So I was up bright and early last Saturday, off to set up our booth at Annual Gathering. Friendship Quilters of Windsor found a great venue with nice lighting and room for all!  We were set up across from Ami Simms booth http://www.amisimms.com/, speaker for the day, which meant we had ring side seats to her lectures.

There were lots of attendees, the guild offered a quilt raffle, quilted sweatshirt raffle, a silent auction with some great items, and plenty of complimentary food! – YUM 🙂 Everyone seemed to enjoy themselves especially Ami’s lectures, if you were there for the first one,

“HOW NOT TO MAKE A PRIZE WINNING QUILT”

then you definitely wanted to stay for the second

“LIVING WITH QUILTS: A SURVIVAL GUIDE”.

This was my third time attending an Ami lecture and she gets better every time! Ami had everyone rolling in the aisles, her down to earth quilting humor and slides assured us that we were not fabric hoarders, nope we weren’t – Ami provided photographic proof that people find the most unusual places to stash their stash, and that we all start somewhere and eventually our skills improve – all with a lovely bit of humor.  The room was full of laughter and isn’t laughter great, I think it’s like a little break from reality.

I presented a demo on Fusing Basics. It was well attended with lots of quilters asking lots of questions – yeah!  I had to beg forgiveness at the demo after starting early, it was only a couple minutes so I started again. Mumzy brought vintage lace and feed sacks to sell and I brought hand dyed fabrics and pincushions, the tables had a multitude of other items too.  We had great fun visiting with everyone who stopped by the booth – what a great day –  good friends, good quilting stories, and plenty of laughter!!!

Thanks Friendship Quilters of Windsor, great job!!

Off to Annual Gathering http://ghqg.org/events/annual-gathering.html in the weeee hours of the morning tomorrow, doors open at 8 a.m. so you can imagine the time vendors get to start setting up.  I’m definitely looking forwarding to visiting with everyone with my hand dyed fabric, beads, Angelina, scarf kits, my Mom’s feed sacks and all the other items we bring along.

Ami Simms is the speaker and I can comment from experience, I been to her lectures twice before – SHE is FUNNY and FABULOUS!!!  http://www.amisimms.com/   I can’t wait for her lectures tomorrow on

• How Not to Make a Prize Winning Quilt (at 9am) and
• Living With Quilts: A Survival Guide

Not a national speaker or anything, I will be giving a demo on The Basics of Fusing. I picked this topic because at the summer GHQG Quilt Show, I was amazed how many people asked about fusing in my booth once they saw my sample for my new line of landscape hand-dyes.  Hopefully a few people will attend and maybe learn something new 😉

There are a couple raffles, I donated a hand-dye and pincushion for one of them and there serving lunch and breakfast – hopefully I’ll see you there, make sure to stop by and say Hi!!!

My Mom, Aunt and I went to the New England Quilt Museum last Saturday to see the Caryl Bryer Fallert Exhibit. The ride was beautiful as the trees have moved into high gear for their fall change of color. There was lots of expectant conversation surrounding both the Exhibit and the Mass Shop Hop next weekend.

I’ve admired Caryl Bryer Fallert for a long time. I discovered one of her patterns in a book that was comprised of multiple designers. Although the instructions were a little hard to follow, I not only figured out the pattern but went on to teach it as a class a few times. The classes bought an individual pattern on her website but it was made to a different larger dimensions. I just couldn’t pass up the opportunity to see her quilts live and in person, especially a perspective from her first quilt to her latest.

When we walked up the stairs to the exhibit, the initial color impact was breath taking. Corona II, a favorite of mine, was directly across from the stairs and on the left wall was Birds of a Different Color, I couldn’t decide which one to drool over first. There was a bench across from Birds of a Different Color so I just sat and took them both in.

What a great show, there were quilts that seemed like old friends I had admired so often in books, but to see them in person was a whole new perspective. Ms. Fallert’s quilting designs that travel out into the borders, the multitude of thread colors used in a single quilt, the hand dyed fabrics all brought such uniqueness to her quilts.

It was all so inspiring – her unique piecing method, the hand dyes got me to consider additional options for my dyeing techniques, and the quilting – there’s so much to consider there:

• Although I often use multiple threads in one quilt, she stuck to solids (where I tend to use verrigateds) so she would have 10 times more thread changes than I might have previously considered
• She let the designs, like a quilted feather, carry out into and run off of the border
• Created ghost images (I have quilted an edge to edge twice but that’s not even close)
• Feathers that resemble realistic feathers

I could go on and on, I took lots of pictures (no flash is a requirement) which they advised were OK to post to a blog – so I’m sharing a few. Hopefully you can make it to the show, to see her first quilt with all the others makes it all feel possible.