Sew Expo ~ Day 4

This day four of Sew Expo and sometimes I wonder why I go to the four days.  Today we need to be seated in the classroom by 8:00 AM - I'm tired out, what was I thinking, it takes about 45 minutes to an hour to drive to Puyallup, so we were up again really early for us.  Have some coffee and I'm a slow ready to go.  This morning I'm taking another class from Simon Haskins in the Brother classroom the Heart Applique Techniques Tablerunner.  In this class Simon presented some of the new techniques that he and Jenny have developed.  The techniques included traditional applique, layered applique, shadow applique and trapunto applique.  We were busy in this class and had lots of fun.  This was and intermediate to advanced class and they had good helpers in the class room.

My ribbon applique

My Shadow and textured applique

Embroidering the ribbon applique

Sample Applique

Sample Applique

Sample Applique

Sample Applique

Save the dates for Sew Expo 2013!

February 28 and March 1 - 3, 2013

I can't wait!

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Sew Expo ~ Day 3

This day three of Sew Expo.  I didn't go on Friday, March 2nd,  I stayed home, tried to rest some and play catch up around the house.  This morning I'm in Simon Haskins' Cutwork Pillow Class in the Brother class room.  Simon always presents a great class and brings lots of samples to inspire you.  In this class we used two plain lace edged napkins to create a beautiful cutwork for a pillow and made the little pillow to insert inside of the napkins.

My Cutwork for pillow

Embroidering my Cutwork

Cutwork Sample of Pillow Back

Cutwork Sample of Pillow Front

In the afternoon I was signed up for the Snap To It! Bag in the Juki classroom.  This was a fun, fast easy class that was well organized.  They had nice kits to choose from.  It was good end to the day.  I was tired and tomorrow we start at 8:00 AM.

Snap Happy Purse and fabrics in our kits

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Sew Expo ~ Day 2

This day 2 at Sew Expo.  (Really it is day 1 because the vendors are all open today).  It seems just as crowded as always for the first day.  I got one of the last finishing kits for the Pinata Quilt, a Libby Lehman class I attended yesterday. 

Combined motifs and embroidered our initial

This morning I'm in Judy Hahner's class for the IPad Sleeve/E-Reader Cover in the Bernina class room. One of the things I like about the Bernina class room is that there are always plenty of helpers ready to help you.  And they always have all of the machines set-up and ready to go, which is job in-its-self.   Class moved quickly and most of finished or were almost finished, I think I would like to add a light weight batting to mine so I didn't quite finish.

Free motion quilted with the BSR on texture magic

Used decorative stitches

My second class was with Cindy Losekamp in the Viking class room making a Pieced and Applique Bag in the Hoop.   Although I've done this type of embroidery many times before, I enjoyed Cindy's class and she has some neat, new applique scissors coming out and a different technique for inserting a zipper in the hoop.  I felt that this was a more of an advanced embroidery class,  many of the other students were lost even with Cindy's excellent instructions.  There were not enough helpers in this class, and I know they were trying very hard.  For me this was a fun class, however I felt that the seams should have had decorative embroidery stitches since this was a crazy patch quilting.  Of course if we had done the decorative stitches we would have been even father behind and as it was, we did run into about half hour of overtime. 

Crazy quilt with applique bag

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Sew Expo ~ Day 1

Today was the first class day at Sewing & Stitchery Expo in Puyallup, WA.  There is no shopping at the vendor booths today, only hands on classes.  It was billed as "The Biggest Sewing Party in America!" this year.  I always look forward to attending the classes there.   Today I took Libby Lehmans's Pinatita Quilt in the Bernina class room.  We were sewing on the new B 580 machines - very nice machines, BTW.   The class kit was made up of Ricky Tims hand dyed batiks, solid black fabric and a firm stabilizer  (all cut to size) and a spool of  Rainbows (variegated thread) and three spools of Ricky Tims Art Studio Colors (bright solids)  from Superior Threads.  Using the circular tool maker attachment, we first created our appliques, cut  out the appliques and then proceeded to have fun playing with the many decorative stitches on our machines and different colors of threads.  This was my favorite class at Sew Expo this year.  It was so much fun to sit and play with the different stitches on the machines. 

Hints:
1.)    Have a piece of fabric (I think a similar colored fabric is more helpful than natural or white muslin to see what the stitch and thread color choice will look like) and stabilizer to try out your stitches on first on.  Don't forget to try out  some of the alphabet stitches, they can be interesting also.
2.)  You may need to adjust your top tension down to a lower number to get a prettier stitch.  This is one of those times when you want your top thread to come to the backside of the fabric.  Test each stitch first.
3.)  If your machine has a "Combi mode or Memory" create some stitch combinations.
4.)  If your machine will allow you to change stitch width, stitch length or elongate the stitch, play with those features on your machine to change how your stitch looks. 

 I can't wait to start again on these blocks using this technique.

Pinatita Quilt

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