Good Things Happen When You Join a Quilt Guild! Out-of-Print Book Miracles and Workshops With Karen Kay Buckley

What an amazing week this has been quilt-wise, and all because I joined the Charlotte Quilters' Guild a few months ago!  On Monday, our Southside Stitchers Bee met at Christa's house, where I got lots of needleturn applique stitched down, ate a few too many homemade chocolate chip cookies, and got a tour of Christa's professional longarm quilting studio, Cotton Berry Quilts.    Christa is letting me borrow a set of Handi-Quilter Groovy Boards to try out with my longarm machine for my next charity outreach quilt, to see it that works better for me than trying to follow a paper pantograph, and I'm really looking forward to that.  

But then, at our guild meeting on Wednesday night, the internationally renowned appliqué goddess Karen Kay Buckley came to do a lecture and trunk show about innovative border treatments, and I had the opportunity to take her hand and machine appliqué workshops on Thursday and Friday.  I learned so much, bought lots of nifty new gadgets and gizmos, and now I'm pretty sure we're BFFs.

Me and My New Bestie, Karen Kay Buckley

Seriously, if you ever have the opportunity to take a class with Karen, don't pass it up.  These were among the best workshops I've ever taken.  Karen has a legit teaching background and it shows -- she knows how to create a project that is accessible to beginners but also rewarding and engaging for those with more experience, and she packed a LOT into each 6-hour workshop because she knows how to write tight lesson plans, how much time to allow for each step, and exactly how much instruction students can process and retain before attempting to repeat what has been demonstrated.  I learned:

• A better, cleaner, and more precise way to hand stitch outer and inner points
• That my Karen Kay Buckley Perfect Scissors can cut FOUR LAYERS of fabric without distortion, thanks to their micro serrated blade.  You know all of those leaves I've been cutting out ONE at a time for my Frankenwhiggish Rose project?  I will but cutting them FOUR at a time from now on!  This is like coming out of the Dark Ages into the Renaissance, you guys!  You can get Karen's scissors and everything else I purchased at class on her web site here, but I'm also giving you (affiliate) Amazon links in this post since Amazon Prime day is right around the corner.  
• A cool way to accurately transfer appliqué designs onto ANY color fabric
• A better way to use pins for positioning appliqué so that my thread doesn't get caught up on the pins
• And so much more.  My notebook overfloweth with new ideas and inspiration!

Class Photo from Friday's Machine Appliqué Workshop

And, what nifty new gadgets and gizmos did I BUY, you may ask?  These are my favorite new goodies:

• I already owned Karen's Perfect Circles templates, but I purchased her Perfect Leaves, Perfect Ovals, and Perfect Stems sets.
• The pattern for Majestic Mosaic, Karen's AQS Best of Show quilt from 2015.  I'm not planning to recreate Karen and longarm quilter Renae Haddadin's masterpiece (as if that were a possibility!), but I'm fascinated by the way she designed the quilt with those unusual interlocking shaped frames around the block, and I'm looking forward to studying the pattern instructions to learn how Karen created that effect.
• Karen has some EXTREMELY fine pins that glide in and out of fabric, even batiks, effortlessly and without distortion.  After testing them in the hand stitched appliqué class, I bought both sizes of her pins.
• She also introduced us to a June Tailor glue pen that I'd never seen before.  At home, my fabric glue sticks were the same size and shape as the glue sticks elementary students use -- not great for applying the glue precisely where you want it to go.  The glue sticks Karen had us using in class were glue pens with a diameter of about the same size as our seam allowances.  So much easier to control!  I couldn't find this one on Amazon but if your local shop doesn't have it either, you can order it from Karen's web site here.
• I bought Karen's Adjustable Perfect Adjustable Square for trimming down completed applique blocks.  Several quilters on a Yahoo! applique forum had recommended it to me, but it was pricey and I wasn't sure how well it worked or whether I'd actually use it until Karen demonstrated for me on one of my completed Frankenwhiggish blocks.  Well, I think it's a really cool design created by someone who intimately knows the terror of taking a rotary cutter to the edge of a block she's spent a gazillion hours hand stitching, and if it saves me from miscutting and destroying just one block in my lifetime, it's money well spent!  I especially like the puzzle-like assembly that allows the ruler to adjust to any size quilt block and the little holes for creating vertical, horizontal and diagonal alignment lines with thread for precisely centering traditional, symmetrical blocks like my Frankenwhig Roses.

