Quilting Class Review

Hello there!  Hope you all had a wonderful weekend!  I did!  It started off with a 3 hour drive up to Hailey, Idaho to take a quilting class.  It was SUCH a beautiful day!  I stopped once to take a picture of the scenery.  Should have taken more!

Bellevue and Hailey are such cute little towns!  Bellevue is the home of Barb of the Mountain Quiltworks blog  (hi Barb! ).  Barb's quilting bee, the 5 Bee Quilt Guild, was hosting Cynthia Brunz (hi Cindy! ) of Quilting is More Fun Than Housework fame.   I was curious how the 5 Bee Quilt Guild got it's name.  It turns out Hailey is in Blaine County which is 5B in Idaho . . . so 5 Bee Quilt Guild.  Makes sense to me!

So here are the three bloggers, me on the left, Cindy in the middle and Barb on the right.  I was a mess.  Forgot my brush and this weekend was a makeup free one for me.  So there ya go.  Anyway here we are!

The first thing I learned in today's class is that Cynthia actually goes by Cindy.  She has the most beautiful, deep, rich voice and we loved her laid back, easygoing style.  (Barb had been in a class where the teacher said as long as I'm teaching this class, you're going to do it my way.  Yikes!)   The class was a lesson in color value and Cindy was using a pattern she designed called Geese Migration.  It's a mini lesson in color wash design.  She even brought a bunch of 2 1/2" squares for us to borrow from.  She found some clear plastic silverware holders which were the perfect size to organize those by color.  Great idea!  I forgot to take a picture of that so borrowed one from Cindy's blog (thanks, Beatrice for finding that!)

We all made about 2 or three blocks using her method and then threw them up on a design wall in no particular order.

Then she started putting them together, on point, by color family . . .

And here's the final version . . .

None of us had any idea what the other class participants were going to be making but when we put them all together, it would actually make a pretty nice quilt.    I have often considered joining in on the Rainbow Scrap Challenge and this block would be a great one for that!

Here are the blocks I made.  The green one hadn't been finished yet when we put them all up on the design wall.  These finish at 10 inches.  By the way I had some serious stash envy going.  Some of the other participants had the most BEAUTIFUL fabrics!  My stash is filled with old fabrics anywhere from 5 to 20 years old and this is a great way to use then up.  But I still enjoyed myself and like Cindy said, it wasn't about the fabric design but the color on the fabric.

So thank you Barb and Cindy for inviting me to join in your class!  It was a wonderful getaway for me.  Barb, I enjoyed getting to know you while we both stressed our way through picking out the right fabrics for our blocks.  This was outside our comfort zone as it is much easier for us to just follow a pattern and do what it says.  Picking out this many fabrics for every block was a challenge!

If you have a chance to invite Cindy to do a class for your quilt guild, I highly recommend this class in color!

I would have a house update picture to show you but it's dark outside and I forgot to take one.   The framers got the floor joists in and floor added onto the foundation while I was gone this weekend and tomorrow, we should see the walls start go to up.  Things are moving right along! 

Oh, guess what!  My daughter's track team had a "for fun" meet within their own team on Friday and everybody had to do a sprint event, a jumping event, a throwing event, and a long distance event.  She was so excited to actually get a personal record in the high jump on Friday at five feet!!  Too bad it doesn't really count for anything; however, now we know she can do it!  I didn't get a picture of the high jump but here is one of her doing the 100 meter hurdles at a recent meet.

Hope everybody had a wonderful weekend!  What did you do this weekend?

Linking to:

Monday Making

Main Crush Monday

Bambi's Show and Tell Monday