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Sew Together Tuesday at Pins and Needles (OH)

After eight weeks off the road, we had our first stop at Pins and Needles in Middleburg Heights, Ohio and boy was it a good one! More than 100 folks showed up for the livestreaming of Sew Together Tuesday. They were as excited to be there as I was and were just the cheerleaders I needed to get this season off on the right foot.

As you can tell, the store is huge! Owner Jan Brotek bought the building and converted half of the huge space in to a sewing machine and fabric store, while the other half became a classroom. It was amazing to get so many people in there, and they have it all wired up with microphone, speakers and a projection system so that everyone can take part. Ideal!

Located southwest of Cleveland, Pins and Needles sells new and used machines, including sewing , embroidery and long-arm quilting machines, as well as fabric, notions, patterns, tools, thread and much more. It was impressive!

Over the two days, I taught the Sweet Sixteen Pillow workshop, Self Binding Blanket workshop and the Sew Simple Blanket workshop to 50+ folks from all over the area. There were ladies who’d driven in from southern Ohio, as well as western Pennsylvania. What a fun crowd and some lovely finishes.

We managed to corral about half the class near the end to show off some of their projects outside the store (luckily it had stopped raining earlier!) .

Thank you so much to Pins and Needles for hosting Sew Together Tuesday and workshops with me. I had a great time with everyone and it was nice to see another part of Ohio! If you missed the show, you can watch via YouTube:

This week we’re live at Creative Passions Quilt Shop and Retreat Centers in Chesaning, MI. You can catch that one live Tuesday at 10amPST on the Shannon Fabrics YouTube and Facebook.

Happy sewing!

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Sew Together Tuesday hits the road again

Here we are, back at it again with another cross-country trip. In the spring and early summer we made our way across the southern states and all the way up to New Hampshire for classes. This time we are starting in Ohio and heading across the Midwest and over to the West coast for the winter, stopping at a new quilt shop every week to film an episode of Sew Together Tuesday.

If you’re near any of the shops along the way, I’d love to see you! Our Lives are open for anyone to come (though you’ll need to sign up through the store first) and watch behind the scenes as we broadcast my sewing endeavors on Facebook and YouTube. If you’re at home, you can watch it, too, of course!

Join me for a Sew Together Tuesday LIVE or a workshop (or three) at these shops. Reach out to the store directly to sign up:

08/30 Pins and Needles (Middleburg Heights, OH)
09/06 Creative Passions (Chesaning, MI)
09/13 Always in Stitches (Noblesville, IN)
09/20 Linda Z’s (Arlington Heights, IL)
9/27 Patched Works (Elm Grove, WI)
10/04 Sew Trendy MN (Eagan, MN)
10/11 Calico Hutch Quilt Shop (Hayward, MN)
10/15 Red Roxy Quilt Co (Decorah, IA) guest appearance
10/18 Inspired to Sew (Cedar Rapids, IA)
10/22 KC Maker Studio & Fabrics (Mission, KS) workshop only
10/25 Quilt Cabin (Colby, KS)
11/1 & 11/4 International Quilt Festival (Houston, TX)
11/8 Quilting Mayhem (Snohomish, WA)
11/15 Hunter’s Design Studio (online only)
11/16 Montavilla Sewing Center (Lake Oswego, OR) open sewing
11/29 Green’s Sew & Vac (Medford, OR)
12/06 Tater Patch (Merrill, OR)
12/13 Cali Quilt Co (Rancho Cordova, CA)

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Sew Together Tuesday: Infinity Scarf with Zipper Pocket

We kicked off Season 8 with no live audience and very little hoop-la (the exact opposite of Season 7’s kick-off at Cali Quilt Co!) but it worked out perfectly with the uptick in COVID cases and our RV going belly up on the first day back on the road. Sigh…

There are a bunch of different tutorials available for adding a pocket to your scarf, including this one from Patterns for Pirates and this pattern from Indygo Junction. I chose to do it my own way and added an invisible zipper.

