David Taylor Applique Class

 Hi all -

I hope everyone is doing well! We had another week full of heavy rain. So unusual for us! But we're starting a sunny spell now.

The highlight of my week was a David Taylor applique class that I took through one of our local quilt guilds. He's an incredible teacher and is very entertaining at the same time! This class was his one day applique class where he showed us his design process and taught us his applique method. If you don't know who David Taylor is, you should look at his Web site. His work is incredible!! For this class, we had the choice of working on either a Chickadee or a Hummingbird. I chose to work on the Chickadee:

Little Chickadee

(I also bought the Hummingbird kit and a Columbine pattern.) I didn't get very far, but I understand the technique and can finish at home. He uses a ladder stitch instead of the whip stitch that I've always used. The ladder stitch is slower for me, but is completely invisible on the edge of the applique pieces. I'll have to practice the stitch so I can do it faster, then decide which stitch I like better. I think my whip stitch looks pretty good so I'll probably only switch to the ladder stitch if I get a lot faster with practice. David has moved back to the area (he's living in Fort Collins now) so I'll hopefully be able to take more classes from him in the future. He's also talking about maybe starting an Asilomar-like quilt seminar series in the area, maybe in Estes Park. That would be incredible!!

I also did some crochet this week. The Grocery Girls (a knitting podcast that I follow) started their Granny Square make-along that I've been waiting for, so I made my first project. This is the Granny Market Bag designed by Zeens and Roger:

Granny Market Bag

This was an easy project to make. You crochet a big granny square variation, then add the sides and handles gathering up the sides of the square in the process. I really like how this turned out and will probably make more as gifts.

I also started another bag for the Granny Square make-along. This one is the Summer Days Daisy Bag designed by Stephanie Jessica Lau. So far, I only have one of the granny square variations made:

Summer Days Daisy Bag square

I still need to make 14 more of these and then stitch them together and add the handles.

Finally, we got our June installment for the Juni Throw designed by Katy Petersen:

Juni Throw

Juni Throw - June close-up

This month's stitch pattern was easy to understand, but, for some reason, I had a lot of trouble stitching it without making mistakes. After redoing the first row four or five times, I added stitch markers to the top of each pattern repeat so I could isolate any mistakes and fix them right away:

Juni Throw - stitch markers to help with pattern

This was a big help and I was able to finish this section. In fact, after taking the above picture I saw that I had made a mistake in the current section and was able to fix it quickly and easily! With this month's installment, I'm half way done with this throw!

That's everything for this week...

Nancy