"TW3!"

In case you’re not old enough to remember (sadly, I am), TW3 was the nickname of an NBC television show from the 1960s titled “That Was The Week That Was.” Looking back, the short-lived series was probably the pre-cursor to “Saturday Night Live” – in other words, it was an idea whose time had not yet arrived. But the title has stayed with me all these years, and it aptly describes my week at Quilting By The Lake.

QBL is an annual two-week convergence of some of the finest quilt artists in the world (visit the QBL web site and you’ll delight at the famous names you’ll see there). There are 2-day, 3-day, and 5-day classes offered, and I was fortunate to have secured a spot in Laura Wasilowski’s weeklong “Fusing Fun/Journal Quilts” workshop.

Her wall quilts are amazing, as you can see from these pictures (click on each one to see the stitching details), and she is an absolute treasure.

She is the self-proclaimed Dean of Corrections at the Chicago School of Fusing, and, after a week of cutting, fusing, embellishing, and learning the school’s fight song, we each received our diplomas (shown above). And we laughed a whole lot.

Be sure to check out Laura’s website; her hand dyed fabrics and threads are a visual treat. And I’ll be posting my finished “assignments” in the next few blogs, so you can decide if I truly earned my diploma.