Teaching!

I will be teaching my Embroidered Quilting class at The Cotton Patch in Lafayette! The Cotton Patch must be one of the oldest quilting shops in California–it was started in 1978! I am so excited and honored to be teaching there. The class is on Saturday April 21, from 10 am to 5 pm.

I teach the basic embroidery stitches that I use, and variations of all of them. If there’s time I talk about writing on quilts and the methods I use for various forms of writing.

The kit I provide has more than enough materials to make this project–this was a challenge to myself to use a kit that had colors I don’t like to make a little composition that I did like.

 

Instagram!

Hi all. I am trying out Instagram. I thought it might be fun to add a picture of what I work on each day. So far I have shared these two pictures.

My big PEACE quilt:

And my “cow rug.” I’m very excited about the changes I’ve made on this rug. I added large lettering, eliminated the field (there will be hills in the background behind the lettering.) I plan to add more cows and also need to add in the greenery to the redwood tree borders.

My instagram label is debbyschnabel.

Finishing Stuff

Doesn’t it feel great to finish a project? Especially a project that you have neglected, and in fact despaired of actually finishing? That was the owl rug. I started it as a challenge to myself to work with a limited color palette. But I got very tired of that limited color palette. And then my knee surgery and more interesting and colorful quilt projects got in the way. And the poor owl languished for many many months.

Then it was time for the Anaheim rug retreat. So just to make sure I still remembered how to hook, I got out the owl. And I worked on it for a few days before Anaheim. When I got home, I thought, maybe I’ll finish that owl before I start in on my cows again. And what do you know? I enjoyed working on it and finished it in just a few days of consistent rug hooking!

The beak was a huge problem for me. The way I had hooked it reminded me of a snowman’s carrot nose. So I kept looking at owl pictures. And realized that the beak was simply too long. I used a method Gene had shown me, and hand cut a piece of wool from fairly wide to narrow (basically an elongated triangle.) I am very happy with how it turned out. And I also made the decision to use just a bit of color for the beak. I used the leftovers from the hand cut beak to make his two claws that were showing.

Anyway, it just made me feel great to finish that (I still have to do the actual steaming and finishing but that is just grunt work.) To celebrate, I took the next day off and did some fun stuff, like working in the garden and experimenting with a new finishing technique for small quilts.