Diane Gaudynski Seminar

My one real quilting experience this summer was that I was able to attend a 2-day seminar with Diane Gaudynski. For those of you who don't know her, here is her website. She does absolutely amazing, detailed machine quilting, all on her home sewing machine.

The seminar was excellent. I was able to borrow a Bernina with BSR from the shop where the seminar was held (one model up from the one I use). Diane brought in a number of her quilts to show us, and they are even more stunning in person then in books and on the web. She is a very encouraging teacher, and she introduced a number of motifs that could be used for background as well as helping us to work on our feathers. One of the most interesting things I learned was to use different colors of thread to give depth to your quilting. I think I am a convert now. I just wish I had easier access to quality thread! She also recommended using wool batting because you get the loft of trapunto without the work. I used it for the class samples and loved it.

Here is a picture of a sampler we worked on to practice the different designs. I have filled it out since, but this picture shows what I was able to do in class. And some close-ups of some of the practice squares. Diane teaches students to do what she calls echo feathers -- instead of backtracking on parts of the feather, you leave a small corridor between them. It was a new way for me to do them. Her lines are, of course, perfectly parallel. Mine are not!

In this picture you can see the feathers and the "folded towels" texture, as well as some small "pearls" to the right of one of the feathered area. All of this is done with minimal marking.












The next picture shows some clamshells and some pebbles to set off the feathers. Again, for the clamshells, I only needed to mark parallel lines!















And finally, one of my favorite backgrounds -- Tsunami. I love how this one looks, but it would take quite a lot of thread if done on a large part of a quilt, lol.

I also made a sample with feathers that uses different color threads in the background. That is for the next blog!

My Summer Purchases

Although I didn't get much quilting in when I was in the US this summer, I did have some time to visit quilt shops. Here is the fabric that I got:
You can see I mainly purchased batiks and tone-on-tones. I hope to put them to good use this year! I also got 20 yards each of Kona Snow and Kona Black, but no need to include a picture of that.


I also managed to get some thread in various colors, some templates, and new gloves for machine quilting with. I don't have pictures of those, but I think I did pretty well.

I'm back!

This is just a short post to say that after a long hiatus from blogging, I am back. I was in the US for the summer, with no access to a sewing machine, and very little quilting going on. There was however, a good amount of shopping for quilting supplies. I may have some pictures to come. I also managed to take a wonderful class with Diane Gaudynski. I will post some pictures of my learning experience in the next week.

While the summer was a wonderful time to visit friends and family, it was marred by one terrible occurance. Our Elkhound Sally died over the summer, apparently from tainted food that must have been imported into our area. My son and I were in the US, and my husband had to handle the whole thing himself. Despite the vet's best efforts, her kidney's failed and there was no hope for recovery. Sally has left a big whole in our lives. We are planning to get another dog, but first we are doing a lot of research to find out how we can make sure we get a healthy dog with good temperament into the country.