My number 8 is Canadian Chris. I am super excited to make progress on this beautiful project Chris gave to me when I visited last May. It will be a great reminder of my trip.
I will be in much need of hand work prepped and ready for the months ahead. This quilt needs appliqué as well as embroidery. Perfect!
Thanks Chris!
Here is a linky for you to show us your #8.
Yay! I received two of my quilts back from my quilter. I love her work.
Quilted Witch
Less than a week since the previous retreat and I was off again. This one is called Quilting Friends Retreat because we all have been friends for years. I am at the very top if the stairs.
I took a "Shimmer Quilt" class. Isn't the sample so cool. Can't wait to start my own. Can you see the shimmer effect?
I also taught an improv houses class. These were made by ladies in my class.
Thanks to Kristi, I have something to post for this month's progress. Here is what she has done with her goal.
Hello friends! I hope you are all having a lovely spring. I’ve been working on my April Challenge which was “Find a ruler in my drawer that I haven’t used and make a quilt from that”. I have the top done!
I decided to use this ruler from Hex-n-More from Jaybird quilts. Jaybird Quilts
And this pattern!
I thought the little chevron shapes could look a bit like fluttering butterflies! So I chose the butterfly print to anchor everything.
This quilt is an overall pattern. I usually work with blocks. I sew up lots of blocks then enjoy laying them out on my design wall. But because of the overall design of this quilt, I had to lay out all the colors on the wall first. Then I took a picture in case anything fell off the wall while I was off doing other things!
Now the challenge began. Usually when I make blocks, I just keep them in a pile. But this quilt had to be sewn in rows. Plus, the order and placement of the pieces really mattered! To keep track of the rows I decided to sew from the bottom. Finish one row and then lay it on my quilting frame. I sewed 2 rows. Then joined the two rows. Then another pair of two and joined the two sets of two. Building the quilt from the bottom up. At the beginning I had to rip out some pieces because I got the pieces out of order. Thankfully I caught those before I attached the rows together. After 4 or 5 rows, I got the hang of it!
I was a little worried about how the points would turn out. But because all this is cut on the bias with the 60-degree triangle and wedge shapes it was easy to manipulate a bit to get them to match. I’m happy with how they came together.
Hope you all are enjoying your April challenges! Next month will be more challenging for me scheduling wise. We are graduating our son (whom we have homeschooled since middle school), taking our RV to a National Park in our state for a Senior year celebration trip, and getting ready to fly to another state to attend college orientation. Plus, my son has picked out the pattern for his college dorm room quilt, so that project will come to the top of the list. Now that this April Challenge quilt top is done, I’m starting his quilt next. Maybe the challenge number for May will work out well for that project! 😃
Happy Sewing!
Kristi
What have you accomplished toward your #4 Chookshed Challenge goal. Below is a linky to let us know.
Time got away from me, and I realized I never posted my sewing progress from my first April retreat.
My maple leaves are now complete for Autumn Afternoon. Love these blocks.
I also cut out my quilt coat. I prepared it for a coat class I would take at my next retreat.
I did make a hilarious mistake that we laughed and laughed over. Apparently it is important to reverse the pattern for the other side. So glad Phyllis noticed before I repeated the mistake.
I also started a new project. I call it Brenna's Dresdon because she was making one. I just had to make it.
Basically, I did all the cutting and strip sewing for 24 blocks.
I also made some round robin blocks.
I entered the retreat last week with four friends and left with fifteen more. Isn't that how quilters are? We just love one another.
One sweet lady named Nicole would go around the group each day and give us all a brief back rub. Her fingers were pro! She is also the one that we share all those itty bitty scraps with - you know - those scraps that you would throw away because they are so small. Here she is with her show-n-tell.
I also discovered that two of my "before retreat" friends love to read/listen to lots of books. That lead to the discovery of more "new friends" which lead to the exchange of Goodreads accounts and book recommendations.
New recipes were also exchanged as is typical of the wonderful quilting community.
We played fun little games including quilter's bingo, quilter's scavenger hunt with selfies being a requirement as we did the scavengering, a photo booth, and a typical show-n-tell night.
The theme was "Pajama Party". We were supposed to wear our pj's every day, but our little group of 5 were newbies and didn't have that many pairs of pj's that were dubbed "cute enough" to hang out in. We wore our matching shirts each day instead.
Here we are at the photo booth.
Our little group took a daily walk where we saw deer right outside the house.
We started a Row by Row Quilt round robin among new friends. I will share more about that in a later post.
We all signed up for foot zoning and foot massages. What a treat! This is Mia, the retreat owner's daughter. She made us all feel GREAT!
The facility we stayed at was the most interesting place I have ever seen, so much that, the owner invited us to take a tour. We visited a total of five homes, each with their own name: Sunrise and Sunset are the only ones I can remember. We stayed in Sunset. As you can likely imagine, it was the home on the West side while Sunrise was on the East. There was a parking garage that fit every single one of our vehicles inside, and we only filled half of it. Every home was accessible from this huge garage. There was a ballroom where we all sewed, complete with an elevator that took our "stuff" up to the ballroom, and wagons to pull our "stuff" to the ballroom. The woman who owns this remarkable place rents it out for family reunions and retreats. Believe it or not, she runs it all by herself and is 82 years old! She just lost her husband last year. She didn't build the facility, but purchased it after it had been on the market for 18 years. She and her husband did much work to improve and upgrade it including. The history was fascinating to me.
There was a green house, a racquet ball court, and a nursery. Look at the beautiful geraniums!
