For QA, the spring ‘Quilting Adventures — Hill Country Style’ seminars have just finished at the wonderful campus of T Bar M Ranch. Our third spring set of events felt nearly perfect. Twelve national teachers arrived on the scene to host and share their hints, skills and energy with a diverse geography of students from seventeen different states. The fun, the energy and the excellence achieved by all was a joy. We studied and stitched until the wee hours…we shopped at Creations (our fabulous vendor from Kerrville, TX) and to a bonus, we enjoyed delicious food, and Texas hill-country stories and music, while friendships from years gone by were renewed.

Our next energizing event is the hill country Shop Hop hosted by stores from Austin, San Antonio, New Braunfels, Fredericksburg and Kerrville. It’s the “shop ‘til you drop” opportunity (Thursday through Sunday, April 10th - 13th). Check the Creations of Kerrville website (www.creations-online.com) for specific times and locations. Take advantage of the sights and touch of the latest fabrics, quilts and accessories—all within the boundaries of girlfriend time and shopping, one store to the next, until all the stores are reached. Quilting Adventures will be at the Creations of Kerrville store to catch the contagious energy and answer questions about next spring’s seminars. And, best of all, for those of you who register onsite with us during this weekend, we offer a $75 Shop Hop discount.

You will find the QA 2009 dates, faculty, class descriptions and photo details here on our website. Simply go to the Seminar Information page on our website, review the fabulous faculty and dates, and select your choice. Classes are offered to reach all varieties of interest…. we have traditional to art style instructors, and skill levels from confident beginner to advanced. Hand-turned appliqué, paint and stitch, piecing sewn traditionally and non-traditionally, machine arts and quilting—today’s stitching world has so many ways to do our craft. The week long setting and Texas hospitality is great fun; and studying with one instructor gives you time to stretch, to experiment, and to reach for the adventure in your stitching soul. It is a great week of exploration!

We, like you, are bursting with creative ideas and unfinished projects. And remember … share your results with all of us by placing your quilt photos on the Quilting Adventures student gallery pages (send a note if you need help accomplishing this). We will be updating our website, including own galleries in April, so stay tuned!

Barbara and Alice

September 27, 2007
We have some exciting pieces of news that we want to share with you!

Helen Ridgway of Kerrville, TX, a student in Rosemary Eichorn's Quilting Adventures' class this past spring, not only had the piece she began in class juried into the Houston IQF show, but was notified that she had won a cash award in the category of Small Art Quilts.

That means that she has won one of the top three prizes, so we are VERY proud of Helen's accomplishment. This is her very first art quilt ever since she claims to be purely a traditional quilter. She thanked us for encouraging her to stretch her quilting by presenting Rosemary's class and plans to continue to stretch in the future with Quilting Adventures – Hill Country Style. Who knew she has been hiding her artistic talents! Be on the lookout for this quilt and some of Helen's other quilts in the Student Gallery on our Quilting Adventures Interactive site.

The second piece of news is our excitement with machine felting. Our local quilt store offered a basic class where we learned about the technique. It's really easy and one of the newest things in quilting embellishment. To think that we have the premier felting teacher coming to Quilting Adventures this coming March should really be a star event for our students. In our tidbits section below, we're sharing with you the ‘before' and ‘after' photos provided by Paula Scaffidi whom many of you know as Fiberella – as she is the one teaching the class. We encourage you to register for this class since Paula hails from North Carolina and doesn't often get this way. You'll have great fun and be rewarded with a unique quilt. The ‘before and ‘after' photos are at the bottom of this newsletter in the 'tidbits' section.

Our September 9th – 12th Fall Into Quilting Adventures' “Flower Arrangements” class with Sue Benner was a hoot! It was such a compatible group and every student produced beautiful and unique flowers. We had great fun, superb food and unique lodging at Ye Kendall Inn in Boerne, TX . Our last night we shared our sewing and quilting stories and our faces ached from so much laughter. Did you know that Barbara's earliest remembrance of sewing was her older brother's attempt to keep her from tagging along with him every minute? He simply sewed her finger with the needle down…..and she couldn't move.

