Chicago

Finally! Time to blog before I head for the airport and to Paducah.  First, the weather. Sigh...

The good news is that I have had a fabulous time teaching and catching up with new and old friends in this Chicago suburb of Northbrook.  I had dinner Friday night with Sharon Rexroad, with whom I have been cyber-friends for almost 5 years - and we couldn't believe this was our first time in person.  I LOVE when that happens! I thought her scarf looked familiar and she reminded me that I had sent it as a thank-you gift for something she had helped me with a number of years ago.

Sharon is an award-winning teacher and best-selling author of the Pineapple Stars books, still popular after five years. She manages the gorgeous Paper Source store in Highland Park, IL.

Last night I had dinner with my friend Maggie Weiss, who is lots of fun and has more energy in her little finger than I have in my whole body. It was great to spend one-on-one time with her for a change. We went for tapas and they were not only beautiful but delicious. In lieu of food pictures, I will move on to the workshop, Reinventing the UFO.  This was a two-day workshop which could really have gone on for another day.  The transformations were amazing!

They all brought their ugly, leftover blocks or unfinished (for a good reason) tops and the changes were incredible.  I don't have pictures of everybody's, but they promised to send me pix of the finished pieces.  Here are just a few of the befores and afters.

Flo started with a dozen lovely basket blocks she thought were boring.  In retrospect, they were.

Here they are, redone (for the most part) and up on the design wall.  An abstract piece that reminds me of pickup sticks!

Mary brought a pile of blocks that were pretty deadly and here is one before/after result.

What a difference a rotary cutter and some great colors made! The little blue triangles were more leftovers from a quilt.  Great idea to integrate them here!

 

Debbie B. came with a bunch of blocks similar to this one.

End result is here.

She also transformed this block:

into this whimsical one, both pieced and fused.

 

Sherry is holding what's left of her "before" and in-process "after."  It will be fun to see how it turns out.

Rhonda started with this leaf block (minus the diagonal strips)

Before you overdose on even more of these, I'll save the others for another post.  Now it's time to finish packing and get ready for my next leg of the trip. Paducah, here I come!