Retreat Report #1

I am back from this year's quilting retreat and am catching up with all the household activities today. Seems the family managed quite fine without me this year! It gets easier each year to be away as the children get older.

I have lots to tell about my retreat projects so decided I will write a blog report every day until I am done, so you will have to check back to see what I accomplished!

First of all, I will tell you about the retreat book I made. The inspiration came from Annie over at "Annie's Quilting Adventures" blog and you can read about it here. She inspired me to create a book using the Blurb software, based on the blog I wrote about last year's quilt retreat.It was labour intensive and a real learning curve with the software program, but I was happy with the outcome. It's a small, soft cover book (only 20+ pages) and I ordered 2 copies which cost me about $27 each with shipping and handling charges. Kind of expensive, but I like the paper it is printed on, and the quality of the photos is much better than I had thought it would be. I was very happy with how it turned out. It's a great idea if you are interested in producing a hard copy of your blog.

So what did I do with the 2 copies? Well, one is for me and one I gave away at the retreat by drawing a name from all the quilters that attended last year and this year. And the winner was Susan! Here she is looking at the book with Jackie and Barb. Everyone took turns reading about last year's retreat and remembering some of the adventures that I had written about and captured on film.

So now I have to get busy and write a new blog for this year's retreat. I will ...as soon as I catch up on some much needed sleep!

Connected Hearts

I am starting to feel better every day...finally! It was a good week to miss since my children only had a 3 day school week (Monday was Family Day and Friday was a P.D. day) which meant they were around to help out more, and there was less running around for me to do. It also meant I was home when the hot water heater sprung a leak, and had to be quickly replaced.

But I missed teaching a quilt class that I was looking forward to. The project was this 8" square Valentine's mini quilt that I am calling "Connected Hearts".I got the idea from the "Connecting Stars" minis I was making (click here to see some), and thought that by changing the direction of the connecting corners, you could make hearts instead of stars. It was really fun to sew, and is made from 5" charm squares, including the backing and binding.

I am so glad to be feeling better because this week is quilt retreat! One of the things I did to pass the time while laying in bed this week was to think about what projects I would take to work on, convincing myself that I would only work on UFO's. I would not have time and energy to go shopping so I wouldn't start anything new. It sounded like a good idea when I was sick, and now it doesn't sound very exciting! What was I thinking?!?! I was clearly delirious!

Under the weather

Just before Valentine's day I started suffering with a cold, which has continued to get worse every day. Maybe it's just that I am "under the weather". Here is a photo from this week of my Molly dog beside the snowbank at the end of the driveway, so you can see how much snow we have. It was getting harder to find places to put the snow. Now today it is pouring rain, which will change to freezing rain. No wonder I am sick!!!
But a wonderful highlight has been receiving a package from Meredith at Quilt Threads. I was the lucky winner of the draw for the first anniversary of her blog. You can see all the wonderful treats she sent by clicking here. Thank you so much Meredith...what a wonderful and generous package you sent! All of the things in the package were quilting supplies that I had never seen before, except the rotary blades, which I desperately needed and I will put in a new one as soon as I feel up to quilting again. While resting and staying warm, I have enjoyed pouring over all the new patterns and deciding what new project I would like to start!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Today is the day for the winners to be drawn for the One World - One Heart Event. I have picked the prize winners using the random number generator. Check this posting to see who my winners are. It was a lot of fun to participate in this event and although I didn't get around to see all 426 listed blogs, I did visit many of them and found lots of inspiration and "artist eye candy"!
On this Valentine's Day I hope to have some time to continue quilting the border of the comfort quilt. I decided to try what is called a "feather design" in the border, but when I am quilting it, I think of it as a "continuous hearts" design. It takes a lot of practise to get the loops the correct size to fill up the border space, and to have the heart edges look smooth and rounded. I didn't use a pattern to trace or sew on, just free motion quilting.
As I was quilting away, I was thinking about how this quilt really is a community gift of love. The fabric for the quilt was either donated to the guild and/or purchased with money that was raised by guild members for the purpose of making comfort quilts. You can read more about this guild project by clicking here. There were 8 women that worked on the planning, fabric cutting, and sewing together of this quilt top. The women were Joan, Marion, Judy, Mary, Lana, Marg, Anne and Bev. Then the top, batting and backing came to me and I will baste, quilt, and put the binding on. Then it will go to our local hospital where it will be given to a child who has been hospitalized on the Pediatric Sexual Assault Treatment Unit. I hope the child believes that there are wonderful, loving people in the world who made this quilt just for her and that we are sending her lots of loving, healing thoughts and wishes for a happy life.
And that's what Valentine's Day is about...celebrating love and spreading it around in our families and communities!
Happy Valentine's Day!