We broadcast from Sew Yeah Quilting in Las Vegas, Nevada, a sibling-owned shop that has a lovely brick-and-mortar location as well as live sales through their YouTube channel.

Thanks to Brody, Zach, and Teancum for playing host to Sew Together Tuesday, as well as some in-person and Zoom workshops.

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Sew Together Tuesday and the ultimate Shop Hop

If you’re like me at all, you love a good shop hop. It’s always fun visiting new stores and checking out the displays, the fabric selection, the notion wall… all of it! Starting in less than two weeks, I’ll be embarking what I think will be the ultimate shop hop.

Hawke and I are taking our Sew Together Tuesday on the road and doing our Lives from 10 different shops across America, every Tuesday a different store in a different state. Crazy, right?! Yes, but it’s going to be so great!

You’ll be able to join in, both in-person and online for the Tuesday sessions, but wait… there’s more! HA! I’ll be teaching additional classes in each of those shops, plus a slough of weekend classes as well. I’ve listed them all in my calendar, so keep an eye on those upcoming events listed to the right —–>

Over the twelve weeks I’ll be teaching at 16 different shops:

Cali Quilt Co (Rancho Cordova, CA) 
The Fig Leaf Quilting (Fort Collins, CO)
The Quilt Shop (Wakefield, NE)
Old Alley Quilt Shop (Sherburn, MN) 
Red Roxy Quilt Co (Decorah, IA)
Time Flies Quilt & Sew (Negaunee, MI)
Blue Bar Quilts (Middleton, WI)
Always in Stitches (Noblesville, IN) 
Quilt Beginnings (Dublin, OH)
Sew It Up Bernina (Hurst, TX)
Poppy Quilt & Sew (Georgetown, TX) 
KC Maker Studio & Fabric (Kansas City, MO) 
The Pin Cushion (Mitchell SD) 
Sew On & Sew North (Langdon, ND) 
Quilts & More (Sidney, MT) 
Backdoor Quilt Shoppe (Billings, MT) 

I can’t wait to get out there and share the LQS love with everyone. I’ll be doing store spotlights and impromptu visits, searching out and sharing shops along the way.

If you’re interested in following along on our travel adventures (especially on our days off!), make sure to subscribe to Makers At Large, the blog I am doing with Hawke.

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Road to California 2020 Recap

This marked my third year teaching at Road to California and it was the best by far. I had four classes, Thursday through Sunday, focusing on fabrics that many are intimidated by: minky, double gauze and knits. I’d spent hours and hours over the last few weeks prepping kits and samples for the classes and it was all worth it.

On Thursday, we made Ellie Elephants using the pattern from Funky Friends Factory and Luxe Cuddle Heather Fog from Shannon Fabrics, along with a couple of solid Cuddle minky fabrics.  They turned out so well and everyone was so happy with their elephants! I saw a couple of students walking the show floor with them later and it was adorable.  Look how pleased they were!

Road2CA students with their stuffed elephants

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Come sew with me at Sew Expo!

Registration opens today for the Sewing and Stitchery Expo in Puyallup, Washington. This will be my third time teaching at Sew Expo and I’m excited to be revisiting some classes that have been popular in the past.

Cuddle Up with Applique on Friday at 2pm

Soft and Simple Cuddle Quilts on Sunday at 11am

Sew a Double Gauze Top on Wednesday at 11am

If you haven’t been to Sew Expo and you are interested in sewing apparel as well as quilting, you are in for a treat. It started as an apparel-sewing event and has a definite lean toward garment- and bag-making, which is exactly how I started, too.

I hope you’ll make the drive and come visit. I’ll be teaching classes and spending time at the Dutch Quilter booth, as well as wandering the show to find all the new goodies I’ve just got to have.

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That Quilt from the MSQC Sewlebrity Sew-Off

Do you remember this fall when I was at the Missouri Star Quilt Company Birthday Bash? Okay, maybe not, but I had a great time (like always!).

