Gillian Travis lives in a small village in the north of England. Her classes present modern uses for embroidery and quilting. Gillian’s cruise classes have been designed to provide memory pieces for this special cruise. I attended a class with Gillian last summer and loved the class and her.
Jen Kingwell is a well known quilt designer. Her quilts are crowd pleasers. She will be offering a hand piecing class, a curved piecing class and an applique class. The highlight of Jen’s classes are her unique sense of color and print. She has a lot of information in her creative brain, which she shares willingly.
I’ll be teaching a hand piecing class, an embroidery class and an English paper piecing class using a half hexagon shape. The embroidery class will be sewing on a cutout of your initials. These are all fun, no- stress classes.
I know all the teachers on this cruise. I know them as friends and I know them all to be excellent teachers. I am looking forward to spending time with them on the cruise. I also look forward to meeting all the students. Husbands are welcome too. My husband will be on board… and he’ll talk to anyone! If you haven’t signed up for the Road to California Baltic Sea Cruise, please do. We offer lots of fun, interesting experiences and lots and lots of yummy Holland America food!
The ship is filling fast and reservations are about to close so don’t delay! For pricing and more details go to: Worldofquiltstravel/Baltic.htm]]>
Welcome to the Road to California Blog
Road's Baltic Sea Cruise
March 14th, 2018Meet Road 2018 Vendor and Teacher i-bead.com
March 6th, 2018 Beadwork – the art of using glass beads to embellish fabric art, jewelry, and other personal items – is as popular as ever.
i-bead.com specializes in offering kits that are easy to put together and ready to go. They are perfect to take along on road trips. Most of the fabrics in the quilt kits come from either Sew Batik or Anthology. The beads Amy uses in her kits come from all over the world. Some of the beads featured in her booth were from Japan as well as some glass, hand-pressed buttons from the Czech Republic. 
Road 2018 was i-bead.com’s 5th time vending at the show. Sharing space with Amy in the i-bead.com booth was Cloud—a white shepherd medical alert dog that adores children.
Cloud was modeling one of i-bead.com’s dog collars that are handwoven and fair traded from the southern tip of the Baja Peninsula. 
In addition to vending, Amy also taught three popular bead classes at Road 2018:
Empress Bracelet
Celtic Dance Bracelet
Just a Little Snippy
To learn more about i-bead.com or to get information about joining Amy for one of her bead adventures, please visit her website.
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Crossing The Border To Road
March 2nd, 2018 Road to California 2018 hosted 42,000 guests!!
Terryl and Kris are sisters. Terryl lives in Walnut, California and Kris is from British Columbia, Canada. Kris also brought with her her “quilting buddy,” Maureen, another British Columbia resident. Kris and Maureen belong to the same quilt guild, the Horsetty Quilt Club. All three have spent decades quilting and have attended Road to California 5 times.
Part of their Road experience was going on one of the bus tours prior to the show opening. They were looking forward to visiting Robert Kaufman Fabrics on the tour. What do they like best about Road? Terryl likes all the variety the show has to offer as well as meeting new people. Kris couldn’t get enough of the beautiful quilts. And for Maureen, she liked escaping the snow.
Also on the bus tour were two more Canadians, Susan and Jean, from British Columbia. This was their third Road bus trip which is always led by The Traveling Quilters, Lynn Crawford and Pam Overton. Susan and Jean not only enjoy seeing quilts together, they also work together. Susan is a family doctor and Jean is her office manager. Susan has been quilting for five years while Jean describes herself as a “fabric artist.” Jean doesn’t quilt but she does sew, paint, and enjoys “everything arty.” They were looking forward to seeing some of the sites of Los Angeles on the tour like Farmers Market and the Graber Olive House. Both ladies took classes before the show started. They learned how to work with silk and how to use the Curvalicious Ruler. 
Liz and Dougal (Ann) live in Vancouver, British Columbia and for the past 12 years have served on committees for the Canadian Quilters Association’s Quilt Canada Show, a national, juried show. Liz helps with lectures and workshops. Ann is Co-Chair. In 2018, the show will be held May 31-June 2nd at the Vancouver Convention Center.
