Upcoming Zoom Workshop With Maria Shell, "Making Prints Out of Solids" + Picasso Landscapes: Out of Bounds Exhibit

You guys, I am SEW excited to be taking a 2-part Zoom workshop this month with quilt artist Maria Shell!  And there are still a few spaces available in the class in case any of YOU would like to join me, from wherever you are in the world!  But hurry if you're interested -- Maria will be lecturing at the guild meeting tomorrow night and the class will probably sell out once members see her work and hear her speak.

Maria Shell, "Making Prints Out of Solids" Workshop September 9th and 16th

This workshop, "Making Prints Out of Solids -- Lines, Tracks & More" is being offered by the Charlotte Quilters Guild and I helped our Programs Director set this up months ago when I was still the guild President, before moving to Florida.  I believe there are still spaces available and registration has now opened up for nonmembers.  At just $50, this is an absolute steal for a two-part workshop with a teacher of this caliber.  The workshop will be conducted via Zoom from 7-9 PM Eastern Standard Time on Monday, September 9th and Monday, September 16th, and you can register here.  There is no kit or pattern required for the class; you just need a copy of Maria's book Improv Patchwork that is available on Amazon here (affiliate link).  

So...  I have the book, I read the book, and I'm nervous about cutting without rulers (!!!) but excited to give it a try and see what happens.  My homework to prepare for class was to put together a palette of solid colors to work with, all pulled from my stash, and prewash half yard pieces of each color.  Here's what I have so far, subject to change of course.  I did have to dash out to JoAnn's for a half yard of brown fabric: 

My Fabric Pull for Maria Shell's Workshop

I have lots of other options littering my worktable, too.  Who knew I had so many solids tucked away in those fabric bins?!

Margaret Willingham's Reverse Appliqué Workshop, Charlotte Quilters' Guild + My Deco Quilt Progress

Happy Fall, Quilters!  Guess what -- I took an actual, in-person workshop with the Charlotte Quilters' Guild last month AND I finished my workshop block after I got home!  I'm so proud of myself for 1. Taking a day off, 2. Trying something new, 3. FOLLOWING DIRECTIONS during the workshop 😬, and then 4. Adapting what I learned in class to suit my personal preferences once I got home to my own studio.  

My 12 x 12 Block from Margaret Willingham's Reverse Appliqué Workshop

I'll tell you more about the workshop in a minute.  First, I have other news to share -- I've made some progress and gotten over the Cutting and Kitting Hurdle with my Deco Quilt that has been in-progress/abandoned for the past two years!  Well, better late than never.  I am supremely pleased with my clear plastic tote bag containing all of the pieces for all of the blocks, neatly organized and labeled in little Ziplock bags.  Our guild has lots of social sewing opportunities throughout the month and, as President of the guild, I try to attend as many of them as possible.  Having a project packed up and ready to go (versus strewn around my studio!) is my biggest challenge, but now I'll just be able to grab a Ziplock bag of block pieces and wheel my travel machine out the back door.  I have a feeling this project is about to pick up STEAM!

My Deco Quilt Completely Cut Out and Kitted, Block One Variations In Progress

Now that I've finished ALL of the cutting for my Deco Quilt, I am officially caught up with Week Two of the Deco QAL (Quilt-Along) that I committed to in the Fall of 2021!  😂. Week Two was cutting out all of the fabric pieces for the entire quilt.  I am like that last straggling marathon runner who crosses the place where the finish line used to be, two years after the race has ended...  Not only am I caught up with Week Two, but I'm also about a third of the way through with Week Three of the Deco QAL, which is the week where you piece all of the Block One log cabin variations.  All 16 blue/green log cabin blocks are finished and all 12 of the half blocks in both colorways are finished and I have 32 blue/purple log cabin blocks remaining to be sewn. The cutting for this quilt was monotonous, but the actual sewing is pretty easy.  I think that completely finishing this quilt top was supposed to be my OMG (One Monthly Goal) for November of 2021; maybe I can get it finished by November of 2023 instead!

Kaffe Fassett Mediterranean Hexagons Colour Workshop Recap

I took a workshop with Kaffe Fassett and Brandon Mably last week!  The project was the Mediterranean Hexagons quilt from the book Kaffe Fassett's Quilts in Morocco, available on Amazon here (affiliate link).

