Retreat Fun with Friends

 In mid-November,  I was able to attend a local retreat with a dozen of the ladies from my church sewing group.  As usual before a retreat, I over plan.  I found myself cutting a bunch of kits and offered to the group if anyone needed something to work on, I would have some extras.  Whoa, the response was a bit overwhelming.  I figured two, maybe three people might say something but then probably not actually want one.  Nope, seven people responded right away.  Geesh, the pressure was on.  I knew pulling together that many novelty kits would be difficult in the time available, so I told everyone I'd see what I could do.  I decided some of the kits could be regular baby quilts from my scraps or stash, but they all needed to be quick and not complicated.  

As it turned out, I was able to prepare five novelty kits and five regular kits, (plus four novelty kits for me).  Aha, challenge accepted and met!  I still was a bit skeptical how many would actually get picked up but I knew any leftover I would eventually work on.  The four I set aside to work on had some more complicated piecing, odd half rectangle triangles or split rectangles.  So, I walked into the retreat with a large canvas bag of kits, all cut and ready to sew.  I had printed pages from my OneNote workbook, showing the block construction and general layout.  A few I wrote some very brief instructions, worried that it would turn into a bunch of people standing at my chair asking questions.  I shouldn't have worried as it went very well.  All 10 kits were taken and all but one was completed during the week.

It was kind of an interesting experience seeing others sew a kit I had put together.  Turns out I made several cutting and math errors, but all we were able to accommodate.  I especially enjoyed seeing how much fun everyone was having with the novelties.  I ended up working on a project someone else brought when I discovered I forgot to bring setting triangles for one of my projects.  It was such an enjoyable time, working together and sharing.  

This fabric was left from a previous large veterans quilt, just enough for a baby quilt.  This is Tina, with her very FIRST quilt.  She did a great job, even with the odd angle of the hexagon.  I think she may be hooked. Pattern is Strips and Stripes by Krista Moser.

Nancy F had fun with this pattern, entwined and I was able to use of the very last little bits of these very old fabrics from my stash.  I had forgotten to get photos, so some of these following pictures were from our Christmas party two weeks later.

Nancy S enjoyed working with the novelty fabrics, pattern is When I'm 64.  It uses lots of scraps but goes together very quickly.

Here is another quilt pieced by Nancy F.  I had to chuckle, she was sitting next to me at the retreat, and she just kept saying, "So Much Yellow"! The pattern uses alternating snowball blocks and nine patches for a great secondary pattern.

Lissa made two kits.  This first one is a rainbow version of Strips & Stripes.

This ladders quilt uses novelty fabrics.  I kept hearing Lissa exclaim about the fabrics from across the room.  Now they understand why I enjoy sewing with them. She did have some problems understanding my notes.  Now I know to put a picture of the block at the top of the instructions, instead of the bottom.  But I helped her with the ripping and she kept smiling.

Kay was a great sport about this kit.  I had miscalculated when I cut the black squares and left off one seam allowance.  So, we had to adjust the pattern a bit, but it still came out cute.  Fortunately, I had included a few extra novelty strips, so the first block cut wrong, wasn't a problem.

Jackie really enjoyed making this Disappearing Nine Patch.  I think she is planning to try it in different fabrics.  It is a very easy and flexible pattern. In the background is another quilt she was working on.

There were two more quilt kits, but I didn't get photos.  Shout out to Astrid and Debbie for also working on my kits.  If I can get photos with them at our next sew day, I will add them to this post. Thank you for everyone who worked on one of my kits.  My novelty drawers are a bit less stuffed than they were previously and now we have some great quilts to donate to Grace House.

Here are the four that I worked on at the retreat.  This first is called Kitchen Sink by Kim Bracket.  This is the one I forgot to bring setting triangles.  I also mis-cut a handful of pieces the wrong direction.  So those I fixed once I got home.  But I did most of the pieces at the retreat.  This one was very difficult to cut and time consuming to sew.  I don't think I'd do it again.

This pattern is BQ5 by Maple Island Quilts.  I've made several of their patterns which are designed to highlight large prints, but they work great for novelties too.  The most difficult part of this was getting the rectangle triangle blocks to go the correct direction.

