MQX Classes

How lucky am i to have Machine Quilters Exposition come to Portland?  They are returning next year October 17-20, 2012.

If you can attend MQX West or East, it is worth your time and money.  The instructors i had were worth every penny!

I took 5 classes and sat in on 2 free lectures.

My first class was called Gadgets and Gizmos 

with Donita Reeve. I can't seem to get her name linked to her page...you will find it here: www.lovetoquilt.com

Donita spent 2 hours demonstrating different acrylic rulers and templates and how to apply them into sashing and border designs.

Here are a few pictures from her demo/lecture

My next class was a 4 hour hands on class taught by Deloa Jones. 

(my favorite, shhh, they were all awesome teachers,  but there is just something about Deloa...)

The class was called Border Patrol.  Lots of free hand quilting designs, some ruler work mainly for marking spines, etc...i did purchase her set of Boomerang rulers used for curved crosshatching.

Here are a few examples from my class

 mirror image work

 

 

 how to move around a corner, eliminating some of the design elements to transition smoothly

  

 My third class was instructed by
Renae Haddadin.  Impressive!  Her class was called Show Off.  

She taught the basics of thread choice; when to match or not to match thread color, what thread weight to use to achieve the desired effect as well as scale and how to divide and conquer the quilting.  I took many notes and the one note that stands out the most for me is her comment "the empty space is more important that the quilted space".

Here a few shots of her demo.

Karen McTavish taught Mastering the Art of McTavishing.  This was a fun class, full of humor and instruction.

Karen covered how to create her background filler, which marking tools to use for registration lines, thread suggestions, stitch length and needle size.  A nice hand out was given and i purchased a signed copy of her book. 

Here are a few samples of her demo

My last class was taught by Mari-Lee Seei.  I could not find a direct link to Mari-Lee, but found a great YouTube video demonstrating how to stitch a Baptist Fan.  There are a couple additional videos with Mari-Lee available on YouTube.  Her class was called Ruler Basics.  Mari-Lee covered a great deal of ruler work, how to chalk grid lines for several different quilting designs and applications as well as how to adjust a design to fit into a border.  She covered the how to's of a Baptist Fan, Continuous Curves, Clam Shell, Full and Half Circle use, Pumpkin Seed and Bamboo.

In addition to the five classes, I sat in on two great lectures offered for free.  The first was given by  Sally Terry who spoke on her methods of quilting and  the second was Page Johnson who's lecture was all about  Loading with a Piece '0 Grid.  I've linked to her video on how to load a quilt.  This is a must see!!

All of this was packed into 2 full days.  I had time between classes to wander around the vendor booths and take a few random shots of the quilts on display.  I did not get a great deal of good photos, but here is the link to MQX West and I believe there will be postings of the award winning quilts.  I hope so!
(click on all the red highlighted words
 for instructors websites or YouTube videos)