J. Michelle Watts

I took a class through the local quilt guild this past Friday with Michelle Watts. The class was all about machine applique and used one of the crosses from her The Quilted Cross book. For some reason Amazon has the book priced well above the cover price so, if you are interested, I would recommend ordering it directly from Michelle.

Michelle is a delightful teacher and had a lot to share. Her particular applique method was pretty basic but her techniques for handling pesky points and various curves made the class worth the price of admission.

Her machine applique method is to use fusible web to attach your shapes to the background fabric then to secure the edges with a small zig-zag stitch that is 1.5 wide and 0.6 long. With such a tiny stitch your eyes can go buggy concentrating on the edge of your shape as it feeds to the needle. Her best hint was to use freezer paper as a stabilizer behind your background fabric to prevent puckering. This hint was well worth the price of admission.

This was a relatively well attended class with twelve enthusiastic quilters working hard to complete their project before the class ended at 4:00 PM. I left at about 2:00 PM as my on-going (8 weeks and counting) headache did not react well to staring at my work. I did finish one piece of applique so I don't feel bad about that... after all one of the other attendees was still working on a scratch piece before starting on her project when I left.

Even though the class was about crosses, a distinctly Christian symbol, I decided that I would make my project an X... as in X marks the spot. Here's a shot of my work:

I finished the sewing on the beige lumpy X and I think it looks good ... at a distance.

Alex and the Girls have been away a lot recently due to the fence project. Now that they are back home they are busy perfomring for me.

Here is Kimora trying to cover up the applique project so that I will pay attention to her:

and Kelis louging around wondering what all the fuss is about:

and Alex trying to figure out when I will stop stepping on his newest red ball and throw it for him.

I hope your weekend is going well. I am waiting for some much needed rain and truly glad I am not in Hawaii as they wait for a tropical storm to hit those beautiful islands. And, I am really, really glad not to be in Taiwan where they had eight feet of rain from a typoon, a worldwide record amount. And, yes, I am watching the weather channel while writing this post!

Stay dry!