Brandon Mably and Rebecca the Rebellious Workshop Student

I'm going to start with a quick synopsis so those of you who are crunched for time can just skim through the pictures and be done with it: 

Everyone loved this workshop except me.  

Seriously -- no fault of Kaffe and Brandon whatsoever; they were delightful.  I was miserable.  I couldn't follow directions.  I wasted a lot of money and -- worse! -- I wasted a lot of FABRIC.  But Brandon was nice to me, and I learned to read the workshop description first before stampeding to the front of the line to sign up for a class next time.  By the way, just because I didn't enjoy the class doesn't mean I wouldn't recommend it to others.  If you have a small hoard of fabulous Kaffe Fassett prints in your stash that you just don't know how to use in a quilt, or if you tend to stay in your comfort zone when it comes to color and you want to learn how Kaffe puts his fabulous combinations together, you would LOVE this workshop.  Kaffe and Brandon are delightfully entertaining and I swear I was the only person in the room who was feeling stifled.

Original Mediterranean Hexagons Quilt from the book, made by Judy Baldwin

I shouldn't have signed up for this class in the first place, since it was all about learning how to imitate Kaffe Fassett's color and design style.  I love his fabric designs, but I'm not really interested in making quilts that look like they were designed by someone else.  Also, having worked as an interior designer for 20+ years, I'm used to having to work within a client's parameters as far as how much color and pattern they can live with and which colors they prefer or dislike, but I am NOT used to having anyone walk up while I'm creating a color palette and snatch fabrics right out of my hands or off my design wall...  Honestly, what first attracted me to quilting is that I can put whatever crazy prints and colors together that my little heart desires, without needing anyone else's approval before the project can move forward.  Quilting for me is about total design freedom -- and yet here I was, in a very restrictive class where I had to design a quilt using the same two shapes as everyone else.  Students were instructed to fussy-cut large scale prints from the same color family for their hexagons, and then Kaffe and Brandon helped each student select a wildly different color for their triangle star points that would make their hexagons "glow."  The workshop is ideally suited to anyone who admires the glorious mixes of colors and prints in Kaffe's work, but who doesn't feel confident putting those combinations together on their own.  Although we all brought lots of fabrics to class, the quilt shop sponsoring the event had also stocked the classroom with bolts of fabric from their store that students could shop from to supplement what they'd brought with them, and those were the fabrics available for Kaffe and Brandon to suggest to students whose fabrics from home weren't wowing them once they were cut up and positioned on the design wall.

Kaffe Fassett Explaining to the Class Why He Hates My Project

Okay, so Kaffe didn't REALLY tell the whole class that he hated my project, but he was definitely frustrated with me for Willfully Failing to Follow Directions.  He said my hexagon fabrics were not all the same color family as instructed; rather they were all the same MOOD.  And I knew that; every fiber of my being was resisting the conformity of using the same fabrics/colors/design concept as everyone else in the class.  When I rooted through my stash to decide which fabrics to bring, I was mostly drawn to some Anna Maria Horner prints that meshed with the Melancholy Autumn vibe I was feeling that day.  And whereas most of the students in the Kaffe Fassett workshop were using Kaffe Fassett Collectives fabrics, I deliberately chose different fabrics so my project wouldn't look like everyone else's.  However, the fabrics I'd selected for my star points were all VETOED by Kaffe.  And then I ran into the dilemma of being halfway through an all-day workshop, with no fabrics that I liked for the star points among what I'd brought from home, yet none of the fabrics lined up in bolts in the classroom was doing it for me, either.  

Students Working With Kaffe Fabric Prints Had the Most Options for Coordinating Fabrics

There was nothing in that conference room that looked amazing with my "moody" hexagons -- all of the fabrics that were brought in for the class were too bright and cheerful.  So I ended up settling for these ugly dark teal batiks that you see in the photo above...  And since they are about the same value as my hexagons, those fabrics (which I had to purchase in class in order to avoid sitting there doing nothing all afternoon) just make the whole think look like a muddy mess.  Blech!  I agree, Kaffe; my project is hideous -- and the whole exercise of cutting up my favorite fabrics just so I can put them up and the wall and THEN decide if I like how it looks?  That feels like the DARK AGES to me!!!  Never again!!  You guys, I butchered so many fabrics in this workshop that are not even going into a quilt now.  What a horrendous waste, especially since some of them are treasured discontinued skus!  I wish I'd had a computer in the class loaded with EQ8 quilt design software (affiliate link) so I could audition fabrics like a sensible 21st century quilter, and only start cutting into fabric (or purchasing additional fabric!) once I was 100% certain I was going to love how everything looked together.