Quilting Grades

Snow. Snow. And more snow! This is our third snowstorm in a week. But tonight the snow caused my quilt guild meeting to be cancelled, so that means there were a lot of unhappy quilters sitting at home watching American Idol instead of visiting their quilting friends and seeing beautiful quilts! Oh well...better to be safely snuggled under a warm quilt, than to be driving on the highways in a snowstorm. This is a photo of my hedge after our second snowstorm...the little branches were so weighed down by all the snow. I hope it survives this brutal winter weather.
In all my spare moments I have been working on the comfort quilt. I finished stitching in the ditch in all directions and gave myself a "B" for not riding up out of the ditch too often. But I gave myself a "C" for my basting job because look what happened at the ends of some of the seams! I got some big nasty bulges ahead of the walking foot. That means I didn't pull the quilt top taut enough when basting, and the walking foot pushed the excess fabric along as I quilted.
I then gave myself a "D" for attitude...and not being kind, gentle and patient with myself, since I had tried my best!! Once I calmed down and re-pinned all the borders, I moved on to my favorite part... the free motion quilting. I used a varigated Sulky blendable thread to quilt a flower in the centre of each of the 48 blocks. And finally I earned an "A" and started having fun!
While working on the flowers, the quilt was whispering something about ideas for quilting the border and I'm eager to get to that part and see how it works out. I wonder if this quilt will be quiet when it is finished??!!

Quilt Whisperer

I went to my UFO meeting, which is now called the Friendship Group, since many of us don't actually finish very many UFO's! Our intentions are pure, but we also love to start new projects!! Anyway, I took a couple of things to show but ended up leaving the meeting with more bags than I had taken!
How does this always happen to me?? I'll tell you how.
Joan showed a pretty quilt top made for our guild's charity and she explained that no one had offered to quilt it. She even had the batting cut and the backing pieced. And that's when the trouble started...that quilt started whispering to me and giving me ideas of how to quilt it.
No one else seemed bothered by the whispers, so I started talking out loud about what the quilt was saying. Then I couldn't concentrate on the conversation in the room because that quilt kept whispering to me new ideas. I tried to shush the quilt, but to no avail. And before I knew it, I was taking that quilt home!
Oh brother...I have so many projects on the go and don't have time for this one! But it keeps on whispering and bugging me, so okay...I gave up and started to pin baste it. And all the while, this thing was telling me which pretty threads it would like (by the way, it prefers the varigated Sulky threads, which is a good thing because I love them too and have lots of selection!).
So, lest you think I have lost my mind, rent the movie "HorseWhisperer" and watch how Robert Redford communicates with the horses, and then you'll understand the problem/talent (?) that I seem to have with quilts!!
Better get going...I hear that quilt calling me!!!

Connecting Stars

Around Christmas time there were a lot of bloggers making a starry table runner. Click here to see a few finished runners on Monica Solorio-Snow's blog. Click here to download the free pattern if you are interested in making one. It finishes 16" x 40".

If you have read my blog before, you might know how much I love to sew anything with connecting corners. Why, you might ask?? I have no idea! I just find it fun to sew.

I have made a similar version of this star design with connecting corners many times for gifts.

This is my latest version and it is 8" x 10". I made it for my niece's birthday gift. It will match her sofa colours perfectly. Better pop it in the mail since her birthday was groundhog day!

Here are a couple of my older minis. On the left is a mini from about 2004 that has 9 stars instead of 12. And on the right is a Christmasy version that was hanging in a sunny window. I have always liked the striped fabric binding on that one! And below is a larger version at 18.5" square made from batik fabrics.

I have been having some fun with a variation of this design for Valentine's day so check back later to see that version.

Also, if you haven't entered my draw to win one of my mini quilts, click here and join in the fun!

There are 70 people signed up so far and if I reach 100 I'll add a third gift to giveaway!

One World - One Heart Event

Lisa has created a wonderful blog event called One World - One Heart and I have signed up for it. What is it? It is a way to connect with other creative bloggers around the world. Each participating blogger is offering a gift to one of their blog visitors. You can click on the One World - One Heart blog and see the growing list of over 400 wonderful blogs to visit and add your name to the amazing draws. It is incredible the gifts that are being offered...get a cup of tea and enjoy blog surfing!

I am giving away two of my mini quilts and all you have to do to have a chance to win one is to leave a comment on my blog. Late on February 13th, I will draw the lucky winners. You must either have your own blog, or leave me an email address where I can contact you if you win. And...since this is a world wide blogger event, if you tell me the area of the world where you are from, I will also send a gift to the blogger who is farthest away from me.