This Chain Letter quilt is one of my favorites which I've made four times.  Except for the setting triangles, it is very easy and fun. 

I've made this lattice quilt several times, but the last time was for a little boy who is now in college.  I decided it was time to do it again.  I may add borders later but it is a nice size for a baby this way.

Here is the entire retreat group.  We are in front of the quilt put together from some blocks pieced by a lady from the Fort Worth group who made gift baskets for us.  Cricket had some gray and yellow fabrics that went perfectly with the paper pieced blocks. Mary Anne and Lee are also pictured below with Deb & Astrid in addition to the others pictured above.

It was such a fun retreat.  There were several late-night ladies which was fun - I hate being the only one up late.  And a sweet reminder of my AZ retreat friends.  At one point, Deb's husband called and she holds up her phone and yells, "Everyone say Hi to Bob" and we all did.  Which is EXACTLY what always happens at the VOS retreat when Cathy Codney's husband Bob calls.  Made me tear up a bit.  We stayed at Rock House Retreat in Santo, which I have visited before and is a great retreat center West of Weatherford..  As always Bridget Light was a wonderful cook and Jo Lynn O'Neal a great hostess.  A wonderful four days with such a great group of ladies.  Thank you all!

Not so "Forever" as I had thought

 After the last forever project that took a year, I decided I was ready to do a full blown English Paper Piecing quilt.  A friend from Arizona co-owns a pattern company called The Darty Kite Company which specializes in EPP, so I went browsing on their site. And found a pattern called Circular Reference.  That name is pretty funny as it is a common Excel error.  Very appropriate for me as a former accountant and Excel geek.  It was pretty intricate, and I figured it would take me at least a year.

Well, I didn't count on getting addicted.  The pattern was exceptionally well written, with good ideas on fabric selection and organization.  So I jumped in selecting fabrics, 90 in total.  The pattern designer has suggested making a color map, then photographing and filtering in black and white to evaluate contrast.  Which I did.  Over and over and over.  Finally I decided I was tired of fiddling around and just wanted to get started, so I jumped in.  Below is the final Color Map, which I sewed into a small top that I thought I might eventually put on the back of the quilt.  I used my little flannel flags to label each fabric, then put corresponding numbers on small zip lock bags to hold the fabrics.

The pattern company also sold some great acrylic templates as well as papers.  Lessons learned, get the larger templates (3/8" seam instead of 1/4" seam) because then it's easier to not get the glue too close to the fold and not too close to the edge.  But I managed.  Also I learned that the glue builds up on the papers and expecting to use them 4 times is optimistic.  I had some raveling occur on some patches because it was difficult to get the glue to release once it was so thick.  Another lesson was sharp needles pierce the papers too easily.  I found that quilting betweens actually worked best for me.  And finally, batiks are a little more difficult to EPP due to the tightness of the weave.  I still like batiks for applique where I can use super sharp needles, but the combination of trying not to pierce the paper but still get through the fabric made then a little difficult (and of course about 30% of the fabrics are batik).

I had a grand time organizing the cut fabric patches in the numbered Ziplock bags.  And glueing the pieces and laying them out was fun.  Oh, and honestly there is something so satisfying about finding the perfect thread color to match a 20-year-old fabric.  I set up a kit with threads and tools in a project case and took it with me everywhere.  Unfortunately, I didn't snap a picture of the sewing case, it looked pretty cool.  I spent so many evenings (and afternoons) sewing.  I had to force myself to take breaks to save my wrists and fingers.  Stitching the split hexagons was very satisfying.  Sewing the rows together was a bit challenging until I got the hang of folding the papers.  It was just so much fun to see each circle emerge.  I found the entire process of this quilt to be very much like an enjoyable jigsaw puzzle.  I was absolutely addicted.  I found I didn't want to work on anything else.  My poor machine felt so left out for these few months.  And I do mean few months.  I started the weekend of July 4th.  And I finished, including the quilting and facing, Today.  Three and a half months!  So much for "Forever".  

