MQX Quilt Festival

What a wonderful time I had teaching at MQX Quilt Festival! Everyone was so happy to be back in Manchester NH. Not that Providence RI wasn't nice, but Manchester just feels like our quilting home-away-from-home! I wish I had taken more pictures of the smiling faces on the students, teachers, vendors, and volunteers that all band together to make MQX Quilt Festival such a wonderful event. 

I was blessed with a full teaching schedule of six classes. My students were all fabulous! Not a grumpy face in the bunch ....okay one grumpy face but out of  about 150 students that's not so bad.

My classes were a combination of "hands-on" where each student has their own sewing machine to work on. Lecture/Demo - they get to listen to me and watch me quilt out the patterns. And Drawing - 4 hours of drawing fun that can be applied to quilting!

Here are some hands on students!  Some students were very new to frame quilting and others were accustomed to working with computerized machines and were trying out freemotion quilting! Here they are....concentrating! They all did a fabulous job!

And they had fun too - here's what one student said "Loved it! Had no idea going into class what to expect, but I am leaving truly inspired. Elaine is calm, fun and relaxed. Great learning experience!" Okay ... I'm blushing....but aren't my students fabulous! I just love them!

I also had the chance to introduce Zentangle as it applies to quilting. We start each class by making a traditional Zentangle tile - here's and example of some student work.

We then go on with drawing and quilting demo's to teach the student how to add "tangle" patterns to their quilting. Here are a couple of examples of Zentangle inspired quilting that I show the students.

A great time! I'll tell you about the other classes later! I'm already looking forward to teaching at MQX Quilt Festival in 2014!

Sunrise Series

Lately I have been enjoying working in series. My latest series is inspired by the sunrises over Nantasket Beach in Hull Massachusetts. The pieces are 5" square (8" with matting).  They are composed of fabric which I lay down improvisationally and secure with fusible products. I then layer with batting and muslin and quilt on a domestic (sit down) sewing machine. The quilting designs are inspired by Zentangle® patterns and I use several thread colors.  

They are available for  purchase click here.

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Sanibelle Quilted

Sanibelle Quilted!



Sanibelle - drawn with Pigma Pen and pencil



The Diva Challenge this week is to create a tangle submitted by one of the blog’s followers. The tangle selected is “Sanibelle” and was designed by Tricia Faraonce. This design is a natural to adapt to quilting. 

This is the Diva challenge tangle I made this on a Zentangle® 3 ½” tile.



This is how I draw it:

I use teardrop shapes instead of the scallop followed by straight lines. I feel that I’m able to create a smoother line this way. Also it is easily adapted to a continuous line for quilting if you retrace some of your lines along the way. This is shown on the bottom left of my sketchbook page.

And again here is the tangle quilted out. I used Signature and Bottom Line threads on a Sew Batik fabric.