****New prize added****

Wow! I now have well over 100 comments registered, so I am adding another special gift for one lucky winner. My friend Judy makes these beautiful quilted fiber art pins and she has generously offered to give one away for this special One World - One Heart Event. Here is a photo of Judy's Valentine pin.

And the winners are:

* Hugs and Kisses Mini Quilt goes to Toni at 3 AM Designs

* Hearts Mini Quilt goes to Michele at Calico Daisy

* Heart Pin goes to Pat at Mille Fiori Favoriti

Congratulations!

I have one other name to pick...that of the person who lives farthest away from us, and I am getting my son to figure that out for me using the globe when he gets home from school. You know Moms...always looking for teachable moments!

Update: my son has decided that the winner of this prize is Michelle who lives in the Bay of Plenty, in New Zealand. I'm not sure if this is geographically accurate, but the point was for him to do a little geography research and let him pick the winner...so congratulations Michelle!

Stash Butterfly Quilt

A group of my quilting friends have been working on blocks for a donation quilt since last summer. You can read about the beginning of the project here. We finally are finished piecing the last blocks. I thought the butterflies needed to have antennae. The group members agreed and said "have fun with that"!! But what kind of antennae to make? I couldn't decide, so I am making each butterfly different. It was fun at first and now I am bored with it!
How many more do I have to do???
This many!!!
On the right is a photo of all the finished (antennae-less) blocks on my design wall...made completely from our stashes. We worked on piecing them mostly at home and didn't know what fabrics the other quilters were using, so there is a wide variety of colours.

Catching up

This week I have been working away on my long term projects including 1) the Bead Journal Project (group blog here and my BJP blog here), 2) my 365 quilt and 3) Journey of a Quilter stitchery. It feels good to be making significant progress again and having some time to devote to these projects. I have finished all my fabric recordings for 2007. December entries were the longest month so far, since it was such a busy time of year with lots of activities going on to write about. I had two exciting blog happenings this week. One is that Bonnie at Quiltville posted some photos from her mystery quilt project and I am so thrilled that she used a photo of my quilt. Check out all the wonderful quilts she inspired at her blog here. The second is that my photo from this post of my ring blocks from Bonnie's mystery quilt inspired Solvi to make another whole quilt! Read all about it here.

Bonnie has come up with another great idea...to give quilters something to work on during the Super Bowl. Read about her idea here to make scrappy bargello quilts. Since I have already made a top using her pattern, I am not tempted (yet!) to start another quilt top! Maybe I should use that time to put on the borders and actually quilt this teal bargello quilt I made at last year's quilt retreat. Maybe....but starting a new quilt is so much more fun!

Dreamcatcher Mini Quilts

There is a wonderful quilt pattern on the Quilt in a Day website by Sue Bouchard called Dreamcatcher. Sue wrote the pattern to finish 28" x 28". I tried making it using 1.5" paper pieced blocks and it made this cute Christmas gift for someone who loves the Thimbleberries fabric line.

Sue gave me permission to teach her design in this small size and I presented it as a mystery project to my mini quilt class. I had to make another one since I had given my first quilt away. And look what happened! I knew the design, and had already sewed it once and still made a few mistakes in piecing the top! What is wrong with me these days (I did the same thing with Bonnie's mystery quilt)?!?! Let's just blame it on the winter weather.

For the mini class, the students had to pick 5 fabrics (border, light background, and 3 other coordinating fabrics) without knowing what the final design was. That was quite a challenge but they did a great job. Here are their wonderful little Dreamcatcher quilts. Isn't it just amazing how the fabric choices change the look of the design?!?! I just LOVE that!

Mystery solved!

