I'd love to meet your guild!

Happy New Year!  It's still January, so I think the wishes still apply :)  What have you been up to so far this year?

I've been dealing with a kitchen renovation (very excited about that!) between blizzards and a record-breaking cold snap, learning the ropes as the new president of the Ames Quilt Guild (it's a bit more than I expected), sewing two quilts I can't share with you until next winter (an exercise in keeping my lips zipped) and planning a mystery quilt-along (details to follow soon).  So, not much I could chat about here on the blog. Well, I could share about the kitchen. It's not quilty, but let me know if that interests you.

I have also had a lovely couple of evenings joining two separate guilds on Zoom to present a lecture slide show.  The talk was going the be about the B's of quilting: backgrounds, blocks, borders, bindings and backs.  It mostly is, but fabric selection needed attention too and that ruined my "B" theme.

I shared about looking at a quilt on a pattern cover and reimagining it in some way, through fabric choices and various little tweaks.  I spent a considerable amount of time digging through my quilt photos to choose just the right ones to illustrate the possibilities, and drawing more possibilities in EQ, because let's face it, I have more ideas than I have time or resources to actually sew up! 

Here's a peek of what I suggested you could do with Shiny Blossoms:

Crossings came up a couple of times, including in a discussion about fudge factors in pieced borders.

If you think your guild might like to dive into this topic with me, I'd love to visit virtually (or in person if you're in Central-ish Iowa).  There's more info about my three current lecture offerings here.

Meanwhile, I'll be working on those quilts I can't share, enjoying not having to wrestle with the drawers in my kitchen, and virtually reimagining existing designs in new fabrics.  A fellow Island Batik designer asked me to join her in a blog hop celebrating her new signature collection so I'm playing with digital fabric swatches.  Come back tomorrow to see what I come up with (yes, I'm a bit last-minute...)