HMQS

Me and CaroLee.  She is my son-in-law's aunt - we immediately bonded since we both own longarms!  Completely by accident we both had signed up for the exact same 2 classes the first day, so we naturally sat together (and laughed at one of our teachers who acted like she'd had a few drinks on her plane ride to Utah.  Not sure that really was the case, but she was comical to watch and listen to.)

LAChat friends

 

I got to go to the Home Machine Quilt Show last week!!!  Yippity do dah!  I have such a horrible track record with that show...it's almost in my back yard, and becoming one of the largest longarm quilt conventions in the country, and I've only averaged every other year since I got my LA.  (Last year my father died just 3 days before it began, so I missed it, again, this time also losing all my classes I'd signed up for as well.)  But this year was a thumbs up - it was wonderful.  I took 8 classes, 2 a day for all 4 days.  This is the first time I've ever taken a class for longarming, I'm completely self taught (well if you don't count everything I've learned from my wonderful friends over at LAChat that I will talk about later here.)  I was worried that I might not learn very much, thus being out of quite a chunk of money, but never fear - it was well worth the time and money spent.  Came home with lots of ideas and new knowledge.

 

I'm wishing now I'd taken photos of some of my other teachers, many of which are world famous in the longarming community.  But I knew I had to take a photo of this teacher, can you guess which one is the teacher in this photo?  Yup, it's the man, Dustin Farrell.  One of a few men who teach.  To look at him you'd hate to meet him in a dark alley, but he's very nice and taught a good class.  All those tattoos on his arms are quilting designs :)

 



 

The rest of my pictures are all like this, quilting ideas -- this one is from Renae Hadaddin's "Show Off" class.  I won't post all of the rest on here, but I need to get them printed off so I can refer to them in the future for ideas -- thus the reason I took the pictures! 

 

It was a great week, I'm already looking forward to next year!

 

Before I close I want to give a shout out to LAChat.com.  This is a web site that I found about 6 months after I bought my machine.  It is a community of longarm quilters from all over the world who share knowledge and photos with each other in this business we've all chosen to work in.  I've learned 98% of what I know from those women.  I wouldn't be the quilter I am today without them.  A few months ago we were informed that the website will be closing down in a year and they are no longer allowing anyone new to sign up for a membership to it.  So it's being sad.  I've only been there for 5 years, many others for much longer.  The photo above is a small group of us who all were attending HMQS this year, most of us had never met each other face-to-face, so it was fun to meet up.  Thank you LAChat and all my friends there for all the support and sharing of knowledge I've enjoyed when I needed it the most.  I'll continue signing on there until the bitter end.