Video Coming!
I'm sure that many of you are familiar with Bonnie McCaffery and her wonderful painted faces technique.  Bonnie is not only a talented quilt maker and teacher, but she's also an enthusiastic cheerleader for other quilt teachers and their techniques.  As part of that, each month she produces a free video for her website, featuring an interview with a quilt teacher, or a tour of a quilt show.  I had the VERY great honor of being her subject in a recent video interview!  Boy, was that fun!  She was in  my town for some teaching, so we actually shot the "vidcast" in my studio and home.  I'm SO excited about this!  It will be showing on her website, next month, and I'll DEFINITELY let you know when it starts.  Can't wait!

Upcoming Events
- Melbourne, FL, February 23 & 24, Workshop "Design Your Own Nature Quilt"
                         - March 1, Workshop "Design Your Own Nature Collage"
- Miami, FL, March 8, Lecture "Playing with Fabric" and Workshop "Instant Art Quilt"
- Melbourne, FL, April 4, Lecture "Increase Your Fiber with Raw Edge Appliqué"
Next online class:  Adventures in Color, starting February 29th.  Enrollment open now!

Eastern Germany and Copenhagen, Denmark

Our day in Germany took us to the northeastern corner of the country.  This area is very agricultural, with mild weather, thanks to the Baltic Sea.  The population is small and our guide told us that if you drove on the autobahn at night, you'd be unlikely to meet another car.   Thanks to tremendous financial help from "West" Germany, the eastern part of Germany is recovering from Soviet rule much faster than the other former soviet countries we visited.  Still, the wages in the eastern part of Germany are about one-third lower than in the western part.

We only had a few hours in Copenhagen, which we explored on our own.  It was bustling, and somewhat crowded, but charming, nevertheless.  Everywhere we looked we saw people on bicycles.  We marveled at each rider's abilitiy to maneuver the deeply grooved and cobbled streets. Copenhagen is filled with canals, so a boat tour provided a very pleasant way to see the city from the water.  This showed us a thorough cross section of the city,  from stately government buildings to nude sunbathers!  Particularly delightful was a quaint section, where many private boats were moored.  The photo at left was taken in this area.

New Work When working on a quilt, I often find myself thinking ahead to the next  one.  Such was the case with my latest quilt, shown at right. I was working on Lakeside Citrus, a somewhat accurate representation of oranges hanging near water.  As I was working on that piece, I wanted to add ovals, and pink circles, and a variety of sizes.  All very non-citrus choices!  So, I decided that I would use the color combination for a future quilt, this time allowing myself the freedom to add circles and ovals of my choosing.  The result is this quilt. Trivia: - In Bonnie's video, this is the quilt I used for my collaging and pinning demonstration purposes.  At that point, only the background was finished. - I don't have a name for this quilt, yet.  Got any ideas?

Short Lesson
Have you ever seen an animator at work?  (One working with actual paper and pencil.)  They work on tilted surfaces, like a drafting table, but their actual drawing surface spins, like a Lazy Susan.  As they work, they continually spin this surface, in order to change the orientation of  the paper. This is because certain motions are easier to draw than others, and repositioning the paper makes their task easier.  

The same is true with free motion quilting.  We all know that quilting forward is easier than quilting backward, but did you know that quilting backward is easier than quilting left and right?  It's true!  Although we can develop skill with this sideways motion, it takes some practice.  With this in mind, I've written a brief tutorial about adjusting your quilting patterns (and directions) in order to make them easier.  This is especially appropriate for rookie machine quilters.  You'll find the full article here.

Website additions
An "About Ellen" page.  Plus new quilt pages, and detail pages.  Start on the gallery page.

Resources
www.BonnieMcCaffery.com

Enjoy the adventure!
Ellen

Would you like to subscribe to my newsletter? If so, use the button below. Your privacy is highly respected!