I wanted the quilting to emphasize the circles but not detract from the overall pattern.  I used smoke colored Monopoly thread and stitched 1/4" away from the seam line.  I decided I didn't want anything to detract from the pattern, so I didn't add a border and faced the quilt rather than adding a typical binding.  And it's all done and ready to hang.  

Only problem is, now what do I do!  I need to find another forever project that isn't so much fun so that it will last longer.

Hand Pieced "Forever Project"

Approximately eighteen months ago, I was visiting a quilting friend and noted he was working on a pattern that I had tried previously called Ring Cycles.  I had only made a table runner because it involved a large number of "Y seams", and I had gotten frustrated sewing those by machine.  We talked about all the Y seams, and he mentioned he was going to try sewing the rows together by hand which would be much easier.  That got me to thinking, what if I did a combination of piecing methods.  I was looking for a new "forever project", meaning one like my applique projects that I could carry around with me and that would be more complex than my usual machine pieced quilts.  I also wanted to try English Paper Piecing but wasn't ready to commit to a large EPP project.  I decided to make the centers of the rings using EPP as a test, the small 9 patches by machine, and put the entire thing together with hand piecing.  I made about 300 small 9 patches using scraps from my stash during a retreat weekend, then started on the EPP.  The entire quilt was completed earlier this summer and is displayed prominently in my sewing room.  A friend helped me find the perfect border fabric which I pattern matched and mitered the corners. I decided I had spent so much time piecing that the quilt deserved a fiddly border too.  I had a lot of fun with EPP stars but I admit I did eventually get tired of sewing the white triangles by hand.  Still much easier to match the intersections by hand than by machine.  I do love the optical illusion of this pattern which is a variation of the traditional Jack's Chain pattern.  I machine quilted using my long arm with some basic outline stitching as I wanted the piecing to be the focus.  And I do plan to enter it in my guild's next quilt show.

Details of some of the stars, the quilting and border fabric.

At one point my iron burped some rusty steam on the quilt, which I rushed to rinse out.  The rust came out but then some of the very old fabrics from my stash BLED in several places.  Apparently when I first started quilting I did not prewash.  Sigh.  I forced myself to keep moving forward and get it completed before I worried about the bleeding.  Once quilted and bound, I soaked it using the method from the blog post "Save My Bleeding Quilt".  It worked thank goodness.  In the pink/turquoise star below, the bleeding was especially bad, with a pink/purple pattern across the white.  But it's all gone now. Such a relief!

Summer Sewing

 I've been playing with some ideas snagged from the internet which have been sitting in my idea OneNote folder.  Some are novelty and others are using up scraps.  

This first one called Circling Novelties was somewhat easy, though I didn't plan well where I started stitching on the partial seamed square in the center.  By the time I worked my way around to the last seam, I had to some ripping to do.  Lesson learned, make that center square a bit bigger.

This was a scrappy idea from Quilt Momma (a speaker at a long ago Valley of the Sun retreat who I have been following on FB.  I was able to clear out a lot of random scraps and used a very old specialty ruler (Scrapmaster) which made cutting the triangles super easy.  I think it was one of my first ruler purchases and had forgotten all about it.  I remember being confused about how it worked.   But now after 20 years of quilting it was easy and very helpful.  I wasn't sure when I first put the blocks on the design wall as it was so chaotic, but now that it's done, I think it is one of my favorites.  Originally planned to be a donation, it's now my nap quilt and makes me smile every time I look at it.  I'm calling it Super Scrappy Triangles.

I recently completed a hand piecing forever project which I'll talk about in a separate post.  These are most of the left over 9 patches from that project, started about 15 months ago.  It made a nice donation baby quilt.

This very fun quilt was made using up 2.5 x 4.5 left over novelties.  The idea was from a free pattern called Finding Your Way Home by Free Spirit Fabrics.  I did not follow the pattern, but instead just started laying out the rectangles while referring to the pattern picture.  This version only uses one quadrant of the pattern but made a nice size for a baby quilt.  I'll definitely be doing this one again (or some variation).

The next quilt is a much-repeated pattern called Frugal Patch.  It is one way to use up some of the miles of piano key strips left over from fussy cutting.  It had been a few years since I had made one.

