Thursday, November 11, 2010

Lancaster Instructor Sue Nickels: In Her Own Words

I started quilting in 1978 after my daughter was born because I wanted to make a baby quilt for her.

Sewing, knitting, cross stitch and other crafty things have always been part of my life. My major in college was art, so quilting seemed like the perfect thing for me. I have been quilting for 32 years!

I do have a designated sewing room/office. My favorite feature about my workspace is my sewing table and my BERNINA sewing machine. I have a table that is very deep behind my machine so I can quilt even very large quilts on my home sewing machine. The sewing machine also sits down in the table and the slide-on tray is flush with the table for easy movement of the quilt. I also have a nice design wall and good lighting. Next will be better storage space for my fabrics and supplies!

My quilting specialty is creating quilts using machine techniques. I teach machine quilting and machine appliqué for the traditional quilter. My classes are nice for beginners as well as experienced machine quilters. I am always striving to keep growing and to use my machine to achieve the best quality results. I am teaching mostly machine quilting workshops at Lancaster. I absolutely love to teach beginners because machine quilting seems very intimidating to most quilters. I love to show that anyone can be a good machine quilter with some good basics and practice.

My favorite story from a class (this was a 5-day retreat) was a student who forgot her power cord for her sewing machine and was so upset that she wouldn't be able to use her machine all week. She called her husband and asked if he could ship it to next day UPS. He could not find the cord at home so he went and bought one at the local shop and said he would ship it to her to arrive the next day. At about 6pm that same day- in walks her husband with the power cord -- he drove 5 hours to bring it to her! We dubbed him the best husband ever and a lot cuter than any UPS driver! (The kicker was when he asked where her original cord might be as he couldn't find it at home, she said she couldn't imagine where it had gone -- he went to sewing machine travel bag, dug around a bit and pulled out the original power cord and he wasn't even mad -- just said he was happy to see her!)

On a more personal note, I am a new grandma! Stella Holly Kavanagh was born May 21st and is now five months old. They live in Philadelphia and we live in Michigan, so we don't get to see her enough, but I will be a little closer while I am in Lancaster!

Sue is teaching the following classes at the AQS Quilt Show and Contest in Lancaster, March 16 - 19, 2011.

#42809 Machine Quilting Tips and Tricks (lecture)




#43503 Stitched Raw-Edge Applique – Tulips and Heart










 # 45501 Drawing Fabulous Feathers













#48101 Machine Quilting: Feathers and Stippling










#48502 Machine Quilting Basics; #48514 Machine Quilting Basics
This is the same class offered twice.



Click here to register for the Lancaster show and to sign up for one of Sue's awesome classes.

1 comment:

Nancy said...

Hi Sue...I am sure you don't remember me, but I took a class from you a while ago in Columbia, Missouri. I wanted to take both machine applique and machine quilting but alas the machine applique class was filled, so I bought your book.
Thanks so much for the fun class. I started the class knowing very little about machine quilting and left doing feathers!!