Carol Taylor Class

On Friday I took a class with the Kingwood Area Quilt Guild and Carol Taylor. The class was called Arc-I-Texture. In class we were to create a 15" x 15" fabric collage from squares of fabric, outline and quilt the squares with yarn by couching with a zig-zag stitch, couch additional yarns in circles and, finally, to bind the quilt invisibilly. Carol's quilts can be found in her gallery as Arc-I-Textures at http://www.caroltaylorquilts.com/.

A member of the local American Sewng Guild neighborhood group, is also one of the program directors for the quilt guild, and let me know about the class. I think I am going to have to re-join the quilt guild to hear about these classes on a more timely basis. In addition I heard about a new sub-group they are forming to concentrate on wearables. Since at least three of the people who are interested in such a sub-group are aso ASG members it should be a good group.

The class was held at It's A Stitch a local quilt store. The classroom was incredibly well lit and everyone had a lot of table space. The issue with the room was that the Dry Cleaning store next to the shop has their hot water pipes drain uder the classroom. By noon anything on the floor was almost too hot to touch . I unfortunately was sitting at the end of the classroom with the hot floor and ended up leaving an hour early being too hot to continue.

The class was great and I really enjoyed the group. Here is photo of the fabric collage I created. Mine did not end up square as everyone elses did due to a brain burp.

The couching around the squares was Lion Brand Suede yarn in Black. I did not do a simple zig-zag but opted for a multi-step zig-zag, which you would normally use for elastic insertions. This gave me a couple of extra spots to hold down the yarn which made it easier to turn corners and hold down the raw ends with a couple of extra stitches.

I purchased yarn from Carol for the circles. It kind of pissed me off that I ended up buying a couple of hundred yards of yarn when I only needed a couple of yards of each. Maybe Carol can figure out a way to sell yarn packets rather than full skeins. On the other hand I now have some incredible yarn for other projects. Isn't it fabulous!

Today I couched the circles which took longer than I expected. I'm not as pleased as I could have been by the results but, with patience, I know I will try to use the technique again. What do you think? Not to leave good enough alone I decided to take the fabric I had created, circles and all, and use it to make a purse. I got a coply of the Sew Simple gifts issue the other day in the mail and decided to try its evening bag pattern. Mine did not turn out quite the same as theirs as I had trouble getting all the layers under the presser foot of my sewing machine. I added a tassel as a zipper pull. I love the all the colors and can't wait to try it out.

While I was struggling with the purse the dogs decided to destroy something. I found them rolling around on the carpet in a bunch of fiber fill bits. I have no idea what they destroyed but I know I will find some decapitated toy in the next couple of days. Here are some photos of the guilty parties.

And another one of the really, really guilty party all tuckered out from his adventures today.

I hope your weekend goes as well as mine has so far. In addition to the purse I went to the Quilt Room in Huffman for their anniversary sale. A weekend that includes fabric shopping and some time at the sewing machine .. it doesn't get much better than this. And to my Canadian friends - Happy Thanksgiving!