To my dear family (August 7th, 2014)

You know I love you very much but for the next two days (August 8th & 9th)  I’ll be in my happy place sewing and learning with Barb Mortell. There is peanut butter and bread in the cupboard.

See you soon, XO

August 8th- Day 1, Barb Mortell swooped in from Denman Island to give our guild two workshops. The first workshop was about colour and triangles. I should mention two years ago, Barb had given a workshop to our guild.  I overheard Helen telling Barb that, that improv workshop really transformed her quilting life and I have to agree… it changed mine too. I think we were all really looking forward to this!

It all started off with a little show and tell of Barb’s work. Darlene lost her mind when she saw some of Barb’s work, which was sooo Darlene, so cute and so enduring!

We were given instructions and a demo.

With Barb’s assistance, we sewed our butt’s off. This is Cathy Mackay’s work. (We noticed through out the two days, we often were sewing with the colours we wore! Does that make us predictable? Predictability cute!)

Sadly, because I was sewing my butt off,  I didn’t get photos of everyone’s work the first day. My apologies to everyone. I can assure you their work was pretty impressive. Although on the second day I did remember to take photos of everyone’s work.

Side note, luckily Barb is a rule breaker, which fit in perfectly to my quiet anarchy. Barb saw me thinking after she gave her talk and told me not to over think. (which is great advice!) I then showed Barb my inspiration and how I wanted to incorporate blocks from a workshop I took from Denyse Shcmidt two years ago. She said, sure, go for it-yesssss! This is what I had by the end if the first day.

August 9th- Second workshop, building on the first day, working with more colour and more triangles. Again the class started off with show and tell of Barb’s work. This is one of my favourites! It’s called ” The Joke is on You”. It’s a piece Barb made at a Nancy Crow workshop.  The oranges flip between glowing and flat. They play off each other in such an interesting way. The photo here really doesn’t do it any justice.

Then we were given inspiration and instruction.

People jumped in head first. Ellen here cut some blocks that she’s been sewing on for years into diamonds. Such a brave soul! And some people had to be brave because they cut their finger-Jean! By the yelp at the other end of the classroom you could tell it was a doosy!

…But luckily we had Christine, who is turning out to be our guild nurse, attending the workshops. (Christine, ended up doing  CPR on their bus driver when a crew of guild members went down to Sisters this year.)  Yup, Christine is pretty awesome to have around. You can see her awesome blocks behind her. Oh and to the left you can see Hedda’s blocks too. I missed taking a full on shot of her blocks. they were really cool. Hedda’s blocks looked like they were braiding. And here’s Hedda on the right, looking through all the yummy inspirational books Barb brought for us to look at.

It was an intense two days of sewing our pants off. Well, not literately but… These are Sky’s blocks on the left and Ellen pondering her blocks on the right. Beside Ellen’s blocks are Barb Macleod’s.

Barb did promise us at the beginning of the day, if we worked hard she’d give us all A’s. Here is Sherri’s A and on the right is Norma’s A.

Jenneke got an A. As you can tell she worked really hard!  And Phyllis, that’s her A on the right!

Darlene got an A, and Ellen was very happy about her A too, as you can see. Yup, it was A’s for everyone!

A’s  for being AWESOME that is, Tee Hee!

Many, many thanks Barb! I’ve learned from you to be fearless and to sew as though I’m leaving my signature all over my quilts. Just as you’ve left your signature on our guild again. We love you!