Catching up – June

This month was bananas. There were so many events and great things, both quilt-related and not, that I just didn’t have the spare moments to write about them here. Before the calendar turns to a new, quieter page, I wanted to make sure that I had a record of them. Apologies for lumping it all together, but with a backlog like this, I would never catch up!

The first weekend in June, I was so excited  and honored to teach a walking foot quilting workshop at the Central Jersey MQG. We met in the gorgeous Hopewell Train Station on a warm, breezy day and shared some fun sewing time.

              Most of the students tried out the improv waves technique. Look at how beautiful their practice is.

The next weekend was the birthday at Rock Paper Scissors. We had to make a trip to visit family, so I made a mini quilt to celebrate the place. I wrote about it here, but I never showed the finished mini. Here it is!

A few days later, I was lucky enough to go to a class and event billed as “An Intimate Evening with Denyse Schmidt.” Denyse is such a talented artist and influential person in the quilting world, and it was inspiring to talk quilting with her. We ate dinner in a beautifully restored historic house and chatted before sitting down to sew. She led us in an improvisational exercise to make blocks from her pattern A Different Stripe using her Modern Solids collection from Free Spirit.

At the end of the exercise, we all laid our 18″ blocks on the floor to make one gorgeous spread of color.

Some of the students donated their blocks to the NJMQG so that we could use them in a donation quilt. I’m looking forward to assembling the top later this summer.

And speaking of NJMQG, the next night was my last as president of our guild. The last two years have been such a valuable experience, and I’m so grateful that I had the opportunity to help build the group into what it is. I met so many lovely and talented people. I’m certainly not going anywhere, but it was so bittersweet to conduct the elections at our June meeting.

And throughout the month my family participated in all of the milestones and events of the end of the school year. There were taekwondo tests, a fantastic Kindergarten play, a preschool field trip to the zoo, Father’s Day, and school picnics. I sewed most of the boys’ teacher gifts.

The wallets are from a pattern by Valori Wells and the bags are from Jeni Baker.

The summer’s schedule is a bit erratic, but I’m hoping to have some nice stretches of time to sew while kids are at camp. Thanks as always for visiting and keeping up with me.