NC Quilt Symposium

In the spirit of being more creative and trying new things, I’ve decided to attend the NC Quilt Symposium this year for the first time as a full time student!

I’m really excited about this because we really don’t get any huge quilting expos or shows here in North Carolina. Sometimes I wished I lived further west, or at least closer to Paducah, Houston, or Denver.

But this NC Symposium is something hosted every year by a different guild in NC. It’s really the best place to learn from some really talented quilters, and for the price, it’s really cheap as dirt cause most of these guys are really big names!
Registration just opened up yesterday and my friend just reminded me about it so I started checking out all the teachers, workshops, and lectures that are available.
Looking at the list, it makes me wish I could split myself into pieces so I could attend 2 or 3 workshops at once!

But so far I’ve decided to focus on 2 areas that I really don’t experiment with much: thread painting and applique.

I already know a little about thread painting, but nothing like the project being taught by Ellen Anne Eddy.

Her DragonFly Sky project (scroll down to see it) just looks really interesting and while I’m not a big dragonfly person, I have a sister who would love this little quilt.

I was really wanting to attend both of Ellen Anne Eddy’s workshops, then I realized that I could only sign up for 4 sessions or I really WOULD have to split myself into pieces!

The other workshop that really peaked my interest was “Let’s Make Waves” taught by Karen Eckmeier. I’ve seen this book dozens of times, but never flipped through it even though it’s intrigued me time and time again.

But unfortuntately this workshop was at the exact same time as “Free Expression Buffet” taught by Robbi Joy Eklow which I absolutely MUST attend.

Of course, when I’m going through a registration like this I always do it sitting at my computer so I can Google the names of every teacher and check out her books and website.

When I found Robbi Eklow’s book Free Expression: The Art and Confessions of a Contemporary Quilter and flipped through it at amazon, I just knew I needed to be in her class.

It’s always a tough call about what classes to take. Almost every class listed in the lineup sounds excellent!

But workshops can be a bit tricky for me. I’ve found that often times I learn better from a workshop if I don’t have my machine with me. I can just set back and take notes and ask the teacher all of my questions as they come up.

I’ve found this to be a good method for me because no matter how much quilting junk I bring, I can never get quite comfortable at my machine outside of my studio. I’m constantly dropping my scissors or losing bobbins and end up leaving without learning much at all.

I’ve also found that I learn more from the teacher if I’m less focused on an end product.

So that’s my plan for this June! If you live close enough to NC to consider it, you really should look into attending. It’s going to be a super fun time!

Let’s go quilt,

Leah Day