Okay all you faithful blog readers...you are really in the bad books today! That's right...all you folks who read my blog on Thursday and looked at my pieced star blocks, but didn't tell me that I had one pieced wrong! Check out on the star blocks on that post, the right hand column, third block down...UGH! Why didn't any of us see that?!?!
So, I started putting together the blocks. Here is a weird photo of the top left corner of the quilt. It is so busy I was almost going blind! But I was really delighted with how well the seam matching was going, and the rows were coming together really well. I realized as I was sewing that this is the first large quilt that I have ever made on point.
I was merrily sewing along, had all the blocks on the design wall, and about 3/4 of the rows sewn, when my Dad arrived for a little visit. Sometimes he likes to bring me a Tim Horton's coffee, and sit and chat with me while I sew. He sat and stared at the quilt for a long time and said "Sweetie, something isn't right in the middle". I thought it was making him blind too, until I saw the mistake...one twisted QST! There it was, right in the middle of the rows I had already sewn together. So then I thought about calling it a "humility" block and leaving it alone. But it was bugging me, so I had to rip out the block and turn it the correct way.
It made me feel better to know that fellow mystery quilter Jeanne did the same thing...check out her version of the quilt here.
And here is my finished mystery quilt top. As you can see I decided to make it 4 blocks across and 6 blocks down (instead of 5 blocks x 5 blocks). Everyone in my family is tall, and since my 13 year old is almost 6 feet and still growing, I think I better start making my quilts longer! So I have one extra ring block and one extra star block, which I'll either include in the backing somehow, or make into pillow covers.
I am happy with the little bits of light blue that I tossed in and think that it is an interesting looking quilt. I have a great fabric that I am going to try to use for a thin light border, and a black fabric for a wider outside border.
Thanks again to Bonnie at Quiltville for all the fun!
For those who enjoy knowing the details of the number of pieces in a quilt,
my quilt with 39 blocks has:
Ohio star blocks: 15 blocks at 53 pieces each = 795
Rail/ring blocks: 24 blocks at 49 pieces each =1176
Setting triangles: 16 blocks at 30 pieces each = 480
Corner triangles: 4 blocks at 17 pieces each = 68
For a total of 2519!!
That's a lot of cutting and sewing !!

Step #7 blocks finished

I have been a one woman piecing factory today. My family is away skiing, snowboarding, shopping, and working, and I had a glorious sewing day all to myself! This is a very rare occurence and I enjoyed every second of it. On the left is a photo of one of the step #7 blocks of the mystery quilt. On the right is 16 of the finished blocks. Don't they look great together? I thought that I could just add a sashing and have a lovely quilt with these blocks!

But I kept right on sewing and was able to finish all the blocks needed to piece together the mystery and here they are. They don't really look like much sitting here a pile, but just you wait until tomorrow when I sew them all together!!!

Happy Snowman Day

Today is declared "Snowman Day" on the Stashbuster's yahoo discussion group. Although we don't have enough snow here in Southern Ontario, Canada today to make a snowman, we did a few weeks ago and I posted some photos here.

This week I tried to teach some quilters how to sew paper pieced snowpeople blocks...not mentioning any names, but some of them had a little trouble with their blocks! It seemed particularly enticing to some quilters to sew the background fabric as the faces, instead of the white?!?! Here is my little wallhanging which is hanging on my front door for the month of January.
It is from Wendy Vosters pattern (click here for her website) and she was very generous in letting me teach this block to another group of unsuspecting quilters! This is a fun block to sew and Wendy provides the free pattern on her website. She also has patterns for a paper pieced alphabet quilt as a free giveaway to celebrate her new Mini Quilts paper piecing book (in photo on the left).

Special thanks to Leanne who brought everyone an adorable little chocolate snowman - it was almost too cute to eat!

Step #6 Finished

This week is just speeding by me! The last block of Bonnie's mystery quilt has been posted and I am so close to working on it. But first I had to finish sewing 16 of these Ohio Star variation blocks. I was glad that I had carefully squared up the hourglass blocks from step #5, since it was tricky to get these blocks to join together well at the seams.
Here are my 16 blocks on the design wall. I like the design that these blocks make when displayed all together. But that's not how it will be sewn...this is only less than half of the blocks I need for the mystery.
I can now start to sew my last blocks from my remaining 100 rail fence blocks, 100 9 patches, and 25 light squares.
Back to "work"....

Step #5 half finished

I didn't have much time to sew this weekend since it was my son's 13th birthday celebrations. It was a weekend of shopping for, feeding and tolerating the noise of a pack of loud boys! But they are great kids really and I'm happy that my son enjoyed his memorable 24 hour party!

I did have some sewing moments, hiding away from all the chaos, and was able to sew up the 16 Half Star blocks. I just keep hoping that my quilt doesn't end up looking like a dog's breakfast! These blocks are quite busy looking, don't you think?? I am looking forward to sewing the 4 Quarter Star blocks and then 16 Star blocks. Some of the quilters on the Mystery Quilters blog ring (links are on the right side of my blog) have already figured out the mystery! I wish my brain worked like that, but I still do not have a clue how this is going to some together. Look at all these blocks sitting in my plastic bin! Where are they going?!?!

