QuiltCon Phoenix | Classes, Tour, and Lectures

For my own sake as well as yours, I thought I'd share about the classes, tour, and lectures I attended. As far as classes, there were two:

1. Off the Grid Improv Design with Allie McCathren @exhaustedoctopus. In this class, Allie shared about letting quilt blocks speak, and using non-grid methods to piece blocks of a variety of shapes and sizes into a cohesive whole. A special treat was seeing her sashiko quilt in person!

2. Fundamentals of Hand Quilting with Tara Faughnan @tarafaughnan. Rachel and I had taken a class from Tara at a previous QuiltCon, so we were excited to take another. I was especially pleased to learn about Tara's preferred thread for hand-quilting, and will be experimenting with that in my own work. We were reminded that not only are Tara's classes very informative, they are a lot of fun!

Something I had also done at a previous QuiltCon was to take a Special Exhibit Tour with Mary Fons @yomaryfons. Even though it began at 8 AM(!) it was totally worth it. This time, Mary focused on two exhibits: The Works of Tara Faughnan and Quilts of the Southwest, joined by National Heritage Fellow Susan Hudson @navajoms. It was definitely an hour well spent.

Then I was able to attend three lectures, all of which were excellent. 

1. Pushing Boundaries with Robert Bosscher @rjbosscher.

2. Unlocking Mexican Textiles & Embroideries Secrets with Lilia Jimenez Meza and Lina Owen. 

3. Keynote - Quilts as Art: Valuing Our Work with Tara Faughnan @tarafaughnan.

Right after the keynote, the Seattle MQG gathered for a group photo! I heard there were over 40 of us in attendance in Phoenix, so glad we could get at least a good number of us gathered together!