Destination Creativity

Friday and Saturday, Sandy, my quilting buddy from Henderson Nevada, attended Destination Creativity. The 2 day event, hosted by the Bernina Connection, included four 3 hour classes. All the class kits and supplies were provided as well as the Bernina machine. Friday morning I made a small bag using the Bernina 1150 MDA overlocker. The bag was constructed entirely with the overlocker.



Friday afternoon I learned curved piecing while piecing blocks for a table runner.

Saturday morning, I made a large project bag.



The last class was machine embroidery taught by Claudia Dinnell. Claudia was a fabulous teacher and I really learned some great new machine embroidery techniques. The class project was a double eyeglass case which is almost finished, I just have to sew on the binding.

Snap Hoop Monster

Today, I decided to do some machine embroidery, not my most favorite thing to do. I usually do my embroidery design using Floriani Total Control software. The software is great but it is PC based, since I have been a Mac user since 1986 using PC software can be a chore. I can use Floriani Total Control because I have Parallels 9 installed which allows my Mac to act like a PC. So I deal with the stress of “using” a PC and get my design exported to my Bernina thumb drive. Now, it is time to go to my sewing room. My new Horn electric lift got my Bernina 780 to the proper height effortlessly and I now store my embroidery module in the new Koala cabinet, so now it is easy to get my embroidery module. Just to make things interesting, I decided to try 2 new products. When I was at the Houston Quilt Festival, I stopped at the Wonderful booth and I learned a new use for Wonder Guards. I was told you can use Wonder Guards on the embroidery thread spool, so I tried them and they worked great. The second new thing I tried was the Snap Hoop Monster. The Snap Hoop made hooping my fabric quite easy, sure did not have to deal with tightening the screw on the Bernina hoop. So my embroidery is now finished, just have to put all the embroidered units together to make a wall hanging.

Bernina Studio Rollabout

Today, my new Koala Bernina Studio Rollabout was delivered and I am so excited to have a drawer especially designed for the larger Bernina embroidery module. My local Bernina dealer, Bernina Connection, was able to order the rollabout for me. The Bernina Studio Rollabout is 32” wide, 25” deep and 29” high. I decided to get the white finish which would go with my new white Horn Super Quilter’s Dream electric lift cabinet. My Bernina 780 machine is quite a bit larger and heavier than my Bernina 630 and I decided upgrading my older Horn Quilter’s Dream cabinet was really necessary. The top drawer of the rollabout has special latches that allow the front of the drawer to lie flat so the embroidery module can easily slip in and out of the drawer.
Pictures of the rollabout and with the special top drawer open


My Bernina embroidery module inside the top drawer and a close up the drawer latches.

Houston International Quilt Festival

I flew to Houston last Wednesday and spent 5 wonderful days at the Houston International Quilt Festival with Sandy, my quilt buddy from Henderson Nevada. This year was the 40th year anniversary of the festival which was celebrated with a special red and white quilt exhibit "Ruby Jubilee!"



I took a class with Nancy Eha, Bead-Dazzling Embroidery Interpretations. Nancy is an excellent teacher and I learned many beading techniques.
We used printed stitch templates which are carefully removed after stitching. I did not remove paper on my stitching sample.


Of course, Sandy and I spent many enjoyable hours walking the 20 long aisle of vendors, 1000 vendors in one place is quilter's paradise. There were so many unique products, many not available at local quilt shops. I was especially happy to find some beautiful variegated size 5 pearl cotton threads made in South Africa imported by akonye ken and some beautiful linen fabric and hand made buttons from l'Atelier d'Isabelle These are just some of the things I purchased.