I'm really enjoying my project from the machine appliqué workshop, which surprised me because when I first saw the pattern, I didn't immediately see how I could tweak it to make it my own.  However, I stumbled onto a fat quarter of ombre background fabric in my stash that reminds me of a sunrise, and I'm really digging the effect.  Interestingly, I found it MUCH easier to accurately stitch the appliqué by machine this time around compared to when I took a workshop with Harriet Hargrave on a similar technique six years ago.  I think that all of the stitch-in-the-ditch quilting skills I've developed since then are transferring over to machine appliqué, because in both situations your goal is for the machine needle to rub right up against the folded appliqué edge or raised seam allowance without biting into it.  

My "Circles Squared" Machine Applique In Progress

I'm definitely going to finish that piece, but the hand stitched one I'm not sure about.  I've only got two pieces stitched down and two more ready to stitch for that one, and my Frankenwhiggish needleturn project has got to be my hand stitching priority until the dang thing is finished or it never WILL get finished!  

My "Fiesta Mexico Block 3" Hand Stitched Applique In Progress

Oh, and I almost forgot to tell you -- guess what ELSE happened at our guild meeting on Wednesday evening?  Check out THIS amazing good fortune:

I Found the Holy Grail!!!

That is a real life, honest-to-goodness copy of Karen K. Stone's out of print (and insanely hard to find below $100) Karen K. Stone Quilts book, which contains the directions for her Cinco de Mayo quilt that I'm planning to make for Anders' high school graduation.  That book is in MY hot little hand, in MY studio, and it didn't cost me a penny.  Why, you ask?  Because this copy came from the Charlotte Quilters Guild library, and as a guild member I get to check it out for two months, completely for free.  Happy, happy, joy, joy!!  My guild membership for the next four years just paid for itself.  I'm SKIPPING over here.

Well, it's after MIDNIGHT now and I have to get up in not very many hours to get ready for church!  I would be tempted to skip the 9 AM Traditional service and just show up for the 10:45 Contemporary service, but alas -- our minister of music has chosen a BEAUTIFUL anthem for the early service and if I don't drag my booty out of bed in time, I won't get to sing it with the choir.  Enjoy the rest of your weekend!

I'm linking up today's post with:

SUNDAY

·      Slow Sunday Stitching at http://kathysquilts.blogspot.com/  

·      Oh Scrap! at Quilting Is More Fun Than Housework http://quiltingismorefunthanhousework.blogspot.com

MONDAY

·      Design Wall Monday at Small Quilts and Doll Quilts http://smallquiltsanddollquilts.blogspot.com 

·      Main Crush Monday at Cooking Up Quilts http://www.cookingupquilts.com/

·      Monday Making at Love Laugh Quilt http://lovelaughquilt.blogspot.com/

·      Moving it Forward at Em’s Scrap Bag: http://emsscrapbag.blogspot.com.au/

·      BOMs Away at Katie Mae Quilts: https://www.katiemaequilts.com/blog/ 

Drumroll, Please: Son the Younger Has Approved His Quillow Design for 2021!

The experience of making Lars's high school graduation quilt from start to finish in only three months was so stressful that it left me physically ill and completely wiped out.  I have never even made a baby quilt in such a short time frame.  Deadline quilting doesn't suit me, so I'm getting a jump start on Son-the-Younger's high school graduation quilt for 2021 -- in hopes that I can actually enjoy making this one!

Anders' Graduation Quilt for 2021, New York Beauty Blocks by Karen K. Stone

Step one was the solicitation of Son-the-Younger's opinions and preferences regarding the style and design of his quilt.  If you had asked me a week ago, I would have predicted that Anders would want something simpler and less conspicuous than his brother's quilt.  I thought maybe I would be making a T-shirt quilt, because Anders has a fabulous collection of T-shirts with snarky science and violin jokes that he has begun to outgrow.  But no, he does not want a T-shirt quilt.  

I started filling a Pinterest board with a wide range of options for his perusal, with some quilts pinned because of the piecing design and others because I liked the color scheme, and many of them would have been fairly straightforward to put together.  But the quilt that caught his eye was not a "quilt-in-a-day" project -- he picked Cinco de Mayo by Karen K. Stone.  

72 x 72 Cinco de Mayo Quilt by Karen Kay Stone (Book is OOP but available here)

Lars's graduation quilt was an original design, and it was cool to do something completely one-of-a-kind for him.  But I have always wanted to play with New York Beauty blocks and Karen K. Stone designed so many interesting variations on this historical block -- I love her quilt.  What's more, these blocks are available as an add-on-purchase for my EQ8 software, so I was able to start with the blocks and layout Karen designed, add two rows to the layout so the quilt would fit an XL Twin college dorm bed, and then start right in playing with color without having to draft those variations myself.

