Happy Birthday Pierre!

Today is my dear husband's 50th birthday. As you can see from the picture above he's quite a guy and lots of fun. In the picture he's trying out my daughter's sousaphone on parent night during band camp. I'm very grateful to have found someone as wonderful as Pierre. I'm sure I wouldn't be the same person without his love and support.

As for where I've been, Palomar's Spring Break flew by much too quickly. I managed to get a start on a couple of the summer projects, but nothing is finished yet. On Friday Wendy and I hosted/taught at a quilting retreat in Temecula. Everyone had a fabulous time doing Wendy's amazing trimplate Storm at Sea and learning how to machine quilt. We had a fabulous group of women and I count myself very lucky to know these women.

The birthday cake is ready to come out of the oven and I still have presents to wrap so I'll close for now. Pictures to come in the next few days if I don't get too busy at Ricky Tims' Super Seminar... Wow, March has been a busy month!

Lisa

Spring Break!

It's Spring Break for those of us teaching at Palomar so I've been working hard on several things.

I've decided not to dye fabric any more so I'm using up what's left of my dyes and PFD fabric, chemicals, etc. I've been dyeing 10+ pieces a day after the kids have gone to school. Low water immersion dyeing itself doesn't take that much work, but the wait time is such that I need to be around most of the day. Today I'm going to try to get a run of grey which is a hard color for me to use because there are so many different greys. I hope this will encourage me.

Summer semester suddenly seems closer, too, so I've been thinking about what to teach. The semester is shorter so I don't need as many projects, but it would be nice to have finished samples!

Also I found out recently that there won't be any Palomar classes at the high school near me. That's where 2 out of 6 of our classes are held. It's very convenient, being only 1 mile from my house. Instead they will be offering those classes at a middle school in Poway which is 25 minutes away. We already have a class in Poway so that doesn't make sense to me. So there are decisions to be made.

A third thing I'm working on is deciding what to put on my website. I hope to make decisions in the next few days.

And finally I've been getting excited about our retreat this weekend! Friday, Saturday and Sunday this week Wendy and I will be in Temecula having the time of our lives. Now where did I put that packing list from last year?!

Santa Ana Blues

I've got the Santa Ana blues this week. I love the warmer weather that they bring, but they also bring some mysterious allergen that the allergy clinic can't seem to identify and sinus headaches inevitably ensue. Not much creativity going on this week, but I am trying to finish up more UFOs. Mindless sewing. That's about all I'm good for this week ;-)

Columns Second Try

Here is my second attempt at making the quilt we're calling Columns. This one has frogs centered in the windows and the same fabric on the window frame as the background stripes. I think this one has more of a feeling of depth, although I liked the fabrics better in the first one. It's a quick and fun quilt to make!

This week we're starting a spring row quilt with bunnies and duckies and birdies, etc. It's very cute, but there are so many different techniques that it will take 4 weeks to teach them all. Sorry I don't have pictures yet because Wendy has her sample and mine. Hers is more of a scene than a true row quilt, and is really nice. We try to show 2 different ideas with our samples. That gives our students more possibilities :-)

Columns First Try

I had a great time teaching last week even though it was a really busy week. I ended up teaching 3 of the 5 classes alone because Wendy was busy with 2 guild lectures and a workshop. She took the last class for me so I could attend the Academic League match on Thursday night. It feels like the time is just slipping away before the kids will be gone.

This was my first try at making an attic windows quilt that we call columns. I centered the window on a butterfly fabric. It came out all right, but I refined my technique and fabric choices with the next quilt. This was the lesson last week. It's such a cool pattern!

Academic League

It's a really busy week, but I'm getting through it okay. I taught both classes yesterday since Wendy was teaching a guild workshop during the day and I knew she'd be exhausted after that. She has another guild lecture this morning so I'm taking the Thursday afternoon class also, but I'm hoping she can take the evening class tonight.

Both my kids particpate in Academic League at our high school. It's like the old College Bowl TV show where they read a question and the first person who rings in has 5 seconds to answer. If they get it correct their team gets to answer a 3-5 part bonus question. Jake is on the varsity team and Elisia is on the junior varsity. Our school teams are doing well, only one loss so far.

Jake is a wizard at the math stuff. As soon as the equation or whatever is read he rings in and figures it in his head in those 5 seconds. He's amazing! And Elisia is one of the captains. She's so calm and cool while everyone on the team is shouting conflicting answers at her. Also she has to ring in if the other team misses if no one else on the team knows the answer. This leads to some inventive and funny answers!

Tonight is the big match against Westview, the other school in our town and the one my kids were supposed to attend. We opted to go to Mt Carmel instead because it's closer and Westview was just opening so it didn't have established programs. I hope that I can go and Wendy can cover the class for me. I haven't seen Elisia play a full match all season. Wish us luck!

Busy Week!

Here is my demo sample from last week's class made into a notebook cover. I really am doing well keeping up with the projects. I even finished another name tag yeaterday! Just one more of those to go :-)Well this week is a darned busy week! not only do we have the usual classes (well, we cancelled the Tuesday night class this week, but we still have the other 5 classes), but Wendy is doing 2 guild lectures (Seaside and El Camino) and a workshop. I help with the lectures (moving suitcases, holding quilts, handing her props, etc), but she's on her own for the workshops since I'll be teaching the Palomar class. I'm all worn out and it's only Wednesday morning!

Her lecture last night at Seaside was very well received. She's a great speaker and has lots of quilts: everything from her antique quilts to her modern day quick-and-easy quilts that she developed for the Prayer Quilt ministry at her church. And she has a great talk called Scrap Management. She tames her scraps into useable, organized pieces. Me? I just give them away, LOL!

This week at our Palomar classes we're teaching an attic window variation Wendy calls columns. I made 2 because I wasn't happy with the first one I made and we kept changing the technique. Wendy is a real stickler for finding the best, easiest method of making something and she worked really hard on this one. The quilts are packed away in my car right now or I'd snap a couple of pictures. I'll try to get some later in the day, if I'm still awake ;-)

Lisa

Last week I taught hi-tech tucks and this was the quilt I brought in as an example. The project was a notebook cover, but I wanted to show them what else they can do with this technique. I also wore a jacket with tucks on the sleeves :-)

I purchased the main fabric for this quilt 10-12 years ago at the Quilting Bee in San Jose (Mountainview?) and let it marinate in my stash until it was just ripe ;-) I added the tucks in a purchased, almost solid brown-black and one of my hand-dyed bright greens. It came out square which was too boring so I cut the bottom into a curve.

BTW, that's my daughter holding the quilt. I wish my hips were that skinny, LOL

Done!

In an effort to avoid having a mountain of class sample UFOs I am endeavoring to finish demo and sample pieces within a week of using them. This is the sample piece from last week's stained glass designing exercise. Sorry about the wrinkles, but it's been to six classes this week as my part of sharing and has been folded most of the week. I think the colors are even prettier in person :-)