Back to Quilting, Traveling and Teaching

Finally it seems I have been back at the kitchen table. It's been only a month since I got back from India but with all the teaching trips, it seems like India trip is long forgotten.

These days my kitchen table is a constant mess and that's the way I like it. There has been so much going on, be warned, this is going to be a long post. 
 
Two weeks after I arrived, I went to Santa Cruz, CA for a Windmill/Winter workshop. Members of the South Bay Area Modern Quilt Guild were so creative and prolific.

  
By the end of the day, all the design walls were full of windmills blocks. Thank you SBAQG for inviting me. I had a great time visiting you.

The lecture was schedule for the next day at the Monterey Peninsula Quilters guild one hour south in Monterey, CA.

Kathrin came to the lecture with her finished quilt top for the show and tell. I was pretty impressed! I am looking forward to seeing more quilts from this workshop at some point.

The next day I spent the morning walking around at the beach, signed some books at Back Porch Fabrics. There was a special exhibit in their gallery of Gwen's quilts. They were so inspiring, I wanted to sew right there and then. Unfortunately, I don't travel with my machine and there was no time to sew. I came back home that afternoon. The drive on 101 north was beautiful! The mountains and farms were lush green thanks to our rainy spring weather! As I got closer to home, I saw the rolling hills covered with mustard flowers. Unfortunately I was on the highway, there was no way to take pictures. 

The next day I started a quilt. I am going to have to post about it in near future.

Here is my most recent finish that I can show you today. 

My Windmills quilt workshop is high in demand so I thought to make a new sample from the "Possibilities" section of the book. This way, I can see for myself how it turns out and gives my students ideas they can see in reality rather than in an illustration.

I quilted it on my Viking using the walking foot. I do like simple lines in my quilts, hand quilted or otherwise. So at first I thought horizontal lines would do. But then I realized, the solids in the quilt and those large blocks could use some extra texture so I turned that into waffle quilting.

Ooops.. Do you see on the lower right corner the batting and backing was not enough?  There were some not so fun moments that evening while I was machine quilting and I rather not talk about it.

I finished the quilt with pieced polka dot binding to make it look like the paint was peeling off the edges. I had to send the sample to the guild the day after I arrived from Monterey so there was no time to take a good picture. I guess this will have to do.

I have started many projects at the same time. People ask me if I have multiple quilts in the works.. My answer is always, YES!

Interestingly enough, I am having fun working on all of them at the same time.

Tomorrow evening I will be presenting at the San Francisco Quilters guild. If you are in the area, please stop by to say hello.

Sujata