Tidbits:

What's fresh and fun in the world of quiltmaking?
Machine felting and quilt making are great new companions!

Here's a Fiberella pieced landscape before felting...

And... the transformation with the pure fun of machine felting!

Join us at Quilting Adventures for a memorable retreat with this exceptional teacher, Paula Scaffidi, aka Fiberella. Whether you love appliqué, wholecloth or piecing, Paula will teach you lots of fun, innovative techniques and guide you as you design your own quilt.

Quilting Adventures - Hill Country Style, held in March of 2007 was a great success. We had many new students as well as 85% of our first year attendees returning. The banjo and guitar duo was a big hit as were the classes with outstanding instructors. Sharon did a great job of posting 2007 Quilting Adventures Seminar pictures on the website. Take a minute to look through them if you haven't already done so and see how much fun we had.

You'll find the 2008 instructors and classes listed on the Seminar Information page of the website. Registrations are filling, so don't wait too long to get yours in to be sure you get your first choice. As always, it's a variety of classes to appeal to every quilter.

Barbara is expecting her sixth grandchild - the first grandson. She's already planning the quilt, don't you know. I visited two of my sons and their families in late April in the Kansas City area and another son's family for Mother's Day near Ft. Worth . Grandchildren are so proud when they learn to jump or lose that first tooth. My oldest granddaughter will spend a week with me this summer to take art classes in the mornings and sew and quilt with me other times. We're going to a high tea one afternoon. It's fun to do girly things with granddaughters that I didn't get to do with my sons.

Happy Quilting 'til next time,

Sue

Tidbits:

1. Dried Elmer's glue can be used as a fabric resist.
2. Practice machine quilting with pencil and paper to get the rhythm and see what you like.
3. A sketch, painting or photo can have a portion greatly enlarged at a photocopy place to inspire an abstract quilt.
4. Washing a raw edged fabric collage softens its look.
5. Sashiko by machine uses tightened white thread on top and navy thread in the bobbin.
6. Black and white fabric can be over-painted or over-dyed to coordinate with your other fabrics.

Our Fall into Quilting Adventures event in September of 2006 was a big success. The single class with Karen Stone was held at Ye Kendall Inn in Boerne where we had great meals, very pleasant surroundings and a large workspace with a fun project. We just may do one of these fall events again.

Sue then immediately took off for three weeks in Africa on a not-to-be-forgotten camera safari into Kenya and Tanzania . You just never get tired of seeing the animals. Upon her return she spent 10 days in Kansas City caring for her two oldest grandchildren, now 12 and 11, while their parents went to Japan courtesy of a business connection.

Barbara split her grandbaby sitting between 10 days in Colorado and 11 days in Texas . Sue reminds Barbara that 10 days is not too long with growing grandchildren!

Next came the Houston Quilt show where Barbara and Sue took three days of classes, followed by four days of work in the Quilting Adventures' booth. OK, Sue spent only two and then headed off for a five-day quilt seminar. Barbara's husband John, whom everybody who's been to Quilting Adventures knows, filled in for Sue. He got the information down pat and thinks he may have convinced a few to sign up for the spring seminars.

Both Barbara and Sue did family things over Thanksgiving and Christmas and have now shifted into high gear getting ready for the spring seminars. Our faculty for 2008 is already lined up and we have some outstanding teachers. Some had to schedule for 2009, so we're well on our way to having a great group of teachers that year too.

We've been busy working on new quilt projects - Barbara with her precision piecing and more traditional style, Sue continuing with her bent toward the unusual and bright colors. We'll update our online gallery soon and show you some of our results. In the meantime, watch for our Student Gallery which is due on-line within the month. It will eventually grow to include a representative piece from each quilter who has been to one of our seminars - provided they want to share it with others!

Tidbit:
We both very much enjoyed reading Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See. It's a wonderful book for a discussion group and gives a picture of 19 th century China , including many of the cultural aspects of arranged marriage, foot binding and sisterhood. For those who hesitate to tackle historical literature, the book is not too long and written in a wonderfully easy style. Try it; you'll like it.