The Singing Quilter Newsletter
May 2012
In this issue: . A great story from Lodi WI . Australian Shadows pattern . Next Cruise: Fall Colours, September 2013 . New class: Notan Design . Solutions: Mock Mola fraying . Upcoming . What I'm working on
Cathy Miller and her husband John Bunge, of Victoria BC Canada travel the world singing songs about quilts, quilters and quilting. For further information, visit the website at www.singingquilter.com. Or email them at cmiller@nucleus.com. Follow Cathy's blog at www.singingquilter.wordpress.com Become a fan on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/pages/Cathy-Miller/59712236960?ref=nf If you would like to be removed from this list, send an email to cmiller@nucleus.com with "Unsubscribe" in the subject line. |
Greetings! |
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John and I are home now, from our
spring travels around North America. We met so many wonderful
quilters, and felt very welcomed and well taken care of at every guild.
Thank you everyone! I tried to get this newsletter out before this, but ran into some issues with my program and the hotel room Internet connections, so I gave up and waited till we got home to send this. We had a great visit to Wisconsin, meeting some old friends, visiting some Frank Lloyd Wright buildings (check out the blog for pictures), and discovering new quilt shops! We also returned to Winnipeg (almost 12 years since we sang one song to them!), Moose Jaw Saskatchewan and finished off in Kuna Idaho (near Boise). Happy quilting, Cathy |
If this is the first newsletter from me you've received, welcome! I send them out periodically, when there's something I think you'll be interested in. If you'd like to follow our doings more often, join my Facebook "fan" page (link at the left) or the blog (where I often write about our travels). If you would like to be removed from this list, send an email to cmiller@nucleus.com with "Unsubscribe" in the subject line. We have only three states left to visit in the United States! If you know anyone who lives in Mississippi, Arkansas, or West Virginia who has contacts to quilt guilds there, please let us know! We can't possibly retire until we've sung in them all... |
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Here's a great story that was told to me after our show in Lodi Wisconsin. A man pulls up to the US border station, just after 9/11. Behind him, a van full of quilters on a spree. The officials search everything, and he has the look of smugness that comes from knowing there's NOTHING they will find. They open the trunk - empty. Then, the spare tire compartment. It's FULL of fabric!! Not an empty space to be had. His face registers total shock - he had no idea it was there. The quilters fall over laughing, as do the border crossing guards.
His wife (who will hear about this when he
gets home): BUSTED!!!
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Solutions: Mock Mola Fraying Have you taken a class in Mock Mola Appliqué from me? If so, you have heard me talk about the "hairy-ness" of the technique (it is raw edge, after all). To minimize the fray factor, I've sometimes encouraged students to use curved lines, and I've recently suggested laying the top fabric at a 45 degree angle to the design, if there are lots of straight lines. But I wanted to find another answer to this problem. The labyrinth design below is almost all on-grain. I chose a really cheap and fairly coarse black fabric on top. There are lots of fray possibilities here! First, I sewed the top section normally, using a straight stitch, cut it out, then sewed a meander on top of the black to catch the edges. Yuck! There were huge threads hanging off everywhere! Then I did some satin stitch on the cut section to finish off the edges. Still pretty messy, because it was cut out before I finished the edge. I finally started on the bottom section of the labyrinth, sewing a satin stitch on the black BEFORE I cut it out! That's the ticket! Then, rather than leaving a scant 1/16" away from the sewing line, I cut as close to it as I could, without cutting through the colour layer. It only required a little bit of trimming frayed threads away afterwards.
This quilt will be finished before we go to Boulder Colorado in August to do a taping of The Quilt Show with Ricky Tims and Alex Anderson. I'm very excited about showing them this cool technique!
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What I'm Working On
. My next job is to write up the class notes for the NOTAN classes I'll be teaching in Birmingham England in August. Class participants will be working with paper to design their pieces, and we'll have an hour to experiment. . I'm officially "under the gun" in writing the World's Biggest Hexagon song! It's okay - I LIKE working under pressure! We have a couple of weeks at home soon, and that's when I'll be looking for inspiration. Wish me luck.... . Yes, I'm still working on hexagons!!! 1/2" this time, in a snowflake pattern. It's going slowly, since I'm having some tendon problems in my left arm, so I can't do too many at a time. . I'll be home for a few weeks before we leave for Australia. During that time, I'll be finishing up the new Mock Mola pieces, and seeing what else I can produce - I need lots of quilts for The Quilt Show taping in August! |
Upcoming Tours: Spring Tour US and Canada:
June 13/14 Sequim WA concert and Mock
Mola class July 26 Spokane WA (USA) 2 shows at 1pm and 7pm
August 2 Boulder CO -
taping The Quilt Show with Ricky Tims and
August 16-19 Birmingham England -
Festival of Quilts John is starting to plan our next huge tour in 2014, again around the perimeter of the US and Canada. The confirmed gigs are up on the website already. For details on any of these
performances, please get in
touch, or visit the
website where there are
contact addresses for each performance. |
Thank you for reading this newsletter.
Feel free to share it in its entirety. If you have any suggestions of
things you would like to hear about, please get in touch at
cmiller@nucleus.com
.
© Cathy Miller, May 2012