Saturday, May 25, 2013

NC Quilt Symposium - A Day with Harriet Hargrave!

Wow!  What a day!  When I was a kid, I remember writing a fan letter to Sean Cassidy, but other than that I've not been much of a groupie. My husband laughs (and possibly cringes) remembering when I met Michael Piller, one of the creators or Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Star Trek: Voyager at an advisory board meeting - I did not wait for an introduction, instead walked up and stuck my hand out and launched into why I loved the series...  Okay, and in my adult life, I'm a huge fan of Trans Siberian Orchestra...

So, as I said to friends tonight - I've tried to stay at "quilt groupie" level versus "stalker" but have been totally giddy getting to meet Harriet Hargrave and take a class from her.  She is a wonderful teacher. And we had the pleasure of hearing her speak tonight and present a trunk show.  Outstanding and touching at the same time.


This is the quilt that started it all.  It is simple, elegant and led to a publisher encouraging Harriet to write Heirloom Machine Quilting.


Harriet  shared many stories about her life and her quilting journey. And I hope that you will have the chance to hear her speak in the future.

Class today was Invisible Machine Applique. The room was packed to the rafters. Aside from the capacitor issue with my machine's pedal - I had no 'slow' speed, I had a surprisingly trouble free day.



This is my tulip from class today. At this stage the flower and the heart layers are sewn together and the applique has been build onto the foundation fabric. It has since been appliqued to the foundation. With multiple instances of driver error.  Much of class today was spend figuring out the settings for our machines and testing strips in order to understand how width, length and tension interact to create the perfect stitch.  And of course, we learned to create the applique pieces. I really like the way mine turned out and am very glad to have taken the class.

Following the class, I shared a few of my Quilter's Academy quilts with Harriet in an impromptu trunk show from the back seat of my car.  What can I say. I'm a fan!

Overall a great day.  More detail to come in the coming weeks as I digest and practice what I learned this week.

The take home message from tonight's talk was patience, precision and practice all play a role in developing my skills as a quilter.

1 comment:

SandraB said...

Thank you so much for sharing your experience with Harriet. I am such a fan of hers and love to hear about her.