Welcome back to another Sew & Tell Party! The party where you can proudly share your progress on quilts or other creative projects. I spent most of the week preparing for the retreat. I cleaned my machine in preparation for a full weekend of piecing, and I am pleased that it is happily making beautiful stitches once again.
I spent time in the kitchen getting my meals ready to go... you can read that as... Make meals for us and save the leftovers for the retreat. =D
The fall temps have turned cooler, even a little chilly, so it was nice to be able to use the oven without the concern of making it too warm. I'm sure most everyone agrees that use of the oven during the summer is pure misery. Though... now that we have central air, I might not be as concerned. ;)
Before I share about the retreat, let's take a look at this week's feature. Nancy at Grace and Peace Quilting shared a lovely winter quilt that she quilted for a customer. The customer used a winter scene panel that had a horizontal orientation but successfully made it a longer than wide by adding strips of fabric. The green is a lovely background that still allows the red to pop.
Be sure to visit Nancy's blog to see what they chose as the quilting design.
On to the retreat... The quilt selected was a "retired" pattern from Missouri Star Quilt Company - Jack and Jill. It uses two jellyroll strips - one brightly colored and the second in white.
It was suggested by someone that we precut all of the units before the retreat. I had joined the strips together and sub-cut the 4-1/2" squares. Each of the squares were to be cut on the diagonal.
I wasn't planning on doing that but in the end... I did. I had not planned on it because everyone gives me a hard time about finishing so quickly.
I'll try my best to go slow!
More to come...
Turns out... I didn't need to go slow at all! I sewed and sewed and sewed some more. I initially thought I would have all the blocks pieced together by Friday night. Boy! Was I wrong. I sewed for as long as I could before I just needed to head to bed. (That was at 9 p.m., BTW. LOL!)
Up early on Saturday morning, I returned to my sewing station and was finally adding 140 blocks to the design wall by 10 a.m. I sought advisory assistance from a few others and finally settled on this layout.
Several others in attendance chose different projects and a few arrived with all or most of the blocks pieced.
Games were played, walks were enjoyed, snacks were aplenty and the conversations often brought laughter. Troubleshooting a few sewing machine issues was also necessary. I was happy to be able to get several quilters back to stitching without too much delay or trouble.
By dinner on Saturday, I finally had a completed flimsy... including fabric won in a game as the narrow border. Whoop! Whoop!
I used red-white-blue fabrics and happily sent this home with one of the quilters to be completed as a Quilt of Valor quilt.
I think this will become a new "tradition" for me when I attend a retreat... Maybe not QOV each time, but I will choose one of the many worthy organizations that the quilters mention and plan to surprise them with a finished quilt top to take home.
What group or organization would you donate to?
Leave a comment... I'd love to hear from you!
Keep Piecing,
Melva
Linking with:
m
