Giggleswick Class With Di Ford

I returned late Sunday afternoon from another wonderful retreat up in Shipshewana, Indiana.  I have been especially excited about this retreat, because I attended a dinner/lecture on Friday night with Di Ford and an all day workshop Saturday on her Giggleswick Mill Sampler.  I can't even begin to tell you how excited I was to be able to take her class.  She is just wonderful.  She signed all of our books and posed for photos.  She said she planned to come back.   I really hope she does.  

The photo below is my center block from class.  It was in and out of my bag several times, and some of the basted flowers came off so it will need a bit of tweaking (and ironing).  I was pretty tired when I started to applique' the top pointed part of the vase.  It took me awhile to realize that I should have sewn the  the stems down first.  It needs some work, but you can get the general idea.  In class we cut the flowers to broderie perse from our fabrics.  Di worked with individual groups doing needleturn applique' and English paper piecing while others worked on their center block.

The photo below is the center of Di's quilt.  If you compare the two, mine looks like someone forgot to water my flowers, and they have wilted a bit.  If you look closely at the photo below, she has added 3 pentagons with yellow centers that she has fussy cut .  They add a little color to the bouquet.  They could also be added where you have an empty space in your work.  

Below you can see the fussy cut pentagons a bit better.

The photo below shows how she pieced two sections of the wavy border fabric together horizontally to make the main part of the basket.  

This is a close up of the border around the center vase.  She has applique'd flowers that extend over the seam allowance around the wavy border print.  These are things that might not stand out to you when looking at the photos in the book.  Some of them I didn't notice standing in front of the quilt until she pointed them out.

She worked some on hexagons and 6 pointed stars.  Some of them are from her line coming out soon called Maling Road.  

We usually are in Shipshewana the week before Thanksgiving, so we aren't there for the Christmas parade followed by the tree lighting ceremony in front of the Blue Gate.  There were 6 of us that braved the cold and walked down to the end of the parade route to watch.  It was hard to get photos of the parade because of the crowd, but here are a couple of my favorite parts of the parade.  This float was really well done with lots of lights and misfit toys.

This one might be a bit hard to see, but it is a red and white striped cement truck decorated with lights and a Santa up on top.  It was reported that there were 10,000 people in town for the parade.  It was hard to get anywhere on Saturday.

I did manage to do some shopping at Lollys......   

and Yoders.

I love this display at the Blue Gate Restaurant.  Almost all of these pieces were lighted.  

I love this lighted cardinal vase on the crocheted doily.  

One of the highlights of my trip was meeting two ladies that read my blog.  Carolyn from California stopped me on my way into the Blue Gate Garden Inn.  She recognized me from my blog.  Those of you that write a blog know what a warm feeling it is to have a stranger recognize you and stop you on the street to say that they read and enjoy your blog. 

I also met Pat from Thoughts From Taylor's Outback blog.  We barely had time to say hello.  And, I didn't put her name together with her blog until she emailed me a couple days after we met.  Both of you ladies really made my day!!!

Thanks for stopping by for a visit.

I hope you are finding some time to do some stitching today.