Well I'm here at the Saskatchewan Stitches Conference and I have to say "WOW".  I have never been to anything like this before.  There is constant motion, talking, sewing, knitting, garment making action and conversation.  I don't know how many people there are here but we had to set up 180 chairs for last night's fashion show.  One of the instructors here is Ron Collins, who teaches clothes fitting and making.  He happens to be a local boy who has made it big in the world of clothes making and is now creating patterns for Vogue.  I wish I was taking his classes, but then I wish I was taking the classes from Jan Bones, who teaches lingerie and sports/lounge wear, and from Lucy Neatby, who teaches knitting and from Liz Thompson who teaches quilting techniques... oh yes I did take one class from her.  It was a free motion class.  I really enjoyed Liz' style of teaching which was to give a bunch of lecture type instruction and then tell us to practice away.  Here are a couple of my practice pieces.

 

The other class I have taken so far is a two day class with Dianne Jannson.  She is teaching the Gypsy Wife quilt by Jen Kingwell. She is well known in Australia and beyond for here bright eclectic patterns.  I haven't made one before.  What I have learned about her patterns so far is that you get to try many different blocks and to learn about cutting different shapes for those blocks.  And that you can spend a lot of time agonizing over colours.  Here are the blocks that I managed to make in two days.  Yes I am very slow! They are sort of laid out the way they go in the quilt.  I have a lot more blocks to do.

 

 

Dianne is a lovely instructor.  She owns a quilt store in Pritchard, British Columbia called Di-Versity Quilting Supplies.  She says she has about 200 bolts of Kaffe Fassett fabric in her store right now.  I wish I could go there!

In addition to the daytime classes there is something going on here every evening.  The other evening Jan Bones taught her Secret Bag as a free class. 

She is a lovely woman, very elegant and very kind.  She designed these boxes when her kids asked her for square blocks for their juggling class.  She had the pieces all cut and serged for us.  What a lot of work for her with over 20 people in the class!  Here is my magic box, filled with my socks.  The boxes fold down flat when not in use.

I tried to add a link to Jan Bones website but... I am at a monastery and her site is called Lingerie Secrets and the computer policy of the monastery won't let me open the site.... :)  I think it is progressive that they have wifi available! 

I have to tell you about the monastery.  Such an interesting place.  But I'll keep that for another post, maybe later today.  I have a free day today, doing laundry and phoning home and the like, and of course keeping in touch with my blogging buddies!  Interestingly although the internet works fine in the building, one has to walk around the grounds to find a spot where the cell phone will work. 

Janet