I still have some left over patriotic fabric donated by a quilting friend who has now moved to Chicago.  I decided to try and use up some of what I had on a pattern seen online. I'm calling it dancing waves and it is kind of a strange pattern to lay out, but it has lots of movement.  I was able to use up the beige star fabric from the donated fabrics. 

Another quilt to use up patriotic scraps.  This pattern from Bonnie Hunter's String Fling book is one I've made previously.  This time rather than the usual strings, I used fabric printed lengthwise for bindings.  I also was able to use some cream fabric from my stash, no idea where it came from as I never purchase off white fabrics.  But it worked perfectly for this quilt.  The red triangles are some VERY old fabric from my stash.

A quilting friend who lives in New Zealand made one of these that caught my attention.  She always has such great scrappy quilts and I've gotten several ideas (and a pattern) from her.  This pattern was designed by Revelation Quilts and called Faux Diamonds.  There is lots of cutting, then sewing, then more cutting, then more sewing.  But it does turn out very dramatic.  It made a small dent in my blue basket of scraps. 

This variation of shadow box turned out very nicely.  I like all the movement created by the dark vs light strips.

And another novelty using black and white which turned out very striking but was super easy to sew.  I made strip sets for the black/white/black and reverse sections between the novelty squares, so it went together very fast.

I've always been intrigues by tessellations and the art of E.C. Escher.  I've looked at several patterns over the years but always decided they were too intricate to piece.  Then I ran across this cat one.  The fabric was donated by my cousin, who thought it looked like something I'd like.  It was perfect for the cat bodies.

Catching up once again

Well, it has been a busy month, at least sewing wise.  I've been spending lots of productive hours in my sewing room and having a marvelous time listening to favorite audio books.  I realized today that I had nine quilts that I hadn't posted about yet so here is the update.

Last post, I had shown a quilt I called small donuts.  This one I'm calling large donuts.  As always, it's fun to group the novelties by color.  I also used up some random triangle left overs.

These next two I thought I would try using strips of black and white.  I always seem to use 2.5" strips in colors but the black and white have been sitting in the drawer.  These were fast to do.

This whirly gig pattern is a repeat that I loved enough to keep.  This one will be a donation.

I saw the inspiration for this pattern in a t-shirt quilt.  The optical illusion created by the black and white was such fun I wanted to try it with novelties.  I love how it came out and I'm sure I'll do another one eventually.

This black and white with rainbow is a repeat of one made during Covid.  Still trying to use up some of those black and white novelties that seem to hang around forever.

This pattern called Wild Thing is a favorite.  This is the 3rd time I've made it.  The first one was for a young lady who loved purple (she is now an adult).  The second I did in rainbow colors a few years ago and loved how it turned out, so thought I'd do it again.  Lots of trimming on all those triangles though.

I had noted this pattern from Donna Jordan's website, called Mix and Match.  I decided to use up a charm pack that I could never figure out what to do with.  The colors aren't my favorites, but it is a very interesting pattern.  It wouldn't work with novelties though, so not sure I'll do it again.

This pattern called Blooming Meadows was designed by Nancy Rink.  I used up some bright flannels I had gotten on sale a few years ago, along with the yellow from my stash.  This one will be in our guild auction in September.  

Phew, well that's the quick update.  Back to sewing!

A few more recent novelties

 As part of my spring cleaning, I went through my "Quilt Ideas" section of OneNote.  Some photo snips stayed as ideas and several were deleted.  And for some, I decided to draw them out in EQ and move them to "Quilt Patterns".  And of course, then I had to make up kits.   Here are the ideas (mostly from FW quilting groups and advertisements) which became patterns and are now tops hanging in the closet.  I am up to 18 tops now; I should probably spend some time quilting. 

This design I've seen several times recently.  I called it Winding Ribbons but I never saw the original name or designer.  It is a framed 4" square with HST on the corners.  The arrangement of the frame colors creates the optical illusion.  It was easy to piece, but I found putting the blocks together was fiddly.  I ended up piecing the columns, then pressing all seams alternating between rows.  And then I had to press the seams open when I joined the columns.  I really don't like pressing seams open.  I am always worried I am going to burn my fingers.  This one goes in the "interesting but probably never again" category.

