Ocean Waves Quilting: Busy summer... what I've been up to

Back at home to stay for a bit after trips to Maine (for judging), California (for family), upstate New York (for antique cars and friends), and New Hampshire (for judging and teaching). Summer has truly flown by and this early fall weather is fine by me. Here are some pix of the classes I taught this past weekend at the World Quilt Show at the Radisson in Manchester, NH.

This past Thursday I taught an EQ class where students brought their own laptops into which they had loaded EQ7 (a couple of EQ6ers). We progressed through a number of lessons, building on what they'd learned as we went. I have to commend the group for hanging in there. This much EQ at one time can be overwhelming but with the help of chocolate and lots of water and walk-around breaks, they persevered. They designed some beautiful virtual quilts, many even went outside the box and pushed their creativity, I was thrilled to see that!

Friday's class was my quilt workshop "Easy Peasey Circles". In this workshop we created a 1600" jelly roll quilt with extra mitered joins, made a sample inset circle, designed a visual path for the circles, then inset contrasting circles right into the quilt using double freezer paper frames and school glue (to keep it non- toxic).

This is one of the student quilt, hers was a 30 strip jelly roll like mine pictured above.Pictured are her freezer paper dots in gradated sizes. The white dots will be replaced with the fabric of her inset circles. It will be a beauty!

Didn't realize until I looked at this picture, but the carpet design matched our whole circle theme for the day!

Saturday's class was my favorite, addictive, trim-as-you-sew block worked in a quilt design I named "Scrappy Star". Students had a choice of doing an 8 pointed star as above or a 4 pointed "Friendship Star". They all chose the 4 pointed version and finished a huge number of blocks in a 6 hour day. Here are pictures of the students and their blocks. Amazing and fun group!

Also enjoyed judging the quilts before show began. Four of us started early on Wednesday and worked through until about 8, being sure to examine each quilt closely and provide ample evaluative and constructive comments to each quilter.

The Best of World quilt, Chinese Journey in Three Parts, by Stephanie Crawford of the UK, a triptych, is amazing. Such fun to explore the exquisite details and the beautifully wrought techniques throughout. Here are a few pictures of this beauty for you to enjoy!