Last month I had an excellent trip to TX to teach at the Rio Grande Valley Quilt Guild and the Midland Quilt Guild. The Rio Grande group has a huge influx of winter members who flee the northern climes for the warmth of TX. My Gateway to Mongolia class was oversubscribed so they asked me to teach it two days in a row to accommodate the extra students. The classes were prior to the guild meeting and several of the ladies finished the large center Olzii block in time for Show and Tell. It was wonderful to see a whole stage full!

We had a spacious church hall in Weslaco for the workshops. I love seeing all the different fabrics my students bring to class and the emerging variety of blocks. The block looks odd during the piecing, but as soon as the background setting triangles are added, it comes to life. There were some nice color transitions as shown with the green to turquoise example. The blue with red outer edges worked well because the value gradation was maintained. The pink and purple on the lime green background glowed. In the bottom left example only three fabrics instead of the usual five were used. There is just one fabric in place of the gradation of three which still produced a handsome looking block.