The Learning Never Ends

With Shop Hop behind us and our 10th Anniversary looming, Bright Hopes Quilting staff took a Saturday day off to make a mini retreat!

As you who receive our weekly newsletter know by now, we have been stocking this interesting ruler, the Quick Curve Ruler for about 6 months now

and Celeste has offered a number of classes that use the ruler to make very cool quilts, such as the Urban Abacus.

Well, some of us have been casting a wistful eye on the ruler ourselves and decided to get in on the action together on Saturday and make Metro Rings.

Metro Rings is a pattern that totally takes the stress out of creating the traditional Double Wedding Rings quilt design and makes it a manageable and, dare I say enjoyable, experience. It's true!!!

We got our cutting instructions ahead of the class from Celeste and met at 9 am. After a quick overview, we started whacking away at our pre-sewn strip sets and moved on to the background pieces. By 10:00, sewing machines were humming up a storm.

You can see in the photos that we all use a wide selection of machines, from Featherweights to full Berninas and our fabric selections could not have been more varied if we had auditioned them prior to coming to class......

It isn't often that we get a chance for a play-day and everyone showed up for this one.....

Here, Mary is bringing together the concave and convex shapes of Japanese indigoes in a smooth sewing line.

Mona uses her stiletto to control the curve with Aunt Grace fabrics.

After a quick break for pizza (gotta keep the energy up!) we began putting the blocks together and look who is very pleased with the results!

Here you see 6 of the 8... from top left to lower right, 

Mona, Linda Kay

Jayne, Mary Green

Georgia, Mary Gerardi

So, now when you come into the shop with questions about the Quick Curved Ruler, we can all with great confidence explain how easy this ruler is to make fabulous blocks in a wide variety of patterns. 

We really love it when one tool creates many choices. It is especially gratifying to know that curved piecing is NOT difficult, when you know how to do it!

Next month is our 10th Anniversary and the start of another two month schedule of great classes. I'll be posting the new class calendar shortly. Stay tuned for more information on both of these......