Road 2018 was their first time at the show. Liz and Ann remarked that they like to plan trips around quilt shows to places they have never been before. They had heard Road “was a good show” and were not disappointed. They loved the quilts, the vendors, the ideas and they really enjoyed “Preview Night.” “It was fabulous,” said Ann.
How far will you travel to get to Road in 2019? ]]>
Meet The Designers Behind Cherrywood Hand Dyed Fabric's Van Gogh Challenge
February 28th, 2018 Cherrywood Hand Dyed Fabrics continued its tradition of hosting remarkable Special Exhibits with van Gogh. Using a color palette of Cherrywood hand dyed deep blue hues, fabric artists were given the challenge of creating their interpretation of van Gogh’s work.
Cherrywood received 465 submissions from four countries—the most ever for their specialty challenges. Because of the overwhelming response, two travelling exhibits were created: French and Dutch—symbolizing both areas of van Gogh’s important life work. The larger French exhibit was shown at Road to California 2018.
Some of the artists were able to come to Road 2018, meet guests, and autograph their entries in the Cherrywood van Gogh book, a compilation of all the quilts.
Karen Courtney, a resident of British Columbia, Canada, chose orca whales for her theme. The challenge for her was figuring out how to make and use fabric tubes for her background. It took 4-5 tries to achieve the look she wanted. Karen has been quilting since 1992. This was the first time she ever entered a challenge. It was also the first time she had gone to Road. She thought the show was “really great” and loved the warm weather!!
The Cherrywood Choice Award was presented to Lynn Randall for her entry. Lynn said she was “humbled” for receiving the award that followed the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place winning designs. Lynn shared that she stood on the exact spot where van Gogh painted the picture she used for her inspiration one year before she created her quilt. Lynn is a resident of Dunlap, Iowa—population 1,100. She has been quilting for over 30 years and said that she learns something from every quilt challenge she enters. It was trying to create a brush stroke effect to achieve realism that challenged her the most with this project.
Sally Wright “adores’ Cherrywood fabrics and has used them in many of her quilt projects in the past. An Art History major in college, she has long been a fan of van Gogh. The hard part for Sally was coming up with an original idea. After that, it didn’t take long for her to sew her quilt.
“I love blue and I love van Gogh,” said Michelle Baker. “I love to go camping to Lake McDonald and see the borealis over the lake.” Previously to this project, Michelle considered herself a modern quilter and was used to working with large pieces of fabric. She loved the experience of using “teeny tiny” pieces (shreds of fabric actually) to create her brush strokes.
San Diego resident, Kay Laboda, was inspired to enter this challenge after seeing Cherrywood’s Lion King exhibit. Growing up in Texas, Kay has always loved stars. She had four different ideas before she settled on her composition and wasn’t satisfied with her choice until she was all done. Her advice to other quilters: “Don’t give in. Don’t give up.”
Angie Gohn was used to using bigger fabric pieces and lots more color prior to this piece. Her biggest challenge was the size of the quilt as well as using less color. Drawn to van Gogh’s boots and shoes, she decided to modernize them with hi-tops.
“Live, Love, Breathe Quilts,” says Margaret Vachon. Familiar with Cherrywood challenges (she saw Wicked and participated in Lion King), little did Margaret know that a picture she took in 2013 at the Centre Pompidou Museum of Modern Art in Paris would be used four years later for another Cherrywood challenge. Margaret said she lets “Cherrywood fabric speak to me.” She started sewing not really knowing what she was going to do and before she knew it, her piece was created and finished in just 2-1/2 months. 
Knowing that she loved art and art galleries, a friend encouraged Diane Winder, a quilter for 10 years, to enter this challenge. When it was all said and done, Diane wished she would have been “braver” in her design and “experimented” more. Road thinks Diane and all the other fiber artists who entered this challenge were very brave to share their talents in this fabulous exhibit.
The 2018-2019 Cherrrywood Challenge honors the legendary singer Prince with his favorite color: purple. Entries will be accepted until July 2, 2018. For details on the Prince Challenge, please visit the Cherrywood website. 
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The Nite Owl Quilters Guild
February 23rd, 2018 Carolyn Reese founded the current model of Road to California 23 years ago. She also founded her local quilt guild, Nite Owls. Over 200 members meet the fourth Thursday of each month at 7:00 PM at the James L. Brulte Senior Center located at Central Park in Rancho Cucamonga. 