The Digital Workshop Do-Over in EQ8

So today, with a little help from fabulous Matt at EQ Tech Support (he walked me through setting up the quilt layout for the hexagons with star points, which only took about 5 minutes), I decided to give myself a Digital Do-Over for the workshop.  This is what I came up with:

This is the Vibe I Was Going For in Class

This first version is what I was originally aiming for in class.  Kaffe wanted everyone to pick out fabrics for their star points that would "make their hexagons glow," but I wanted to explore what it would look like for my stars to glow and my hexagons to recede instead.  And of course, unlike designing a quilt by chopping up actual fabric to audition it on a wall, once I've set up the quilt layout in EQ8 software I can recolor it over and over again as many times as I want, without wasting any fabric in the process.  It's a LOT easier to change your mind about a fabric that isn't working with the others when you haven't already chopped your yardage up into Swiss cheese.

So here's my second version, which did use mostly Kaffe Fassett Collective prints:

See, I CAN Follow Directions.  I Just Choose Not To!

By the way, these computer renderings are totally to scale, and the fabrics are all to scale as well.  I can rotate them and slide them around to simulate "fussy cutting" a particular flower so it's right in the center of my hexagon, as well.

Version Three, Also Following Directions

See?  I was able to design two quilts that look like they came right out of a Kaffe Fassett book.  But I still like my version with the gold stars better, even if no one else does!

Still My Favorite

If I was actually going to make any of these quilts, I'd have to jazz up some of those hexagons, maybe with some appliqué in some of them or some pieced hexagons made from stripes.  I can actually plop any pieced block design inside my hexagon with EQ8, so I could put stars within stars...  The possibilities are limitless.

Anyway, I'm done with classes and workshops for awhile.  I've got too much of a backlog of unfinished projects, too many ideas swirling around in my own mind, and too many techniques that need to be practiced until they are developed and solidified into skills. 

I'll probably write up an EQ8 tutorial within the next two days, showing how to draw this quilt layout in the software, just for my own future reference so I don't forget, but I've got some other work to get caught up with first.

Meanwhile, I'm linking up with:

MONDAY

·       Design Wall Monday at Small Quilts and Doll Quilts  

·       Monday Making at Love Laugh Quilt

·       Moving it Forward at Em's Scrap Bag

·       BOMs Away Katie Mae Quilts  

TUESDAY

·       Colour and Inspiration Tuesday at Clever Chameleon

WEDNESDAY

·       Midweek Makers at Quilt Fabrication

·       “WOW” WIPs on Wednesday at Esther's Blog

THURSDAY

·       Needle and Thread Thursday at My Quilt Infatuation  

The One Where I Meet Alex Anderson, Struggle With Control Issues, and a Bernina 790 Tries To Lure Me Away from My 750 QE



Rebecca Meets Alex Anderson!

I got to meet Alex Anderson last week at a two-day event sponsored by my local Bernina dealer!  On Friday evening we had a "Meet-and-Greet" event -- hors d'oeuvres, book signings, photo ops, and Alex shared a slide show presentation about how she came to be a quilter, with lots of photos of her quilts and a few photos and anecdotes about her family.  It was interesting to hear her story of how she got into quilting and teaching and how she became an internationally recognized author and television personality.  I enjoyed that. 



Quilt Basket Rendezvous in Batiks, Class Sample Made by Bernina Dealer's Staff

Then on Saturday morning we came back for an all-day workshop to make a 4-block version of Alex's Quilt Basket Rendezvous pattern, pictured above.  My Bernina dealer provided all of the machines for the class, and they assigned me a B 790 machine.  At first I was thrilled, since the allure of the brand-new Bernina model B 790 had been tempting me to trade in my B 750.  Unfortunately, my dealer did not bring the FHS (Free-Hand System)  Presser Foot Lifter bar for any of the student machines.  And one of the quirks about all of the 7 Series Berninas is that they do not have a manual presser foot lift behind the presser foot, because that's where the Dual Feed mechanism is housed -- so without the FHS bar, the only way to raise and lower the presser foot on these machines is to press a button awkwardly located on the front of the sewing machine: 

I know that Alex was blindsided by this, too, because she had a slide about FHS in her presentation and she was telling us how much we were all going to love using it for machine applique. 