I was on Jenny’s team and we worked like mad women for an hour making a lovely pinwheel quilt that was designed by Jenny Doan just for the event. Sue Daley was there so we had to add some EPP hexagon flowers thrown in; hand-piecing with a strict time limit just makes it that much more fun–ha!

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Life Quote Quilt

life quote crinkle dreamsI finished a quilt –for myself!!– last month. It’s been on my to-make list for years, but in my life somehow for much longer.

Let’s start back in 1999. Despite the amazing Prince song that most people are reminded of, there was no partying happening. It was the year I got divorced and embarked on a road that I have stayed on for the next 17 years…solo parenting. (Long story short, their father is not a part of their lives.) I grew up in a religious family that holds tight the conservative ideas of American life: birth, school, marriage, work (til you have kids), buy a house, play it safe. Getting divorced and all that it entailed for me and my two kids made me rethink everything I’d believed in.  I knew I could either feel bad about the path my life was on or I could embrace it fully and that’s when I came across the Helen Keller quote that inspired this: Life is a daring adventure or nothing.

You’ll notice in the mock-up I have the quote with an additional “at all.” That’s how I originally knew the quote, but before I got to cutting out letters,  I did a bunch of searching for the original. From what I can gather, that part just got tacked on by someone, somewhere along the line and suddenly there were two versions of the quote. From what I could find, the shorter version is actually what she said (but I could be wrong!)

Anyway, this quote has long-guided me in my choices, both as a mom and as a person. We get one shot at this, I figure, we might as well make it interesting (hence college in my 30s, living in SE Asia, making a hodgepodge career, random road trips, etc).

I wanted a quilt that would exemplify that idea, so I started with a big box of scraps from work. I cut dozens and dozens of strips, divvied up by color intensity. Then started sewing them together. 

I used my handy Strip Tube Ruler to cut out a ton of triangles, then laid them out. Then chain-pieced like a crazy person. Soon enough, the top was done . Then came the scary part–the letters. 

I made templates out of file folders and traced around each, hoping to spell out the quote correctly. I worried about that a lot.cutting out letters

I stitched around each letter, then carefully cut out the patchwork to reveal the Grunge (Moda) that I’d backed the quilt with. It headed off to the quilter (Kazumi Peterson) and came a few weeks later looking just as good as I’d imagined when I first came up with this crazy idea. I love love love the way “or nothing.” just fades away, giving it a bleach-dipped look.  

I’m happy to announce that the quilt will be hanging at the Sisters Outdoor Quilt Show in Sisters, Oregon on July 9, 2016.

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The Making of Red, a quilt

Red at Watermark Gallery. Photo credit: Peter Cameron

Late last year, I teamed up with Bill Volckening to brainstorm some modern art-inspired quilt designs. Over a couple of dinner meeting, we settled on something reminiscent of Matisse’s paper cuts with a touch of Rorschach, deciding that it should be all needle-turn applique in the spirit of traditional Hawaiian quilt making.

Teresa Coates applique
I started by free-hand drawing the red shape on Kona Cotton, then cutting it 1/4-inch larger. I basted it to 108″-wide white muslin.

Over the next month, it went from a digital sketch to a full-blown (80″ x 80″) quilt, hand-appliqued and lightly hand-quilted by me, with load of echo quilting from Jolene Knight.

The entire shape was appliquéd using a traditional needle-turn method. It took about 30 hours in total.

I just keep stitching, then removed basting stitches.

Needle turn might just be my favorite.

Big stitch quilting
Bill took it to Jolene who worked her magic, but left purposeful gaps for some additional big-stitch hand quilting in both the white and red.

 

In the end, I’m absolutely thrilled with ‘Red,’ which is now part of the Volckening Collection.

It is currently on display at Watermark Gallery (part of Gallery EOSS) in East Providence, Rhode Island through April 10, 12016. Red by Teresa Coates, quilting by Jolene Knight

 

Addendum: Sam of Hunter’s Design Studio wrote about the work here and there was an interesting bit of discussion that ensued.