The guild is all about sharing homegrown talent and experience in promoting the art of quilting. Member Elizabeth said she appreciates how the guild brings in speakers as well as offers in-house workshops taught by their members. Two Saturdays a month, the guild offers Open Sew Days 10:00 AM – 4:00 PM at the center. Members are invited to come and bring their unfinished projects and receive expert advice from experienced guild mentors.
[caption id="attachment_5600" align="aligncenter" width="480"]
Carolyn Reese showing off her stuff!![/caption]
Nite Owls is also known for contributing “lots” of charity quilts to local hospitals (Kaiser in Fontana and San Antonio Regional Hospital in Upland), to the local police department to be used in comforting children who need to be picked up in police vehicles, and to area homeless programs.
The guild was on hand at Road to California 2018, selling tickets for their current raffle quilt, Rhapsody in Blue. 
Road to California appreciates and supports the tradition of local quilt guilds, making a difference in their communities.
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2018 Marie White Masterpiece Award
February 20th, 2018 Marie White Masterpiece Award winner, Pat Holly, received $7,500 for Turkish Treasures from Sponsor Road to California, Inc.
The Marie White Masterpiece Award is the second highest cash award given out during Road to California’s annual quilt contest. Named for the mother of Road to California founder, Carolyn Reese, Marie White was very active in the quilting and doll making world until she passed away seven years ago, six weeks shy of her 93rd birthday. Marie and Carolyn established The Fabric Patch fabric store in 1981. Their store was featured in the third issue of American Patchwork & Quilting Magazine, naming it one of the top thirty stores in the United States. Marie’s specialty was doll making. She also loved working with ribbon embroidery and crazy quilting.
The 2018 winner of this prestigious award was Pat Holly for her quilt, Turkish Treasures.
6 Tips For Your Quilt Business
February 17th, 2018 Jamie Wallen, has owned a longarm quilting business for over 20 years.
During his classes, not only did he help students improve their longarm quilting skills, he also shared advice about how to be a successful lonngarm quilting business owner based on his own experiences.
Practice. Practice. Practice.
Practice your craft at least a half an hour a day by drawing designs on paper, creating “muscle memory” for when you take the design to the machine. As you practice, learn new designs and techniques. Be willing to learn and grow with your talents and skills.
Go Online.
Jamie shared that there are 100’s of quilt block quilting design ideas online. Search for contour line quilt blocks. Print them off and practice the designs. Also search for current trends in quilts and come up with three different ways to quilt a particular designed quilt.
Clients Will Come
“No need to worry if you will get clients, ” assured Jamie. “They will come.” He recommended practicing your business pitch right along with practicing your quilting techniques. You won’t have time to practice when a customer drops off their quilt.
Sharon was a student in one of Jamie’s classes. She has been quilting for over 20 years and started longarm quilting four years ago when her kids got out of school and she had more time. She has owned a longarm business, Bee Squared Quilts, for 2 years. At first, she quilted for friends and their friends. She is ready to expand her business so that is why she took Jamie’s class. Her first longarm quilting class was with Jamie at Road 2016. She loved learning his design techniques and hearing his stories, so she signed up again in 2018. Her best take-away? Keep drawing.
Use Your Time Wisely In Your Studio
When Jamie first started his business, he found he was spending 10-12 hours in his studio but that he was wasting a lot of time. “There are lots of distractions and interruptions when you work out of your home. It’s takes self discipline to have a successful business,” stressed Jamie. Some things that Jamie does to stay on track is to have a running timer on his machine. When he walks up to the machine, he hits it on and whenever he walks away, he hits it off so that all through the day he keeps a running total of the time he actually spends quilting. Today, he has cut down his quality time to 7-71/2 hours quilting.
Jamie recommends avoiding television when in the studio. Television causes a distraction because you often look away to see what it on. He prefers books on tape or podcasts because they keep you at the machine. “We need stimulation while we quilt and non-visual is best.”
Another suggestion is to take advantage of answering machines and voicemail. Stop every hour to stretch, check your messages, and do other tasks.
Make Friends With Your Clients.
