Sue Spargo Class

BFF#2 and I drove to a class with Sue Spargo on Saturday.  The weather was awful.  Rain, rain and more rain.  We ended up getting nearly 5 inches of rain on Saturday.  We found the place without too much trouble and were just a few minutes late but the class hadn't started yet.  It was a class where we were working on a section of Sue's Folktales quilt.

I expected it to be more structured than it was.  I thought Sue would have us work on a certain section.  But she just let us choose which animals we wanted to put on it and where we felt like putting them.  That is very freeing.  I wanted to put on the alligator and she showed me how she does it:  what needle, what thread, what technique and how to do points.

She had a whole boutique of her stuff there.  The pact to not buy anything stitchy until next year is so dead and broken.  How could I resist?  Look at all those goodies. 

Once you have the animals on, you embellish the heck out of them.  That is where your individuality takes over.  The quilt can't help but reflect your personality as you put on stuff that speaks to you.

Some people planned out their whole quilt arranging all the elements they plan to put on.  Me?  I just started stitching.  I put on the things I liked.  I saw a technique where you emboss velvet using a rubber stamp.  So I tried it out putting dots on gold velvet to become a fish.  I didn't do it very well. (Push harder, spritz with water, don't touch it too much, etc.)  So you can't see the dots now that I have stitched it on.  But I learned a lot!

I got a good start on my little piece of quilt.  We will work on stitches and embellishments tomorrow.  It was a fun day of doing something different from cross stitching.
A