Teacher and student

Posted on February 10, 2011 by Suzanne

The 4th session of Feather Boot Camp got underway on Monday. It’s going well — and with the switch to a new shopping cart, my life got about a bazillion times easier. The switch automates a huge chunk of what I was doing before, and while there have been a few glitches, and there is still room for me to screw things up, ultimately, this has been about 1000% less stressful than previous class launches.

The first week of class is typically pretty quiet, but so far so good.

I continue to find it ironic that I have turned into a teacher. I was going to be a music teacher, but decided after my freshman year at Ithaca College that I didn’t really have any interest in teaching. Maybe it was more that I didn’t have any interest in teaching people under the age of 20.

Here I am, though, teaching machine quilting classes, writing instructional books for machine quilting, and supporting the people who use the MQResource forums, teaching them how to use it.

I’m teaching myself a bunch of new stuff lately, too. Well, not new stuff, just trying to be a little more official about some things: I fake my way through a lot of the website stuff I have gotten myself in to. I’m not afraid of software and of figuring things out, but I have been painfully aware that I was only scratching the surface of the technologies that I have been using. So, I’m working on officially learning things like HTML/CSS/PHP/ and a bazillion more acronyms plus all of the programs that web designers use to do their jobs. It has meant getting reinterested in using Photoshop, and the other day I saw that Angela was taking a class from my favorite scrapbooking teacher, Jessica Sprague. Turns out the class is the next step in her progression of digital scrapbooking classes, and on a whim I signed up for it. She assumes a lot with this class, that you can figure out how to do some things on your own, so I kept having to stop and drag things out of the recesses of my brain.

This is what I did this morning, using photos of the boys from our Christmas time photo shoot:

The papers and elements were all provided in class, and I pretty much followed her recipe, but there were several times that made me say out loud “THAT IS SO COOL,” so hopefully I can remember them again when I need them. It’s not so much that I want to spend a lot of time digi-scrapping, but I thought that things I can learn from her will be useful for the web design stuff that I am learning in other ways.

One cool thing is the stripe generator — http://www.stripegenerator.com — used to make the stripes for the circles in the background. I like me some stripes. And polka dots.

This also serves as warning that I will probably occasionally babble about web design/development kinds of things here. I’ll try to keep the technobabble to a minimum.

Feather Boot Camp is Back

Posted on January 3, 2011 by Suzanne

Feather Boot Cam 4caf3c4816e10 Feather Boot Camp is Back

Spread the news, my online class, Feather Boot Camp, is returning for a fourth session this February!

Class starts February 7, 2011 and lasts for 5 fun-filled feathering weeks.

For all of the details, visit MQResource.

If you took the class in 2010, go to the Online Classes section and check out the Alumni option. (If you took the class in 2009, send me an e-mail or post a comment and I’ll help you out…)

Still time to join in Feather Boot Camp

Posted on August 23, 2010 by Suzanne

IMG 0867 Still time to join in Feather Boot Camp

I’ve been meaning to mention this, but it’s been a zoo, and I keep forgetting: the August 2010 session of my online workshop Feather Boot Camp started today: but there is still time to sign up if you want to join in. I may be biased, but I think it’s a pretty awesome experience — you’ll spend 5 weeks dissecting your freehand quilted feathers, drawing and stitching and refining them. I quilt on a longarm, but many of my students use short or mid-arm systems and some even quilt on their domestic sewing machines. You get to do the exercises at your own pace, in your jammies if you want, and I’ll be there to virtually hold your hand, every step of the way.

For more info, or to sign up, visit the link below:

Feather Boot Camp

Feathery Goodness

Posted on July 31, 2010 by Suzanne

Oh, how I wish these pictures were better, but the lighting was bad, and I didn’t realize HOW bad the pictures were until after the quilt was gone, and no more pictures were possible.

Normally, I use a circle template to create the basis of my spines, but this time I used an oval. I was sort of playing off the elongated shape of the blocks themselves.

I kept the red sashing and the yellow border unquilted for contrast.

The blocks themselves were pretty simply quilted — a little bit of continuous curve, with those ribbon loops into the white part.

I was able to do a row of blocks in a single pass, combining the stitch in the ditch and the block design, and using the sashing cornerstones to travel from block to block.

I love quilting feathers. They aren’t perfect, but they are mine, and I like them a lot.

If you would like to learn more about quilting your own freehand feathers, you are invited to join me for my third session of Feather Boot Camp at MQResource. It starts August 23rd, and it’s a completely online class. I do quilt on a longarm, but DSM quilters are welcome to join us — the general principles apply. For more information: Feather Boot Camp.