Jamie shared this observation: “Your clientele are not just there for your services. They are also looking for friends. Make appointments with your clients to show you respect their time. Find out about them, their work, their interests. Offer them coffee. A mediocre quilter who treats his or her client kindly will be more successful than a superb quilter who doesn’t take an interest in their client.”
Another one of Jamie’s students, Chrissy, is new to the longarm quilting business world. She says she puts a lot of love in the quilting she does for her business, House of Threads. Chrissy said she liked “the touch and feel” of the machines during her class. She appreciated the opportunity to meet fellow quilters, see Jamie’s quilts up close, and have him answer questions. “Jamie is amazing.”
Tell The Truth.
“The human eye only corrects 75% of what it sees so the likelihood of your client catching a mistake isn’t that high. Still, it is better for you to bring it to their attention. Always come clean with your client if you mess up. Don’t try to cover it up. And fessing up to a mistake doesn’t necessarily mean you will have to always undo your mistakes.”
Jamie’s tips can be adapted for anyone who owns their own business but especially for longarm quilters.
]]>Jamie Wallen And The Art Of Longarm Quilting
February 13th, 2018 Innova machines under the tutelage of Jamie Wallen.
Prior to becoming a long arm quilter, Jamie was a Registered Nurse for over 20 years. Burn out with the profession settled in after working 18-hour days, 7 days a week for so long. One day, in the mid-90’s, Jamie went to a friend’s house to help him put up a fence. His friend’s wife was a piecer and had a quilting magazine laying around. Jamie picked it up, thumbed through it, and saw an ad for a longarm quilting machine. He bought the machine 2 days later!! Right from the beginning, it was never about the piecing for Jamie; he was all about the longarm quilting. He recalled, “I saw the potential for ‘painting on a canvas of what was finished.’”
For two years, Jamie did nursing and quilting was his hobby. In those days, there was no support for longarm quilters so “you had to make it up as you went,” shared Jamie. He did a lot of practicing on bed sheets to come up with ideas. Soon, the quilting industry began to boom—and so did his business. How many quilts has he quilted? He stopped counting three years ago when his total reached 6,500!! 
A resident of Michigan City, Indiana, he and his partner, Rich, travel extensively with their business, Quilters Apothecary. In 2017, they spent 34 weeks traveling over 60,000 miles driving and flying, including a one-month stint in Australia teaching in five different cities.
Jamie got in to teaching as a way to be a mentor for friends who made a big investment in their longarm machines but didn’t know what to do with them. Today, he values teaching as a way to be a caretaker for the industry.
Jamie teaches at Road approximately every other year (he previously taught in 2013 and 2016), and his classes sell out fast. Being from the East, he enjoys coming to Ontario during the winter. He appreciates the creative energy found at the show and all the inspiration that it has. Jamie says his students are always “happy and ready to learn.”
During his classes, Jamie demonstrated drawing and quilting different designs as he shared personal stories of what it like to be a longarm quilter. One thing Jamie stressed with his students was the necessity of putting aside time each day for practicing. With drawing, practicing at least a half hour to 45 minutes will help build muscle memory which eventually translates over to working on the machine. “Drawing designs is addictive. Anything a pencil can do, a longarm does,” Jamie said. He recommended keeping a TV tray, a folding chair, and some drawing tablets in the family room and use them when watching television. 
With quilting, Jamie said that the biggest problem is waiting until you have a quilt before you start quilting. “You need to practice a lot before you lay down a quilt on the machine.” He added, “Every new quilt design is like learning cursive. It will look ugly at first,” but over time, “repetition brings rhythm.” Looking for new longarm quilting ideas? Jamie recommends going online. “Search for contour line quilt blocks. There are 100’s of quilt blocks to print off and practice.” He also said to look for popular quilts, print a picture of them, and come up with three ways to quilt it.
What are the biggest changes Jamie has seen with longarm quilting since he started? For one, it has become more of an industry than merely a hobby. People recognize its value and are willing to pay appropriately. Another change is how quilts are looked at in general. No longer are they just functional fabric items. They have evolved into family heirlooms where quilters preserve lasting legacies. Jamie shared that the current biggest trend is photo quilts—4×4 inch photos on fabric.
To learn more about Jamie Wallen and his quilting tools, please visit his website.
