La Todera

Good Afternoon, Toderas!

Take a gander at my new quilt top, just finished today.  Here's the story....

  A few weeks ago, I went to Chicago to visit my good friend Todd and to go to the Quilt Festival.  But of course, I took a class from Kaffe (rhymes with 'safe') Fasset.  His classes are the most exhilerating, exhausting, and brain stretching excercises ever for color junkies like me.

The class was based on a pattern from Kaffe's  new book, "Simple Shapes, Spectacular Quilts".  It's an eight hour class with a lunch break.   Beatles and Abba are blasting on the boom box to keep you from thinking too much.  No sewing involved, we just cut the patches and rearranged them over and over on our flannel sheets pinned to the walls. Kaffe and his co-teacher Liza would walk around and help if it looked like you needed it.  Very little instruction.  It's all about finding your own color sense and discovering for yourself why things work!

The last hour of the class is my favorite.  We all gather round and listen to Kaffe critique our quilt tops.  You really see why arrangements are successful- or not.  There are always surprises!

Here is Kaffe looking at my quilt top:

I ended up making the top bigger- it's now 60" by 72", changing the border, and picking a different stripe for the cornerstone blocks.
This is the third class I've taken with these guys, but the first resulting quilt i've actually stitched together!

So the next day, Todd came with me to the show to see Kaffe's lunch/lecture.  Here we are:

Here we are at the "Bee" (short for 'quilting bee'- Todd's friends teased him mercilessly for agreeing to go... what a good sport!)  And what a good host-  Here is what was waiting when I arrived at Todd's!!!  MMMMMM!!!