More Paducah

For this post I wanted to talk about the classes I took.  Yuki and I took these classes together.  They were wonderful.  The first class we took was with Jan Krentz.  She is a wonderful, patient teacher and a really nice person.

The class was about learning about Y seams and making this large lone star.  Now Yuki and I had taken a lone star class here in Ann Arbor so much of it was review for us but she showed us how to make a border on it (not shown here) and that technique was good to learn.  She provided the kits and I chose the birds.
The second class we took was Hunter Star and Here is what my Hunter Star block turned out like.  It was difficult to choose fabrics when we didn't know what the pattern would be (I think it was called something like simplified stars class).  I might have chosen differently if I had known.  Her hand out was excellent and wow, the number and variation of blocks you can make with HST!  Who knew?
The third class we took was Take Away Applique with Suzanne Marshall.  I confess ahead of time to not knowing who she was but she was AWESOME!!  I was so fascinated by her birds, as shown here.
But this was amazing too.  Notice how she outlines the applique with black embroidery floss?  It really makes it stand out.  She uses a stem stitch but she and I do it completely opposite from each other.  I asked for pointers as I don't think mine is very good and she told me I do it the European way.  I liked her way better.  She is a very down to earth, humble person.  If you did not know her quilts and how talented she is you would not know it from her own mouth.  She told of her beginnings, checking books out at the library.  She is self taught.  She told us of her failures and how she turned into the expert she is today.  She even invited people to get together a group of people and visit her home for instruction.  Even to have lunch.  Amazing!
This was my lonely flower.  She told us that if you can master inside and outside curves and points you could do what she does.  Right....  But her Take Away Applique technique is so wonderful.  I know I will be using it in the future.  She has a new book out too and you should all check it out, it is great!
Look, here I am with Suzanne!!
This is the latest project she is working on.  I thought it was rather nice of her to let us photograph it!  Just shows you what a sweetheart she is!
Well, after all that hard work and all that hard shopping Yuki and I needed a break, so we decided to share some potato chip thingies (like apple peeling where you keep the string going, that is what they did with the potato)  So here is Yuki.


And here is me!  We only ate a little and gave the rest to some ladies sitting near to us.  

I have more from Paducah so stay tuned!  Life at my house has been so hectic lately.  We had a lacrosse game on Monday, I had a lacrosse meeting on Tues, Quilting with the CL's on Wed, a lax game tonight, supposed to go to a gold party on Fri (probably going to skip that) and another lacrosse game on Sat.  (which is senior recognition day).  I had to call all the incoming freshmen families this week before today and invite them to come to one of our last 3 home games too and there were 22 families!  My poor DH asked me last night if I was going to do this again next year (be president of the lax assn) and I had to tell him I was.  He is not very happy about that as he thinks I am never home (I really was never home anyway with swimming either).  

I also wanted to let you know that Liz got TUQ quilted and back to me.  I will try to get some photos and post them when I get a minute.  The paisley pattern was perfect for the quilt and she did the quilting in orange.  It really shows up well on the blue/green back.  I promise photos soon.  Too much to share and not enough time to do it!