72 x 96 Cinco de Mayo Resized for XL Twin Bed, in Monochrome

Like Lars's quilt, Anders' quilt will be comprised of 48 twelve inch blocks in a 6 x 8 layout for a finished size (before quilting) of 72" x 96".  Karen's original Cinco de Mayo quilt is 72" x 72" so I just needed to add two more rows.  When I asked Anders what colors he wanted, he said something about blue and white.  After playing around with it for awhile, I decided shades of blue with accents of red/orange would be more fun to work with.  Not sure yet whether I'll stick with solids or venture off into tonal solids, batiks and prints, but what has me most excited about this project is that every block in the quilt is unique and I get to play with scraps, fussy cutting of any interesting prints...  That should help keep things interesting.

Coloring is Just a Guide; This Quilt Will be Scrappy

Quillow Sunday 2021 is twenty-three months away.  

If I make three blocks per month, I'll have all 48 finished in 16 months.  If I make 2 1/2 blocks per month, I'll still be done making them all in 20 months, giving me a month to assemble the blocks into a top and another two months for quilting and binding.  That is SO MUCH MORE my speed!!

Because it's not like I don't have anything else to work on...  Does anyone remember THIS quilt?

Neglected WIP Quilt for Anders That No Longer Fits His Bed

Yes, I'm ashamed to admit that I started making this quilt for Anders back when he was twelve, and here he is about to turn 16 and I have finished ONE block.  Ugh!  It's the Moda Modern Building Blocks sampler, except that I resized it, swapped out a few of the blocks, and added the rainbow stripe borders to the top and bottom to make it fit a twin bed with a really deep pillow top mattress, and then I matched my Kona Solid colors to the modern graphic wallpaper in his en suite bathroom.  And since my son is now TOWERING over me at 5'10" or 5'11" or whatever, we got him a Queen bed.  The irony is that the original quilt pattern was sized to fit a Queen bed and all the blocks would have been ruler-friendly measurements if I'd left it alone...  So anyway, there happen to be 48 blocks in that quilt, of which 47 blocks remain to be constructed.  I need to finish the middle school quilt before my kid graduates from high school, too. Ugh -- so many quilts!!  So little time!!

I'm headed to Appalachian State for New Student & Parents Orientation tomorrow, so consider this my jump start on Design Wall Monday, To-Do Tuesday, AND my July OMG (One Monthly Goal).

This week's To Do:

• Resize Beware the Ishmaelites (Anders' MBB Sampler Quilt) so that it fits a Queen bed again
• Make the two 6" Farmer's Wife blocks that I've selected as "palate cleansers" between projects
• Cut out the turquoise clam shells and circles for the 6-months-overdue Modern Baby Clam Shell quilt (Can you imagine how uncomfortable the poor mother would be if her baby was as long overdue as the baby's quilt?!)

And this month's goals:

• Make the first NY Beauty block for Trece de Agosto (Anders' graduation quilt version of Cinco de Mayo)
• Repair Lars's Drunken Dragons quilt and get that back on his bed in our house
• Make THREE more blocks for Beware the Ishmaelites
• Make another block for Trece de Agosto, Anders' graduation quilt

By the way -- if any one of you owns this Karen K. Stone Quilts book, or your library has a copy, or your friend has one that I could borrow, I would really, REALLY appreciate it.  I can't bring myself to spend over $80 for a paperback book, especially when I already own the patterns from the book, but I would really like to take a look at the instructions to avail myself of any tips, tricks, or special techniques that Karen used in the construction of these very intricate New York Beauty blocks.  Thank you!

I'm linking up with:

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·      Oh Scrap! at Quilting Is More Fun Than Housework http://quiltingismorefunthanhousework.blogspot.com

·      Design Wall Monday at Small Quilts and Doll Quilts http://smallquiltsanddollquilts.blogspot.com 

·      Main Crush Monday at Cooking Up Quilts http://www.cookingupquilts.com/

·      Monday Making at Love Laugh Quilt http://lovelaughquilt.blogspot.com/

·      Moving it Forward at Em’s Scrap Bag: http://emsscrapbag.blogspot.com.au/

·      BOMs Away at Katie Mae Quilts: https://www.katiemaequilts.com/blog/ 

·      Colour and Inspiration Tuesday at http://www.cleverchameleon.com.au

·       To-Do Tuesday at Stitch ALL the Things: http://stitchallthethings.com

·      One Monthly Goal at Elm Street Quilts: http://www.elmstreetquilts.com/

·      Midweek Makers at www.quiltfabrication.com/

·      WOW WIP on Wednesday at www.estheraliu.blogspot.com