This next idea was using the traditional drunkards path block.  The last time I did a drunkards path block was very early in my quilting life.  The baby I made that quilt for is now a senior in college.  I used a new ruler (Classic Curves) which has slots to cut several different sizes.  I also found a video called "curved piecing a drunkards path with two pins" by SewShelly.com that was very helpful. And it went together very easily.  So now I will have to make more drunkards path quilts. I took this top to a recent show & tell with a group I've been on retreat with last year.  One of the ladies asked to purchase it from me and she would finish it.  I was flattered and let her take it.  Again, I do not know the name of the pattern as I got the idea from a FB snip.

This is another traditional block, called Card Trick.  The fun part is the alternating black and white large blocks.  I pieced it a little differently than you might guess, with rows on point.  The black and white sections are pieced as HST & Hourglass blocks rather than separate triangles in each block.  I look at having to match all those points for the black and white triangles between blocks, and this method seemed much more likely to work consistently.  I ended up laying it out on my design wall and piecing it in rows, one at a time.  I really like the effect.  And all the points are perfect!

This is one of two version that I'm calling donuts.  This one uses 4" center blocks, with 2 x 4 rectangles and left over triangles from other projects.  I didn't try to match any of the triangles, I just wanted to use them up, so I broke my usual rule of not repeating.  I have another version with 2" center squares which is a kit and will post it when completed.

This is a very quick and scrappy quilt with 2x4 rectangles framed with 1" strips, alternating with 4" squares.  Using the gray scraps let me use both black and light novelties which I can't usually do in the same quilt.  I also was able to use some brown novelties that never seem to make it into quilts because so many of my quilts are color focused.  It's nice to do really scrappy sometimes and just see how it turns out.

A bit of this and a bit of that

 What have I been doing?  Well since the last post I've worked on a few things.  I made a bunch of name tags for new members to my guild. Pretty fun and quick to do.

 I then pieced a few more of the novelty kits I had put together.  This first one I had seen -n a quilting group on FB.  It worked great with the novelties and was very easy to sew but a little complicated to layout.  My row/column flags really helped keeping things in the right order.

This one is called floating squares, and I've made it several times over the years, but it looks so cool.

And this one is actually left over blocks from another quilt that got too large, so I made it into two quilts.  The border fabric is some very old fabric from my stash of little shoe prints. 

But mostly what I've done for the last several weeks is to finish a 13-year-old UFO.  These are four small quilts made from my father's ties, one for my sister, my niece, my daughter and myself.  I had started it years ago and got discouraged after 9 blocks & packed it away.  In going through boxes in my sewing closet I found it again and decided I was going to finish them.  And promised myself I wouldn't work on anything else until they were done.  I didn't quite keep that commitment.  After all the blocks were pieced, I took a break to piece a nice cotton quilt which was so nice to work with after those slippery ties.  But I did get the four quilts finished right after that.  I still need to add labels then get them mailed.  I do like them much better now that they are all together.  The black sashing really helped it come together and they kind of shimmer.  And it's very nice to have an old project completed.  It is going to feel strange when I don't have all four.  Some friends have suggested I make myself 3 more to keep but NOT right now.  I really did not enjoy foundation piecing those silk & poly fabrics.  But I did keep the left over fabrics, so you never know.  Maybe in another 13 years - haha.

 

I did run across my inspiration in my OneNote file.  Based on the date 2013, looks like the UFO was "only" 12 years old, not 13. LOL

Partly because dealing with the slippery tie fabrics was so frustrating, and partly because I had seen this pattern and wanted to give it a try, I put this quilt together as a break from the ties.  No idea what I'll do with it.  Initially I thought it would be a donation, but I'm sort of attached to it so I might keep it.  I do love secondary patterns.  All these fabrics were either from the donation table or left over from other projects. 

 

Another pattern I had seen in a magazine that I wanted to try.  It was pieced using strip sets which was interesting.  This one will probably be a donation for our guild's comfort quilt program.

And now I'm all out of kits, so I need to spend some time cutting novelties.  But first I have to finish the taxes - ugh!