At first I thought, “I’m bringing way too much to work on during the retreat”.
Then I thought I’m bringing potential.
I had plans to work on two quilts, one due later this week and the next in the “Twilight in the Bronx” series. Beyond that I wasn’t entirely certain. A couple of friends also attended the retreat – one having attended for years. I brought the ironing board and iron, just in case and both were well used over the weekend. Most of the other quilters on the retreat participated in the watercolor quilt project, including one new quilter that I helped choose her fabric earlier in the week.
This is my workspace sometime Saturday morning. I’d taken my shoes off. I can’t work in a quilterly fashion with my shoes on. I’ve tried. I can’t think clearly with my shoes on. I prefer to be barefoot and even in this weather without socks. Does this make sense? No. Then again, it’ doesn’t have to. 🙂
The bag on the table holds the blocks for a school quilt I’m working on. Quite a few of the blocks have glitter on them. Glitter ended up everywhere. All over me, all over the table, all over the floor under the table. On my friends table – she helped me pull out basting stitches.
Two weeks ago I visited Quilting Possibilities in Bayville, NJ. I got the blue/blue & green striped bag on the floor. Yep, that handy tote came home with me. It held about 1/2 my thread stash. Yep, half, I have a lot of thread! Inspiration City!!!! I picked up a gift for a friend and a bunch of Superior Thread. I nearly picked up a yard of this amazing dark blue batik but decided to wait for now. I have a whole bunch of projects that are rumbling around my sewing room…more on that later.
Friday night I spent the entire evening drafting out the 8 pointed star on the fabric I chose for the front of the next of the “Twilight in the Bronx” series. I don’t have a name for this quilt yet this will happen a bit later. The central spines are all the same size and the blocks all line up. I drafted out 200 parallelograms (diamonds) for this. The next step is stitching around each one of them on batting then trimming out all of the excess batting. I’m trying to figure out if I want to use 8 colors or 4 colors for the star. I think I’m going to play on paper with both ideas and see what happens and which I like better. Do you see the peacock blue Radiance under the table? It’s sitting on a bag with a quilt in it. That’s going to be the back…I mean the front…no the back of the quilt. Let’s see if this pulls a “little miss sassy pants on me”.
I enjoyed watching the watercolor quilts come together.
Each one as different and unique as it’s maker. Listening to the buzz in the room as the quilters swapped for just the right fabric and realizing that the back side of the fabric is an option was so much fun.
This quilt to the left was finished with a narrow purple then a wider green border. She managed to quilt this before the end of the retreat. I cut bias strips of the purple for her to use as the binding.
Below is a new quilters layout.
sorry about the head turning option, I thought I saved this the other way. At the top you can see the quilters hands laying out two inch squares. She’s going to take the “quilt your own project” at hartsdale to finish this project.
She had lots of help learning to use her rotary cutter and ruler. She glued down each one of those squares prior to pressing onto the fusible. Let’s just say that the experience of other quilters in the group led to that decision!
Another friend spent the weekend working on piecing these strips to make a raffle quilt.
I let her use a spool of MasterPiece in the piecing – she loves it! A couple of strips gave her fits however we were able to work out the details and she’ll whip this quilt up in a jiffy!he strip sets will be cut up into 4 1/2″ squares the put back together to make a delightfully fun quilt.
Reminder: I have classes coming up and there’s still time to sign up for:
Beginner Freemotion Quilting
Advanced Machine Quilting (need students for this class)
Click on the bindings link to Hartsdale where the classes are offered.
Happy quilting!
Teri
What fun retreats are! Just being with fellow quilters is always a delight! I’m a no shoes kinda gal, except I have to wear slippers to keep my feet warm. Living in a house built on a concrete slab gives mighty cold floors!
I had to giggle at your comments about glitter. There was a lot of glitter around here at Christmas time, falling off the ornaments and trims and getting just everywhere.
My husband had a total glitter hissy trying to get it out of the carpet, up off the tile, etc. He finally just prolaimed, “Glitter is forever!” and gave up.
Sounds like you had a lot of fun. I’m with you I don’t like wearing shoes when I quilt…sometimes socks…but mostly not. Wish I lived closer would love to take some of your classes.
i’d love to have you as a student.
I too prefer to work with no shoes, I feel that I can contol things better. Don’t ask why. Someone asked me about it at my last retreat, guess they thought it was odd. I carry the little bootie socks in my supplies when it is cooler.
JayneCT
Even though I’ve never played “Where’s Waldo?”, I had what might have been the I’ve-found-him! experience while I was searching for the blue Radiance fabric in your bag!!!!
And oh yeah, I love love love that pink, orange, green, tan and black panel!!!
Thanks – it has since been cut into 4 1/2 inch diagonal squares, and then sewn into 60 inch strips. Soon to be sewn to the strips of “focus” fabric – which may take a back seat to the squares. (And just used the last bit of the Master piece thread…I am hooked and craving more.)
I do love the colors…and how they came together.
Motto of the weekend – Random is random.
We had great fun.
I also quilt shoeless. Had nice “winter” socks from LLBean to keep my toes warml.