I am not going to do justice to the 2 days I spent with Cindy Needham, but I'll try. She is amazing!! Her teaching style is very approachable and she spends a lot of one on one time with each student. I had a blast. Now if I can translate that into improved skills LOL!
I took the Linen Ladies workshop and she allowed us to take pictures of the pieces she brought.
The are all so intricate and beautiful.
She embellishes with lots (I mean hundreds) of beads.
This is her Nun quilt - story on her blog here. Be careful, you can get lost wandering around her blog looking at her beautiful thing.
Each piece had it's own beauty.
This was my favorite piece. Each little square is 3".
I wish my pictures could capture the incredible beauty. It's hard to believe these used to be regular linens.
This is going to be my first project. It's a linen napkin - about 16" square. Cindy had tons of stencils for us to use.
This is a linen tablecloth - card table size. I used an iron on stablilizer as it's very flimsy.
It's hard to see the pattern, but I'm hoping by the time I finish the napkin, I'll feel confident enough to tackle this.
Doesn't this look just like me?? Very "modern guildish". NOT. But it's some yardage I got from a friend. I think it's probably from the 60's or 70's.
I actually think it will be a fun piece to experiment with.
The second day I took a machine quilting workshop. I'm not a newbie, but I thought I would learn something. The most fun part was playing with the "thread bar". Cindy brought tons of different types of threads for us to experiment with and see how it looks on our machine.
This was something she offered at the workshop. I didn't buy it the first day, but after I got home I decided to splurge.
Here's a picture of my machine as it is normally. You can see the light directly over the needle area, and the dark shadow over the throat space.
Here's the same thing with the LED light turned on. I am so excited! I think it's going to make a big difference in my ability to see what I'm stitching.
You can order off the website I'm sure. I highly recommend it if you've got a little mad money lying around. If Cindy comes to your town, go. She is wonderful.
Happy stitching,
Karen
7 comments:
I have been seeing the LED light strips for sewing machines. I have one of those that attach to the end of the machine & have a bendable piece to allow you to aim the light where you want. I need to replace it and the strips might be the way to go.
How fascinating to be using linen napkins as a quilting format, Karen. I'm looking forward to seeing where you go with it all! Thanks for the tip on the lighting as I need to do something different in my sewing area.
I'm signed up for these two classes with Cindy in July at our state guild show weekend! I'm so excited! I've been drooling over her blog for over a year now, and have wanted to take a class with her so much! The threads class is the first day, the linens class the 2nd. Yikes.....I can't wait! And I've been acquiring vintage linens for the past year to practice on, and have found some family heirloom pieces, but will wait on those until I have some talent on this! lol
I really like the napkin that you chose to experiment stitching onto. This is such a great idea, and lots of times you can find these napkins at Target and places where miss-matched ones have been marked down in price. I think I will look for some!
A pretty fat quarter would be nice too!
I'm definitely going to look for Cindy's classes, I have a tablecloth that I want to quilt and I am afraid to tackle it; maybe a class like that would be my ticket to courage. I love that light, being able to see is never a bad thing!
I would love to take a workshop with Cindy, but don't know if I would be "UP" to the challenge. Her work is beautiful. I am taking a Craftsy class with her and need to get going on the next lesson. I can't wait to see how your projects turn out. I have lots of old linens - I am drawn to them, and her ideas would be great to use on them. There is one embroidered table runner in particular that I want to quilt.
Ooo, I like how that lamp works! My sewing area is well lit during the day, but I really struggle at night, especially quilting. I do have a bit of mad money, so I'll be checking into it. Thanks for the info. So glad you enjoyed yourself and have an exciting new project to work on.
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