Now, when I'm piecing on my vintage Singer Featherweights, of course I don't have a FHS bar to lift the presser foot, so why was it such a big deal that I didn't have FHS on the Bernina 790 I was using for the workshop?  With a mechanical sewing machine (as well as with many electronic and computerized models), I still have a great deal of control because the manual presser foot lever is located right behind the foot, within easy reach of your left or right hand.  I get my fabric in position, lower the presser foot, and then I can make small adjustments by just barely raising the presser foot with my left hand.  Once everything is perfectly aligned for that 1/4" seam, the presser foot clamps the fabric firmly in place as I step on the gas pedal to sew. 



Bernina FHS (Free-Hand System)

On my B 750 QE sewing machine at home, I have even more control because I can keep BOTH hands on my fabric the whole time, using the FHS bar to raise the presser foot just slightly, all the way up, or anywhere in between, controlling all of this with slight pressure from my right knee.  And this is exactly how I would do it if I owned a B 790, because the FHS does come standard with that machine.  But with the B 790 and NO FHS, I had to position my fabric, then have to take my RIGHT hand completely away to press the button on the front of the machine, and then find that my fabric had shifted ever so slightly out of position.  Again.  And again.  Ad infinitum.  Ugh!  To make matters worse, the hover feature was turned on for the first half of the workshop so that the presser foot would not even go down all the way to secure the fabric until the machine started sewing.  My 750 also has a hover option, but I have never understood that feature, never practiced working with it, and I turned it off in my machine settings the very fist time I used my 750.  In class, I couldn't figure out which sub menu in the 790 machine's settings folder would allow me to turn off the hover feature right away.  So I'm trying to line up and position my fabric pieces, trying to line the raw edges up with a foot that is "hovering" up in the air instead of touching the fabric, then I take my hand away to hit the button and lower the presser foot but the presser foot STILL won't come all the way down until I start sewing, and meanwhile everything is sliding all over the place and every seam is starting out crooked.  It was so frustrating that I couldn't even appreciate any of the slick bells and whistles on the machine -- I couldn't sew a straight, accurate seam allowance to save my soul and I just longed for my own 750 with her shiny FHS bar!  [EDITED 8/8/2015: One of my readers, a 710 owner, was kind enough to tell me in the Comments section that I could have used slight pressure on my foot pedal to bring down the presser foot when using the hover feature on the 790.  I wish I had known that in class!  Thanks, Katie!] 

So, the fancy new B 790 machine and I did not get along.  This is most likely due entirely to the missing FHS (which is a standard accessory on ALL 7 Series machines) and the missing cloth guide (which is included with all #97 and #97D Patchwork feet) rather than any deficit of the machine itself.  Also, I've never taken a class where I used someone else's sewing machine before and I probably am just more comfortable using my own equipment, even if it is a pain in the tushy to have to pack up a large sewing machine and schlepp it off to class with me.



Bernina Patchwork Foot #97D With Guide

Although all of the classroom machines were fitted with straight stitch plates and #97D Patchwork feet for piecing, for some reason they did not to give any of us the guide piece that comes with the foot, which is supposed to screw into the bed of the machine.  And that guide piece is my favorite piece of the precision piecing puzzle, because -- as Alex said in class -- if you wait until the edge of your fabric gets to the edge of your presser foot to make sure it's lined up perfectly, you're already too late.  This metal guide screws right into the bed of the sewing machine, is impervious to movement from the machine's vibration, and is infinitely adjustable to ensure an EXACT 1/4", scant 1/4", or whatever seam allowance you're trying to achieve.  If your guide is screwed down in the right position and your fabric is touching the metal guide from the edge closest to you, then sewing a precisely accurate 1/4" seam is virtually goof-proof.

Piecing with Patchwork Foot #97D, WITH the Guide, on my B 750 QE

The Bernina guide is almost identical to the vintage Singer Cloth Guide accessory that I use for piecing on my Featherweights, except that the Bernina guide has a cutout at the back for the 9 mm feed dog.  I have tried all the gimmicks, tricks, and gizmos out there for achieving a perfect seam allowance for quilting, and my favorite and most reliable method is using a screw-down guide like this one, adjusted until my pieced units come out measuring exactly the size they should be and then guaranteeing that every subsequent seam allowance comes out exactly the same width as the first one.


