Laura Nownes

[Renata L.]

The other day I watched the video clip introduction by Laura Nownes to her class that starts next week. I thought I opened it up in the CLASSROOMS section (purple bar), but now I can't find it and have looked in every place I thought logical. Did it disappear? Can anyone tell me where it might be? :? :? :? THANKS A BUNCH!!!

[Renata L.]

I just looked at in the "classroom" Good luck

[wendy w.]

The link to the video isn't working yet, you must have struck a lucky gremlin. There is a file giving supplies and some basic information :?

[Renata L.]

Thanks, Wendy and Pat! Too bad it is not up anymore. I watched the whole thing and even though it was an overview of the entire series, Laura showed a different set of fabrics from what is in the handout (it was a nice set of what looked like huge daisies with a couple of shades of red in them on a white and grey background and she apparently used it to obtain a nicely coordinated spread of the several fabrics that could go into the sampler. I wanted to watch it again to understand how she used the inspiration fabric to pick her other pieces... Hopefully, they will post it again... at least I got to see it once!

The video was a really nice companion piece to the supply list and frankly, it was great to see the overview/summary video a week before starting the actual class. Oh, well...

[wendy w.]

Now you'll have nothing to watch next week. :cry:

[Renata L.]

Now that I think about it... Laura Nownes' first class in the Classroom section was actually dated "17 July" when it was added to the Classroom section and that is when I watched the video. Since then, whoever manages that part of theTQS program changed the start date to next week. :cry: I remember it clearly because the previous week I had downloaded the .pdf file in anticipation of the start date because I wanted to be ready to "go" on 17 July when classes were announced to start. On 17 July, the first video aired, but now the date has been changed to next week and the video clip disappeared. I guess I'll have to wait... :roll: :roll: :roll: At least I got a preview, eh?

[wendy w.]

So you're going to make the sampler quilt. You're not a beginner

[Renata L.]

Wendy, I'm kind of a "backwards" beginner, if that makes sense... I bought my first sewing machine two and a half years ago and I've only made a handful of pieces--I can count them on my two hands... My sister taught me the basics and then I went at it, well, sort of...

My first piece was a kit, paper-pieced and the pieces were so tiny that once the different elements were assembled I had to hand them over to my sister to put the full picture together because I was failing miserably at matching pieces and putting them together and getting the seams to fit . You can see the quilting and the piecing on my part is pretty nasty, but I could not make myself do a nine patch as my first attempt...



Then I wanted to do applique' so I found something I liked in Quiltmania and with my sister's guidance on how to do raw edged applique' I came up with this little wall hanging. I did all the quilting myself but I did not know how to do background quilting and for fear of it looking ugly, you can see the background is still not quilted... I think I can go back and do that now, right?


To welcome me into their quilting world, my mom and sisters invited me to do a round robin. This is the center of the quilt that belongs to me--I was ripping my hair out trying to do a circle-in-a-circle and refused to applique' it onto a background. Instead of keeping the material supple, I actually starched the circles to death making it even harder to complete the task... but it was done!



So, then I was ready for a throw! But I had to do a practice piece to make sure I could match corners, etcetera, so I made this runner and practiced quilting with a vengeance because I thought the fabric so ugly, I did not care if my quilting looked horrible. At a distance of time, I actually like the quilting I did back then... :roll: So then I did the actual quilt... it was, I believe a McCall pattern from a magazine, but I wimped out on the quilting, so my sister did it for me... I'll post the runner and the throw in the next posting because there is no more room for photos here...

You might have seen my pineapple quilt on the FORUM, along with one AAQI quilt and I've posted my SEDONA STAR 2012 BOM in Show and Tell as I've gone along, and THAT'S IT!!! All of it has been a complete struggle, because I started the hard way and slugged my way through it; it takes me forever to get any of this stuff done; when I saw Lorchen's posting about wanting to quit quilting, you don't know how close I actually was to quitting!!! So, I've decided to go BACK TO BASICS and learn all the stuff that I should have started with in the first place! Deep down, I know I love quilting but I just have to find a way of easing my way into things. With the exception of the pinwheel, I have never made any of the blocks in Laura's sampler... so I think it's time for me to take a deep breath and build some basic skills (which I should have done at the beginning...). Make sense?

[Renata L.]

So you're going to make the sampler quilt. You're not a beginner

Here's the runner and the throw... Funny, I am now finding that the better my piecing gets, the less I want to muck it up with bad quilting... I'll get over that too... :lol:

The Runner (practice piece for the throw)--no problem quilting this but got cold feet on the throw because it was a bigger investment of work that went into it... and the embroidery module of my Bernina 830 took care of the embroidery in the center squares... :wink:



The Throw:

[wendy w.]

Absolutely makes sense and there really are so many ways of doing piecing and quilting that the ways you invented aren't wrong just different. Fancy starting with circles :shock: well done that's enough to make anyone give up.

Lovely runner and throw

I was daft and started with an enormous sampler quilt of stars with patterns taken from an Alex Anderson book and learn't loads along the way. My squares were supposed to be 12" finished but they were 1/2 to 1" either way :lol:

here's the evidence. The blue triangles are just a little out ops:



Bit better since then

[wendy w.]

Got to go work tomorrow. Talk later

[Lois B.]

I missed this Laura Nownes class. How could that be? I am on this website all the time? I 'd like to do it. But I am getting to know that I want to do everything. I think it looks interesting. Do you think the absence of the introductory video was just a mix-up in the start date, or it a technical glitch? If its a glitch look under "Help" and go to "Contact us" choose technical support for the website and they'll be right on it. You'll probably get a personal email from "Guru Bob" telling you what's up. I love TQS!

[Renata L.]

I missed this Laura Nownes class. How could that be? I am on this website all the time? I 'd like to do it. But I am getting to know that I want to do everything. I think it looks interesting. Do you think the absence of the introductory video was just a mix-up in the start date, or it a technical glitch? If its a glitch look under "Help" and go to "Contact us" choose technical support for the website and they'll be right on it. You'll probably get a personal email from "Guru Bob" telling you what's up. I love TQS!

I only caught the intro video because I expected the class to begin on 17 July and that is the day I went back to Classroom so I can only surmise that the dates might have been wrong and when they caught it, they corrected it. In any event, it does not matter whether it begins this week or next... I enjoyed so much Sue Collins' video that I thought it would be a good idea to go back to basics with Laura's class, even if the principles Laura teaches are a review of what I have learned. Besides, it means I get to make another quilt top!

[wendy w.]

I've another baby quilt to make so I think I'll join you and refresh skills I probably haven't got anyway.

[Renata L.]

I've another baby quilt to make so I think I'll join you and refresh skills I probably haven't got anyway.

See you there!!!