Relaxing With The Girls! ((Wax On -- Wax Off!!))

What’s more fun than a class room full of Quilters?

A HOUSE full of Quilters!

After dinner last night ((Home made tortellini soup, garlic bread, and salad, all by Deb ---the Kitchen WIz!)) Marti had a fun plan for us to pamper ourselves just a bit.

It was cold and rainy and dreary outside – our tummies were full of yummy food and we were unwinding and enjoying each others company after the long day ----

Marti decided to give us all a Shay Butter Wax hand treatment!

I’ve never had this done before, but boy did it feel good --- smelled good too! Lavender! Not only one of my favorite colors, but favorite smells too!

She stirred and stirred until all the wax was melted in what looked like it's own crock pot ----when it was ready --- I was the first to go in!

Dip Three Times --- (( I’m getting the lyrics to “knock three times on the ceiling if you want me ---" going through my head!)) Can you see the rain splashing on the deck outside the window?

Hurry quick! Wrap your hand up in a plastic bag all nice and snug…….

Then on goes the mitt to keep it nice and warm! Don’t ask me why I look like I am singing “And The Rocket’s Red Glare!!!” here ----Carrie just caught me at a wide mouth moment! LOL! What can I say? We had 4 women in this bathroom at one time….LOL!

Next it was Anne’s turn…..doesn’t that feel good?

Anne and I give each other high-fives with our snuggly mitts on! When these hands are done, we will repeat with the other hands ----in the mean time:

Carrie goes in with her left --- while Marti stands guard ready to baggie her up!

THIS is Carrie’s tattoo!

If I ever got brave enough to get a tattoo --- it may be something like this…or it might say something like “Here today, Gone to Pieces!” :cD

After Carrie and her mom left --- with the smoothest softest hands ever --- Marti and I set down to do some evening stitching. I brought my white featherweight with me this time….when I plugged her in the other day, her motor had a squeal in it from not being used often enough --- poor baby! She’s warmed up and humming now….I got about 10 Wild & Goosey blocks stitched last night from cast off crumbs.

If you have a vintage machine in your closet and it hasn’t come out to play in quite a while --- get it out..run it…they are happiest when used and used often!

iPhone-o-Gram! What a Tangled Web!

Machines are pedal to the metal!

Who has the ugliest fabric!? There is no such thing when it's pieced in the quilt!

Who has the oldest fabric?? So far I think it's Marti who has sewn in bits of her grandmother's dress from the 1940s---Marti comes from a long line of scrappers!! It's the black piece next to the red!

Carrie brought a completed one---love the spider web fabric on the back---

Geri brought one to show made of selvages!

String piecing has so many possibilities---of course the scrap table isn't getting any smaller!

Oklahoma Backroads in Dover

Thirty excited Quilters --- ready to plug in their machines and tackle the scraps!

That’s what we arrived to find yesterday at the Magnolia Fire Hall. It was a really great class.

My favorite thing to do is take note of WHO matched their project the best!

This sweet Quilter won the prize hands down….I want you to take notice of the “apple green” theme going on…..First notice the green crocs…then….oh, the green is reflected in the green details on the sewing machine, and also the sweater she chose to wear. She was READY to roll on her quilt…

And just to carry on the theme….these are her blocks…they pick up the green color too!

She wasn’t the only one of course, we had quilters dressed in pink, with pink cell phones, and pink bluetooth ((Pinktooth?!)) earphones sewing on fabulous pink quilts and loving being in “their element” It’s just fun to notice, and everyone was a good sport with my razzing!

One of the other things I also love is when people ask me to explain a bit farther on a subject --- ANY subject. Because I don’t know what they really want to know unless they ask.

In this case it was a discussion on lights vs neutrals, darks vs colors.

You know, that whole light-medium-dark thing can be so broad in spectrum that it can be really confusing. And even though a neutral ((white, cream, beige, taupe, tan)) can be considered as LIGHT, so can any color of any fabric as long as it is “lighter” in value than whatever fabric it is placed next to. This can really muddy the waters, can’t it?

Sometime that spectrum is SO wide ---that if I go strictly by the lightness or the darkness of the fabric, if the “backgroundy” shades have TOO MUCH color in them, the background starts to fight with the foreground and muddies the definition of what is the block design --- and what is simply background. Did you ever notice that?

So we had a good discussion on how I categorize mostly by whether a fabric is “neutral” or “color’. We flipped through one quilters squares and bricks and asked each other where we EACH would put that fabric by category. It was a great discussion.

I also know that I can put the palest pastel shades in the “light to neutral” category…but if those pastels pass a certain intensity they wander into “medium” territory, and I’d rather use them as a COLOR in the main block design, but not use them as background, because there is just too much color. You gotta follow your own instinct as far as what you consider too dark to be background --- it might be better as main block parts. Work with it ---it will come!

Take a look at what we got up to in class:

		Oklahoma Backroads, Dover DE 2012 VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

This is Carrie, Myself, and Carrie’s mom, Anne who have been key in organizing this whole shindig --- I couldn’t have done this without hem, and we’ve been having a great time!

Today’s class is a String Spider Web workshop – and tonight is the lecture/trunkshow at the guild meeting, so this is my BUSY day ---

Have a great ----wait --- what day is this? Oh yeah, MONDAY everyone!