Back to the workshop itself...  Well, it was project-oriented, with everyone making the same Basket quilt, and there was a mandatory fabric kit that we all had to pay about $100 for above and beyond the price of the class.  Yuck, and more yuck, as far as I'm concerned, but I knew all of this up front and I decided to sign up for the class anyway because -- ALEX ANDERSON!  But I should probably never take a class with a kit again.  I'm an interior designer, for crying out loud -- I design textiles and pick out coordinating fabrics for a living.  The design stage of any quilt is my favorite part of the whole process. 


Boring Mandatory Batik Kit

Compare my all-batik fabric kit, above, with the bold, vibrant prints that Alex combined in her original version of this quilt, below:



Alex's Quilt Basket Rendezvous Using Kaffe Fassett Prints

My Precut Kit Triangles

What's more, the blocks we were working on in class had all been precut the night before by the Bernina dealer's staff, frantically working late into the night because they had under anticipated how many pieces needed cutting.  Bless their hearts, I feel for them, but those were not ideal conditions for cutting accuracy.  My precut block pieces were unstarched, slightly off grain, and not particularly accurate.  Note the cut-off triangle points in the photo at left.  The triangle points aren't really cut off.  What happened is that they hurriedly cut squares, lay a ruler corner to corner diagonally, and then sliced the squares into triangles with a rotary cutter.  But on most of my triangles, the ruler was not lined up precisely from corner to corner when they made the cut, so some triangles were about 1/16" to 1/32" too big, the others were too small, and they were not perfect right triangles.  That meant that no matter how accurate my seam allowances were, even if I wasn't working on an unfamiliar sewing machine, the odds were already stacked against my achieving accurately pieced blocks with perfect points.  The dealer's staff also helpfully wrapped masking tape labels around the precut triangles so they could label them for us, a well-intentioned thought that really helped with laying out the block pieces, but it was very difficult to remove the tape without it ripping away threads and distorting the bias triangle edges. 

So, disclaimer here -- I have some serious perfectionist tendencies, if you haven't noticed, and that is one of the reasons I enjoy quilting.  Perfectionism may be a waste of time in other pursuits, like when you are cooking, for instance.  The stew is not going to taste better just because I managed to dice my potatoes and onions into EXACT 1/2" cubes, or because all of my carrot slices measure precisely 3/4" and are cut at a perfect 45 degree angle.  But in quilting, the extra time you invest in precision pays off big time.  Inaccurate cutting and "good enough" piecing creates a road block for quilters because there comes a point when those tiny errors add up until you eventually hit a brick wall and certain blocks are just "too difficult" for you.  So when I am doing my own projects at home, I take the time to straighten and starch my fabrics, cut them as close to perfectly on-grain and as accurately as I possibly can, and then I measure throughout the piecing of every block to ensure that my units and finished blocks come out exactly the size they need to be, without any triangle points cut off or floating where they don't belong.  Call me a control freak; I don't care.  If a quilt is worth the hundreds of hours I invest in making it, it's worth it to me to do it right and end up with something I can be proud of.
 
So with all of these factors driving me crazy (including a defective travel iron that I bought the night before especially for the workshop), this is all I managed to accomplish by lunch time:

My Meager Accomplishments Midway Through the Workshop

 By about 2 PM, I had all four baskets sewn together and I managed to have three of them meet my personal standards of acceptability, but the fourth basket was irredeemable:



Rejected Basket!

I took that apart and resewed it at least four times, trying to compensate for the inaccurately cut, misshapen triangles in my kit, and I could not correct for the size of the tiny triangles without putting the outer corner of the block seriously out of whack, as you see above.  Remember what I said about perfectionism paying off in quilting?  The smaller the fabric pieces you are working with, the more crucial it is not only to sew them together with an accurate seam allowance but also to cut them out accurately to size in the first place!  There's no salvaging this block without recutting some of the pieces, and I just am not excited enough about making this particular quilt in these particular fabrics to bother with doing that.  I've still got my paper pieced pineapple log cabin that I'm working on, the Math is Beautiful quilt that was based on my son Lars's math notebook doodling, my Bear Paw project, the Jingle applique BOM, and my needleturned applique FrankenWhiggesh Rose quilt AND my skirt project to keep me busy.  Not to mention the Dear Jane quilt that I'm itching to start.


