Quilting Boot Camp: Days 2 & 3

Although I had every intention of blogging our progress every day, boot camp took over our lives! The rest of the week flew by in a blur! I'm going to put it up in two batches, though, so as to not be overwhelming!!

Day Two: Creating the Nine-Patches

The disappearing nine patch pattern starts with, you guessed it, nine patches! We spent the better part of Tuesday sewing our preliminary blocks.

Day Three: Laying out the quilts

Once the nine-patches are finished, they are cut into quarters; these smaller squares become the building blocks for our finished quilts.

It seems like this part would go pretty quickly but, since you're going to be living with this quilt for the forseeable future, all of those little decisions about what color sits next to what takes on a much grander importance.

Each quilter in the class started to create sets of rules for their design; a kind of logic to guide the process depending on their colors and personal styles.

Eeeh! The quilts are coming together!! This is the stage at which I start getting really excited... :0)

Quilting Boot Camp: Day 1

That's right: BOOT CAMP! Five days, three students: come with fabric, leave with a quilt. (Or that's the goal, anyway...) I thought about dressing in camo and combat boots today and wearing a whistle-- "that's a generous quarter inch, not a scant quarter inch: drop and give me 20!"-- but instead I decided to go with a playlist that was 3 hrs of Eye of the Tiger.



HA. Just kidding. I only made them listen to it once. (So far... bwahahaha.)

Day 1: Cutting the fabric

We are making a disappearing nine-patch pattern, for which we need a total of 108 8" squares.

Our three brave recruits... I mean students: Christine, Jordana and Karen.


Less chatting, more cutting! Drop and give me 20!
HA! Gotcha again, it's all cool. :0)


Christine's color palette is phenomenal! All Merimeko prints purchased at the Crate and Barrel outlet. JEALOUS. I can't wait to see how it turns out!



Tomorrow we'll start piecing the squares together!

What are other good montage songs I should download for my montage mix? We're gonna need all the 80's-stye adrenaline pumping we can get come basting day!

Happy Holidays from Lillstreet and other ways to shop!

This past weekend we invited friends, co-workers, students and members of the Lillstreet community to join us for the second annual department Holiday Sale. Much fun was had by all!

We had ten vendors this year! Some of them were craft fair pros:

James and Jordana of Qualaar.

Heather Bella of Spills Her Coffee

And, for the first time, we invited students to apply as well. They did great!

Caryn

Amy

(More pictures from the event in my flickr!)

A few months ago I decided not to prioritize making crafts to sell. Instead, I was going to spend my precious little extra studio time to re-vamp my portfolio. Well.. then I had even less studio time than ever so I pretty much ended up doing neither. But the Lillstreet Holiday sale is one of my favorite events of the year! I definitely wasn't going to miss out.

Is it even possible to feel prepared for craft fairs?! If so, I definitely haven't figured out how. I pretty much had to build my whole collection from the ground up in the three weeks leading up to the event. (Y'know, since I had stopped making crafts.)


I even designed some new products!

I've got birch bolsters and birch/brown wood pin cushions! They're pretty adorbz, if I do say so myself.

All in all, I'd say my booth came together quite nicely.

I'm doing one more fair this season: this SATURDAY! If you're in the Chicago area, come by and check it out!

Happy holiday crafting, everyone! 'Tis the season to buy stuff made by your friends. :0)