Step #5 finished

I finally had time to open up my Christmas present and become acquainted with my new sewing machine. I thought this might be a good block to sew since the quarter inch seam is so different on this machine and it was not as necessary to be perfect in this block. We were working well together as a sewing team and quickly producing the 100 hourglass blocks for the mystery quilt, until I noticed a problem with my blocks. Can you see it in the photo on the right? When I sewed the second seam, somehow it pulled the fabric back in the centres. Some blocks were just fine, but this was happening on about 25% of the blocks. I tried very hard to fix this, putting the blocks through very carefully, but couldn't seem to solve the problem. I ended up having to take out 2-3 stitches in the middle of the seam, fold the lip back and resew that part of the seam. Does anyone have any suggestions as to what is causing this?

Anyway, I persisted and resewed the problematic blocks, and then squared up the blocks to 3.5". It was a lot of work, but I was determined to catch up before Bonnie posted step #6. And I just made it! How are these blocks going to be sewn together?!? It's a mystery!

Step #4 finished

I finished step #4 of Bonnie's mystery quilt today, even though my son has been home sick from school. In between waiting on him hand and foot (and doesn't everyone love being waited on when feeling under the weather?!?) I really enjoyed sewing these cute little units.
Ruthie emailed me to help with my calculations on my previous posts about how many little squares we are sewing in the 9 patch blocks for the mystery quilt...it was even more than I had thought! I adjusted the numbers based on correct addition :)
And another fun happening was that Jeanne honoured my blog today...you can read what she wrote here.
That really made my day!

Step #3 finished

I forced myself to get those little 9 patch blocks done and here they are!

They look so cute sitting there...don't know what all my fussing was about!!!

Now I am ready to get going on step #4. Bonnie said she might post Step #6 on Thursday or Friday, so I am still optimistic that I can get #4 and #5 done before then. Here are all my finished blocks, waiting in a plastic bin...rail fence on the left, 9 patch in the middle, step #2 blocks and filler squares on the right.

I was at quilt guild meeting tonight and I always come home revved up on quilting energy, so maybe I'll go sew some step #4 blocks now...can't sleep anyway!

How small is "too small"?!?

I can't believe I'm saying it, but I am tired of 1 1/2" squares! That's right - I said it!

Step #2 had 900 1 1/2" squares. (Done)

Step #3 has 720 1 1/2" squares. (Halfway done)

Step #4 only has 120 of these squares. (Not started yet)

And so I took a wee break from the squares today and jumped ahead to Step #5 to sew something different...don't tell anyone!

On the Stashbuster's Yahoo group there has been some discussion this week about how small is "too small" of a piece of fabric you would keep. I keep everything - even the seam trimmings from paper piecing blocks and very rarely throw out anything except snips of beige thread. I put the tiny scraps in jam jars and line them up on the shelves of my sewing room. Here is one of my shelves. I will sometimes sort through the bits and take out specific colours to make a mini quilts such as I did for this quilt. But mostly I just admire the pretty colours and it makes me feel happy. So here is a photo of what I was doing tonight...cutting off the dog ears, putting them in the jar. Looks like I better look for a new jar...this one's getting full. There's probably still room for the other 180 snips to fit in!

Step #2 finished

I am on a roll - this is my fourth blogging day in a row! And I am sewing along like crazy, trying to catch up to the rest of the group. I have finished step #2 - 100 9 patch blocks (3" finished). I sprinkled in a few blue squares because I was getting tired of the green and now I like the blocks better. I had a few renegade blocks...don't know how that happened! There are no blocks like these two on the left (so far) in this design.
Now I am off to sew more 9 patches with darks in the corners.

Step #1 finished

I sewed all morning and finished the first step of the mystery - 100 rail fence blocks. Here they are...not looking nearly as wonderful as they should for all that time and effort! Oh well, they will look better when they are put together with their friends! It sure has been great to use up all the small bits and scraps of these fabrics that were just sitting in a box. I already have cut lots of 1 1/2" strips to go right into step #2 this afternoon.

Quiltville Mystery

Yippee...I am finally starting the Quiltville mystery called Carolina Crossroads! I have been thinking about it, dreaming about fabric combinations, and wishing for time to sew, and here it is! My husband is taking the kids to a football game tomorrow, and I get to sew all day...can't wait!
As I wrote on Dec. 26th, if I couldn't make the entire quilt from my stash fabric, I wasn't going to do this project. I dug around in the boxes today and came up with a huge pile of browns, blues, rusts, etc. but wasn't happy with the thought of sewing all those dark colours. Then I found a box of fabrics that were black backgrounds with lots of colour and I was happy to have those as my dark. Then I settled on white fabrics with some black patterns for the lights, and picked bright green for my accent colour. I'm not sure if I'll have enough green fabrics, so I have pulled out some blue to use if I need to. I have cut enough strips to get started on the rail fence blocks.