Three Decent Baskets

After I got home from the workshop, I decided that it would be silly to force myself to finish this class project.  I sliced off 1 1/2" strips of some of the blue and green kit fabrics so I can incorporate them into my pineapple log cabin quilt, and then I packed the rest of it away into my stash.  I put the basket units in my Rejects pile, destined most likely for free-motion quilting practice or warmup quilting (prior to quilting my actual quilts).  And I feel good about that.

I understand why Alex required the dealer to supply kits for the class.  Even if there had been a supply list and instructions for what to have cut out and ready to go ahead of time, there are always going to be a handful of people who would show up having made cutting errors, or who neglected to do ANY of their cutting beforehand, and they would hold up the whole class. 

Despite my difficulties, I'm really glad that I attended the workshop.  As I've said, my two primary objectives were to meet Alex Anderson and to spend some time sewing on the Bernina 790 sewing machine.  I got to do both of those things.  Alex was great, and although I didn't bond with the 790 machine I was really glad that I got to sew on it in a workshop for 5 hours and find out I didn't like it instead of paying thousands of dollars to upgrade, get the machine home, and THEN discover I didn't like it any better than the machine I already have.  Finding out that I prefer the machine I already own was well worth what I spent for the workshop and the fabric kit.  Although I was disappointed that my kit was not cut out as carefully as I would have done for myself, I also realize that most normal quilters would have been fine with the kits -- and unless the kits were die cut, it would have taken so much longer to cut them "my way" that they would have had to charge three times the cost for each kit!  I am well aware and very appreciative of the great deal of effort that my dealer and his staff exerted in order to pull off this event, going out of their way in so many ways to make all of us feel welcome and comfortable, cutting and assembling the kits and trying to make everything as clear and streamlined as possible for us.  They gave me the machine that I requested to sew on, and situated me right up at the front of the room as I had requested, as well.  They had name tags for everyone, rented an excellent facility for the event, and had plenty of staff on hand to help with machine issues (like helping me turn off the bleeping hover feature) so that we could concentrate on our projects.  We had wonderful lunches from McAlister's Deli, and although I didn't know any of the other students at the start of the class and I was the youngest person there by several decades, everyone was very welcoming and inclusive towards me.  Some nice ladies from Rock Hill, South Carolina invited me to eat lunch with me and encouraged me to come to one of their guild meetings.  And I just might take them up on it!

And now, back to my pineapples!



Alex Anderson Workshop Tomorrow -- Woo Hoo!

Quilt Basket Rendezvous by Alex Anderson

I am SO EXCITED to be attending a quilting workshop with the legendary Alex Anderson tomorrow!  The workshop is hosted by my Bernina dealer, Lee's Creative Sewing and Vacuum of Charlotte, Hickory and Shelby, North Carolina, and we're going to be making a smaller version of Alex's Quilt Basket Rendezvous project.  I really love her version made with Kaffe Fassett prints, shown above, but my Bernina dealer says the kits for tomorrow's workshop are all batik fabrics.  This makes me pout -- I love me some batiks for applique projects, and I like to mix them with other fabrics, but I'm not a huge fan of quilts that are made ONLY using batiks.  I don't even like the idea of making a quilt using fabrics that someone else picked out for me...  But I'm not taking the class for the quilt per se, I'm taking the class so I can meet Alex Anderson!

Smaller Batik Version of Quilt Basket Rendezvous for Workshop

If it were up to me, I'd probably choose 1930s reproduction prints for this project, but I'm just going to have to make the best of whatever kit I get stuck with.

Alex Anderson

What I love about Alex's quilting books is that she is so encouraging and makes quilting accessible for total beginners.  Whereas some of my other favorite quilting authors like Harriet Hargrave, Diane Gaudynski and Sally Collins go into excruciating, exacting detail to teach mastery, Alex's books give new quilters the essentials they need to get started and achieve results they can be proud of -- without overwhelming and intimidating them with too much information.  I'm looking forward to meeting her and learning as much as I can from her class.

Also, since Bernina is providing machines for us to use in the workshop, I'm curious about which machines we'll be using -- and grateful that I don't have to pack up my beast of a 750 QE sewing machine to take to class.  If any of you in the Charlotte area are going to be in the workshop with me tomorrow, please say hello!

Happy stitching, everyone!