Bonnie Hunter Comes to Maine

It has been too long since I posted to the blog. Life is busy, and I've been doing lots of quilting and knitting but just haven't taken the time to post about it.

The Pine Tree Quilters Guild in Maine contracted with Bonnie Hunter quite some time ago to come and teach a couple of workshops and do a trunk show for us. I am a big fan of Bonnie's; and after what seemed like an interminable wait (for me), she finally arrived this week.

I took her workshop for the Jamestown Landing quilt yesterday and had a blast. Jamestown Landing is one of the quilts from Bonnie's book, String Fling. I've been quilting a long time, and her book explains well enough how to do the piecing for this quilt, so my objective in taking the workshop was to learn more about the methods that she uses to piece her quilts; and I was not disappointed. I get so used to doing things a certain way that I don't stop to think if there might be a better way to do it, so I had some lightbulb moments during the workshop.

Bonnie took lots of pictures of our workshop and uploaded them to both her blog and her Facebook page, so you can see more there.

We received instruction on the Easy Angle tool to make half square triangle units, and she also showed us how she makes her string blocks. Jamestown Landing is composed entirely of these half square triangle units and small string blocks, arranged in an unexpected way. I only finished 14 or 15 string blocks and maybe about 70 half square triangle units, so I have lots of work left to do.

Today Bonnie did her trunk show for the membership. She is a very enjoyable speaker and shared lots of information about her scrap users system and the way she actually chooses and uses her scraps.

Her trunk show was marvelous. I thought about taking photos, but I really just wanted to listen to the lecture and look at the quilts. Besides, the photos of the quilts in her books are much better than any I might have taken at the presentation, and I have all of her books.

Bonnie has one more workshop scheduled for tomorrow in Augusta, then she'll be moving on to her next engagement. I asked her yesterday if she'd been to all 50 states to teach, and she said she'd been everywhere except the Dakotas. If you ever have an opportunity to see Bonnie Hunter, don't miss it.