Beading, Machine Embroidery, and Journaling classes

My ankle is mending well....in fact I'm up on both feet without the cast.....but moving slowly with lots of swelling. I'm taking it easy, though, so decided that this was a great time to sign up for an on-line class to stretch myself. Trouble was, that I found several that I would like to take that were being offered at the same time.....go figure! Soooooo, I whittled it down to three: Introduction to Textural Beading and Embellishment with Janet Lasher and Studio Journal as a Designers Work Horse with Sharon Boggon. Both of these are offered through http://www.joggles.com/ who offer a vast variety of online classes on a wide range of subjects. These two classes have begun. The other class that I signed up for is through http://www.quiltuniversity.com/ and is Begginning Machine Embroidery with Joanne Winn. This class begins the 18th.

I decided to take the beading class for a couple reasons. One is to improve my beading skills for crazy quilting and the other is that I bought some neat fabric for a jacket that just begs for beading embellishments. So far, we have learned some basic information and stitches and have been encouraged to use some patterned fabric as inspiration to make some sample pieces using these stitches and a variety of shapes and sizes of beads. I'm posting a work-in-progress picture of a sample that I'm working on and the almost finished piece (I need to even off the sides). This is an approximate 2" square. Now Sharon's class is harder to share my progress with you. Her's is more of a process to change my habits as relating to documenting my ideas.....not working through an entire project or journaling what I've already done....just capturing those inspirations that we get. I'm hoping that she will help me cure myself of lossing those fleeting ideas that we all get for future projects. I tend to jot something down on bits of paper....never to be found again, see something that intrigues me or inspires me and then forget where I saw it, or have a inspiring thought and then can't remember it later. Sharon's class is one to inspire us to document these inspirations for future use, where we can go back through them later to find and develop those of merit when we need them. We've only had one lesson so far and I can definately see how the concept will help me.....now it's to learn the process and then to make it a part of my routine.......wish me luck.....I'll keep you posted on how well I'm doing in implimenting her journaling ideas.

Now, the Machine Embroidery class is long, long overdue. I bought a Pfaff 2140 embroidery sewing machine over 5 years ago and have yet to use the embroidery unit. The dealer that I bought it from went out of business before I had a chance to get any training on the use of the embroidery part of the machine. The class offered on Quilt University will deal with all brands and models of machines, how to download patterns, and how to use all aspects of the embroidery machine. I'm really excited about taking it. I'll post some of my results as it goes along.

I've been organizing and pulling out my UFOs and am sorting out which ones to work on first. I'm going to religiously finish one UFO before I can start working on a new project. Hopefully, this will help me get some of these old projects done. I'm finding a few "class projects" that I may never finish and a couple "Why on earth did I ever start THIS?!?" projects. If it's just something that I lost interest in, I may find someone else that would like it and might want to finish it for themselves. If I find "disaster" projects, I'll toss them. Either way, I won't have to worry about them taking up space.

I did start working on my Grandmother's Flower Garden quilt while riding in the car.....yes....I said riding....not driving! It's, also, a nice project for doctor's offices, etc.

Well, time to elevate this ankle....the foot has gotten really swollen. So, until tomorrow......