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Meet Road 2018 French Vendor: Les Secrets de Marie
February 10th, 2018 
Marie also has a strong love for America. It stems from her father’s experience of meeting a U.S. soldier during World War II. Her father was just 13 years old, living in South Africa. The soldier gave her father a ring to remember him and America by. Knowing the story, Marie had wanted to come to the U.S. ever since she was a little girl. In all, she has visited America 20 times.
Quilt Market in October, 2017 was Marie-Claude’s first foray into the United States retail quilting community. After that successful show, she sent her fabrics and quilts back to France. Then, she found out six weeks before Road to California, that a booth was available. It would have been too expensive to ship everything back to the States, so she had to become creative in introducing her product line at the show. That’s when she came up with the idea to have miniature versions of her projects, packaging them in small wooden boxes.
Her clever idea soon proved extremely popular and was a real hit with conference goers.
Marie personally made everything in her booth. All of the materials contained in the Les Secrets de Marie boxes featured French artisans and French products.
In addition to her business selling and showing French Farmhouse quilts and designs, Marie also organizes tours for French quilters. Her first book, French Farmhouse-Quilts with Rustic Simplicity, will be available from Martingale Press in May, 2018.
Marie thoroughly enjoyed her time at Road 2018 and thought the experience was “just wonderful.”
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Road 2018 Best of Show
February 7th, 2018 Congratulations to Claudia Pfeil who won $10,000 from Sponsor Gammill Quilting Systems for her quilt, Fractal 
Claudia Pfeil is a quilting pioneer in Germany.
The fall of 2004 totally changed Claudia’s world. She had brought Quilt & Co. as a vendor to the French quilt show, Carrefour du Patchwork. Next to her booth was APQS. She played everyday on their Millennium quilting machine and was hooked with longarm quilting. She purchased her longarm machine in 2005, finding a way to “express myself through fabric and thread that was exciting, addictive and fun.” Claudia says free-motion quilting gives her the freedom–“like an eagle flying over the mountains”– to play with spaces and quilting designs.
When Claudia begins a project, she likes to work with a theme. Themes challenge her, get her out of her comfort zone, and start her thinking “out of the box.” Her theme for Fractal was kaleidoscopes. Claudia searched Google for pictures of kaleidoscopes and endless links introduced her to fractals. She admits that before then, she really didn’t know what fractals were. She became fascinated by their dynamic , vitality and vibrancy.
Before falling asleep at night, she would collect dreams and visions of her theme and began thinking about how she could translate her visions into realistic designs. She began by preparing circles in different sizes out of white Dupioni silk on freezer paper templates. Next, she drew designs on to the circles, first with pencil, then if she was satisfied, she drew them with a black pen (Faber-Castell) filling in the details and painted them with acrylic colors (Stewart Gill) and Tsukineko ink pens. Playing and creating the layers is one of the main parts of the quilt. She tried to enhance this impression with the choice and placement of quilting designs. Using 100 wt black silk thread, it took several backtracking stitches around the outlines of the circle designs to repeat and enhance the black drawing lines. The design was couched with different yarns ( for example Razzle Dazzle and Yli ) around all outlines, respecting again the different layers to create a foreground and a background. Her final touch? 30,000 Swarovski Crystals!!! Claudia says her entire process took approximately 10 months to complete.
Besides learning about fractals, Claudia also learned by trial and error how to use mixed types of ink and paints and pens while making Fractal. She commented, “I learned that it is hard to get rid of pencil drawings on silk.”
When she received the news that Fractal had won Best of Show, it was around 5:00 AM in the morning in Germany. Claudia said she woke up “unintentionally” to check the time on her cellphone and saw that she had received several messages on Facebook telling her of her award. She went downstairs, opened her email and saw the official announcement from Road. Claudia said she was “shocked” when she found out she had won.
Where does Claudia go from here with her quilting? “I am working on my new project for 2018. I am bit behind my own time schedule this time. But the quilt is loaded on the machine and waiting to be quilted. In May, I will travel to the USA to teach at several APQS Showrooms in Raleigh, Louisville, Austin and Dallas. In November, I will be at Quilt Festival in Houston and…. I am soooo hoping to be back at Road to California next year!”
Congratulations Claudia Pfeil for your outstanding entry.
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