Des Moines Quilt Guild

I just spent a lovely few days in Des Moines, Iowa. I went a few days early to stayed with my friend Jennifer. We had a great time stitching for two days, it was wonderful to take a little break.

I then taught two full day embellishment classes. I always get excited when I see all the creative ideas my students come up with. On the Flower Pot class they layered there flowers, leaves, vase and berries with fun fabrics added stitching, beads and hand dyed threads for texture.

I love the combination of cotton fabrics with hand dyed wool. It adds a really fun element to the blocks.

My sister Wendy hand dyes 40 colors of silk velvet for my website. The texture that it gives on the wool pieces is wonderful and of course the colors are great too.

We had a lot of fun using different ribbons for the stems. Each person attached them with different threads and stitches.

Many flowers were dimensional using ribbons and fussy cutting fabrics.

It is amazing how different a circle can be using different layering and stitches.

These stems were stitched with seagrass and metallic threads.

Deb brought her wonderful Duffel bag she made from my Journey Tote pattern in the Urban Sacs book. She must have spent hours embellishing as each element was layered with beads and stitches.

I have been home for a few days now. It is cold and icy here at home. My trip this weekend to Dallas was cancelled due to bad weather so I have used my time wisely and spent the weekend catching up on emails, paperwork, writing my new book and stitching. It has been perfect weather to curl up and stay home.

Keep stitching

Sue