As many people around the Portland area are aware that the  MQX West show opened this week. It was everything I had hoped for and then some. The Classes offered this week taught by some very well know quilters, who not  only create their own award-winning work, but  teach as well.

I can tell you a bit about my own experiences, to give a firsthand view. I was able to take two hands on classes,  that I enjoyed and I’m so glad that  I signed up. My only regret was not having signed up for more.

Karen McTavish’s class on McTavishing was one of my highlights, she is one of my quilting favorites. I’ll admit it, I’m a MT devotee. Having a hands on class with her as the instructor was, of course, as awesome as it sounds.  I have a couple of pictures taken during  Karens class, as well as s few  photos of  her two award-winning quilts.

Of special interest to me was that this year there were several  classes for the domestic machine quilters, not  just for long armers. I’m not aware if this is a first, but it is happy news to me

Teri Lucas was the instructor for my second class, “Let Your Feet Be Fancy & Free”, more machine quilting.  Again, what an excellant class and instructior. She covered so much ground in a short day, but never rushed . She took the time to give a lot of personal attention to each student. This class was packed with information, including many fun quilting motifs to take your quilting to the next level.

My friend attended a class taught by Cindy Needham, ” Beginning Machine Quilting”, which she was very impressed by. Cindy was, like many of us, a self-taught machine quilter. She described problems it presented her, not knowing some very basic information. Some of us have had that same experience, not knowing about needle sizes and what they are used for. Machine tension, so much more.

Learning by trial and error was the hard way, and her purpose was to present much basic information to help new machine quilters get a solid start without the trial and error.

There were so many other great instructors with a great selection of classes; Dawn Cavanaugh, Cathy Franks, Jamie Wallen, Sally Terry, Angela Walters, Judy Woodworth, Kim Brunner, Cathy Wiggins, and the list goes on and on. I can’t begin to list the many incredible instructors and classes offered.

e

I have pictures of Karen’s quilts on my facebook page, my show ones were not very good.http://facebook.com//BarbaraHarmsFiberArt.

Related articles

• Mqx!! (quiltingismytherapy.com)  Angela Walters had some great sounding classes,  Techniques for quilting the negative spaces sounded really good.