MQX

I'm having such a wonderful time! And staying in the host hotel is so great! Ralph is enjoying himself- it's an enforced rest for him. He's taking a couple of naps a day, using the exercise room, and working on the laptop.

I've had fantastic classes. Tuesday night was the ice cream social, and fabric craps. I took enough fabric strips for us both to play, and Ralph won the first round at our table- everyone's strips!

Wednesday morning I had a Circles class with the Janome educator. We learned how to use the circle attachment, which was so much fun that I bought one when the vendors opened. We made a little wallhanging, which I finished except for the binding. We were working on $7000 machines!

Wednesday afternoon I went from "ABC's of Perfect Pantos" to "Taming Your Templates", both of which were very informative.

Thursday from 9-4 was the Mystery Quilt class with Mark Lipinski. It was a blast! He is so nice, and so funny- he teases and hugs everyone. We learned to make Drunkard's Path blocks without pinning- it was very traumatic at first, but everyone quickly got the hang of it. Then we worked on 3D pinwheel blocks, which are different and cool. One lady actually got all her blocks completed, and Mark helped her lay out the quilt in the mezzazine. I'm nowhere near done, but that's OK. And we got to preview and critique his new fabric lines! All of us with cameras got our pix taken with Mark. I'll download all my pix when I get home. Mark is the speaker at the banquet tonight.

I had another class from 6-10 pm, on fusing. I was tired going in, from all the sewing at the mystery class. It was another fun class, and we each did a little picture and got some goodies from the teachers. I knew very little about fusing, and Barbara and Yolanda (more Jersey girls) were very knowledgeable and good teachers. I'm so glad I took the class.

Today we had a class on thread given by Bob of Superior Threads. Ralph took this one with me, and he and I both found it interesting, informative, and helpful. It was from 8-10 a.m., so we went to breakfast afterwards, then I went and drooled over quilts and shopped the vendors in the Expo Center, and Ralph took his morning nap.

I have one more class this afternoon, on designing borders, then the banquet tonight. Tomorrow morning we head for home. I'm so glad we came!

Holly