The springboard for our trip was a weekend workshop at The Stars Aligned, which is the brain-child of Lynndi Enright. Lynndi designed the pattern for my very favorite purse, which I've been re-making every two years since 1997. She and her mother bought two run-down houses in Eugene and remodeled them into the perfect quilter's nest.
Let me take you on a little tour....
This quilt was hanging on the wall of our bedroom. Lovely quilts are scattered all about both houses, providing warmth and inspiration.
And here's our bedroom. Comfy and cozy, with french doors into the green, green back yard. And a shower as big as that king size bed. Gosh, I loved that shower.
From our room you'd walk down the hallway to the comfortable living room.
Which was right alongside the fully appointed kitchen and dining area. Lynndi provided eggs, muffins and coffee for breakfast and arranged for deli lunches during our stay.
If you walk through that door at the end of the kitchen, you enter the quilting studio.
I think it was originally a large garage, but it's been remodeled with great lighting, large work tables, and enormous cutting mats. Oh, and also a flat-screen TV, in case anyone wants to do a video presentation.
Did you forget some sewing tool you can't live without? Need a shot of fabric mojo? Want the pattern for that cute quilt hanging on the wall in your bedroom? No problem, it's here.
The delightful Lynndi cutting fabric for a happy quilter.
A small but carefully curated selection of quilting cottons, threads and tools.
And a display of great patterns, many designed by Lynndi. Including my most favorite purse pattern ever, there on the right.
The subject of the workshop was free motion quilting. There were 8 in our class; some of us were not quite sure what free motion quilting is (yep, that's me and Lisa) and others had already taken a class or two on the technique. Our teacher, Ken Casey, is a fairly recent transplant from Arizona to Eugene. He's been a quilter since his early 20's and he also had a career as a public school teacher. So; he doesn't just know how to quilt, he knows how to teach. In 16 hours he took all of us (yep, even me and Lisa) from a cussing crowd who thought free motion quilting was too darn hard to a room full of happily humming sewers who were having fun and thinking we'd be trying this on our next project.
Looks like a nice guy, doesn't he? And he is! But he kept us on task like a room full of unruly 7th graders.
He presented each of us with a large sketchbook and a black pen. He proceeded to clearly explain each step in the process. Then he'd have us gather round to watch him demonstrate each technique.
Then he's send us to our work tables to practice making the patterns with pen and paper. This was a great exercise. You got the feel of how to make the shapes and move smoothly from spot to spot before adding in the complication of controlling your sewing machine without the help of your feed dogs.
Once you had the feel of the pattern from your paper practice, making those same motions on our quilt samplers was much easier. In fact, I think I have become a free motion fan. I'm working on a small quilt right now, using a pattern I bought from Lynndi, and I plan to do some free motion around the border. Just to get my feet wet.
We were free in the evenings to make dinner and hang out at the house, or to wander around town. Eugene is a lovely spot. The Willamette River runs through town and there are hiking and biking trails along both banks. The weather was perfect. Just a lovely weekend!
I'll end with a couple more cool quilt photos.
Lynndi offers workshops on quilting techniques and she also rents out her space on Airbnb. She will even help you arrange a quilting weekend for you and 6 to 12 of your friends.
This is another of the quilt patterns Lynndi sells. I love how those curvy lines are made; totally doable, even for me.
These last two quilts were hanging as samples for a scrappy quilt retreat that's coming up shortly.
This last scrappy quilt looks very Gustav Klimt to me. The background isn't flashy but it reads gold.
Looks like a plush retreat space and great time.
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