to longarm machine quilting for hire after losing his job as a high-end luxury item repo man (!!), and just approaches the whole field with a refreshing outsider’s outlook and a very serious-minded dedication. I actually wished my husband were there to hear Dusty talk, which is a first for me at a quilting event. Plus, his quilting was very entertaining to watch, as he used the YLI blacklight-activated thread on black fabric with a blacklight bulb in the longarm machine, so it was more like watching a laser-light show than watching someone quilt. His class models were amazing as well. He’s just getting into teaching, and I hope he gets many more opportunities.
Class sample, "Echoed puzzle filler" by Dusty Farrell
Patsy Thompson’s class was simply wonderful. For all I’ve learned watching her DVDs (and I own 5 of them!) there’s just nothing like having her right there in person, giving gentle guidance and feedback. This was a hands-on class on the domestic sewing machine, and I felt very fortunate to be able to participate at all after the near-disaster I had precipitated through my own negligence. Before leaving home Wednesday, I had very carefully packed up my supplies, actually physically checking items off the class supply list Patsy had provided — and then I accidentally left my bag with all my notions, threads, sewing machine feet, bobbins, scissors, Machingers, etc. in my car trunk parked outside Diane’s house, three hours’ drive to the southeast of the resort. Whether I was distracted, excited, or just blind — black bag on black trunk carpeting — who knows, but I was devastated when I realized what I’d done. I had my sewing machine, thank goodness, with its cord and foot pedal; I had my practice quilt sandwiches; and I had left my freemotion quilting foot on the machine because I’d been quilting before I left the house. But I had no thread, and not a single bobbin for my Janome. Fortunately, the Superior Threads booth at the vendor mall (staffed by Bob Purcell himself!) came to my rescue. I was going to buy some threads anyway, and it turns out that the size L prewound bobbins fit my machine! With a Tim Gunn “Make it Work” attitude, and the addition of some kind loans of supplies from Diane and from Patsy herself, I barely missed my forgotten bag, and was very happy with the techniques I learned and the work I did in class.
Next post: the vendors!
PA National Quilt Extravaganza 2010
"Which Came First" by Anne Morrell Robinson and Grace Whiting
Actually getting around to posting about this!
The first issue I must address about this show is the name: Pennsylvania National Quilt Extravaganza does not exactly roll off the tongue. It doesn’t even have a cute acronym. This is why I, and most people I know, tend to refer to it as “the Fort Washington show”, even though it hasn’t been held in Fort Washington for at least four years. Since it moved to the Greater Philadelphia Expo Center I’ve been flirting with calling it “the Philadelphia show,” but a) it’s not really in Philadelphia, being located about a 40 min. drive to the northwest of the city; and b) that sounds less like a quilt show and more like a TV show about corruption and cheesesteaks. (I kid, I kid, I lived there for five years.) At least it’s less confusing than it was during the intervening years between the Fort Washington expo center and the current location, when it was held at the Harrisburg Farm Show complex, because calling something “the Farm Show show” just leads to shame and self-loathing.
"Reflections of a Rising Sun" by Ann L. Petersen
So: Diane and I went to PNQE (that works in print if not in speech, but hey, we’re on the internet here!) She had been in the area for a work-related seminar, and I was departing Friday afternoon for a weekend of work in Indiana, so we were able to attend the show Thursday on its very first day. It was crowded but not ridiculous, which was a good thing because I haven’t internalized the fact that my pregnant body is now no longer any narrower if I turn to the side. (Fortunately I only knocked a couple of fat quarters on the floor with my belly trying to absentmindedly squeeze through booths.) Like the other Mancuso quilt shows I’ve attended, it was large. The majority of the quilts on display aren’t actually from the competition specific to the show (which always drives my mom nuts when it comes to voting for Viewer’s Choice) but are traveling exhibits such as the World Quilt Competition, quilts from SAQA, and the Hoffman Challenge. The show program actually lists seventeen special exhibits. This means there are over six hundred quilts (and garments) on display, according to the show website. I’m getting fatigued all over again just typing about it.
"Henry the Octopus" by Betty Busby
I have to say, I really thought the competition stepped it up a notch this year. (Good pictures of all the ribbon winners can be found here.) The quilts were amazing, and special congratulations to Diane on sharing in a blue ribbon for Best Wall Quilt for a stunning Alaskan landscape slice quilt:
"Ketchikan, Alaska" by Lila Mason, Fran Frederick, Rose Kotzalas, Diane Quinn, Karen Zemba & Nancy Reigel
"Ketchikan, Alaska" by Lila Mason, Fran Frederick, Rose Kotzalas, Diane Quinn, Karen Zemba & Nancy Reigel
Vendor-wise, I managed once again to be very conservative in my purchasing. I didn’t entirely escape buying fabric, because I knew I would regret not buying this fat quarter:
but mostly I bought stencils, having found some good deals and being very much in the machine-quilting mindset. Plus, I suspect someone at The Stencil Company must have planted a post-hypnotic suggestion on me or something, because I seem powerless to NOT buy something from them every time I’m within gravitational pull of their show booth. At least all my new (and old) stencils are catalogued and organized now, so I don’t have guilt associated with them — well, except for the part about not actually using them…
Once done with the show, we met Rhonda for dinner and proceeded to my quilt guild meeting, where we enjoyed a trunk show lecture by Didi Salvatierra full of even more quilty gorgeousness:
Detail, "Stars on the Susquehanna" by Didi Salvatierra
And then Friday morning we watched a Patsy Thompson machine quilting DVD until it was time to get packed up and on our respective roads. I didn’t get to any quilt shops while I was in Indiana; the only one whose hours aligned with my work schedule was Back Door Quilts, and I had just been there in August, so I passed in favor of some really good thrift store shopping. I did, however, have my laptop and my quilting DVDs with me, and I watched Kim Brunner’s Twirly Whirly Feathers DVD in my motel room to mentally prepare myself for Quilting with Machines, my next stop — and next blog post.
