Riding on a VQF high

I look forward to the Vermont Quilt Festival every year and, although I was sorry it moved to the Burlington area from nearby Northfield a few years ago, I do love the spacious new, aicronditioned facilities. Thursday, I took two classes with Cindy Erickson of Omaha. I had signed up for a class with Gail Garber, but it was cancelled at the last minute. So I ended up taking "Rotary Tips and Tricks" in the morning. It was a bit of review for me, but I did learn a few things and Cindy was really fun and easy going. We discussed whether or not to pre-wash fabric, when to change needles and rotary cutter blades, etc. Cindy showed us how to tape templates on the bottom of our rulers and turn them so we wouldn't have to draw around them and cut. I'm going to try this with diamonds in particular.

I had signed up for Cindy's afternoon class about settings. She had Powerpoint slides with a host of examples and then showed a pile of quilts and tops. She now cuts and sews cornerstones on separately in order to be more accurate and allow some easing of blocks if necessary. I tried that when I got home, and it does work.


Cindy had encouraged us to bring in batches of blocks for us to "play" with, so I brought the 70 or so Sylvia's Bridal Sampler blocks I have made. I would like to move on and work on something else, but I also want to put these varied blocks together. Cindy suggested that with a lot of disparate blocks, a simple setting may be the most effective. Here we are moving the blocks around. Arranging the blocks in a rainbow fashion with matching sashing and cornerstones seemed best. The beige fabric I bought for sashing seemed uninteresting that I will probably just use it as a background for other quilt blocks, or maybe even the back. This was a really fun class.


When I got home Thurs. night, all I could think about was arranging those blocks, which I did... endlessly. The next day, Polly and I went back to the quilt show to see the various exhibits and shop the vendors. I made a bee-line for the batik and hand-dyed fabrics and got some "gradations" from SewBatik as well as two packets of various hand-dyes. When I got home that afternoon, I did a final layout and started auditioning sashing. Saturday, I made a few more blocks to fit, color-wise, into the blank spaces. Today I washed the batiks so I can get busy cutting soon. Can't wait!



Saturday afternoon, Paul and I went back over to St. Michael's College to see the musical The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee which was lots of fun. We had a delicious dinner when we got back to Barre at Lucia's - filet mignon with eclairs for dessert. We are hoping to get to two more plays at St. Mike's Playhouse this summer.



Sunday morning, we handled the Barre Historical Society booth at the Vermont History Expo at the Tunbridge Fairgrounds. It was fun chatting with people with roots in Barre and also looking at the other societies' booths. Later in the day, I made my fourth trip over to Burlington in as many days to pick up my 1930's Baby Jane that was in the special Treasures of the Green Mountains exhibit at VQF.