MQX Quilt Festival - East

Last week I hopped in the car with a couple of my quilting besties and we traveled to Manchester, New Hampshire for the MQX Quilt Festival - East!
All I can say is...once again we had a fantastic time; great friends, great classes, great quilts, great vendors, great new quilters to meet!
BTW - it's also great to be home again; missed my husband, missed our kind of water, missed my bed, and so on!

I took a total of 4 hands on classes and one lecture. Two of the classes were for free motion quilting and the other two were piecing classes.

To be honest, I have taken a number of free motion classes and think it is a good idea to learn from a variety of teachers.  Everyone has their own technique and style, you can glean from each hands on or lecture what works for you.  Then you practice, practice, practice.  That IS the one thing every teacher has in common, PRACTICE.  This year I took a class with Andrea Brokenshire and a class with Leah Day.  Both ladies were a delight to spend 4 hours with and they both had a lot to share in the way of free motion quilting.

Yesterday I practiced a design called Paisley.  My personal goal is to practice for 15-30 minutes per day on my new Baby Lock Tiara.  Yup, I am now the proud owner of a Tiara and I am loving it.  I haven't quilted any quilt tops yet on the one at home but I have quilted a number of sample quilts already for the shop on the Tiara floor model.
So happy and thankful to now have one at home.  I am adding a page at the top of this blog to journal my free motion quilting practice and invite you to follow along as I find out what works for me.

The class with the ladies from Sew Kind of Wonderful (http://sewkindofwonderful.com/) was a lot of fun.
We used their Quick Curve Ruler with the Chic Kisses Pattern.  My original plan was to do this with the fabrics in my Civil War Repro stash but since the class was to only make one block I used a few fabrics from my 30's Repro stash.

Cute block!  This is one that I will be doing again and again I think.  The block is fairly large (@23x23) so it will pull together into a large quilt.  This sample will be a table topper for summer after I quilt it.

That brings me to the lecture I went to at the show.  The same ladies gave a lecture on using their QCR Sidekick Longarm Ruler.  This ruler has curves that follow the curves made in your blocks using the QCR.  Lots to learn.  Picked up the ruler set and will need to practice A LOT before quilting this. I will add some of the ruler work photos to my free motion page when I get around to this practice.

Happy Stitching (and practicing),
Colleen