McCloud Retreat!

Every year by best quilting buddies and I go to northern California for a retreat in the pines in the tiny, historic town of McCloud. There we stay in a 100+ year old building with an inn (and huge classroom) on the top floor and shops and restaurants on the main floor fronted by a wide porch with benches and flowerboxes. It's pretty much the same as it's been for decades except for the upgraded rooms at the inn. Along with the wavy glass in the extra tall windows and antique-looking fixtures, the bathrooms and beds are pristine and plush and the reproduction wallpaper (including William Morris designs!)--Delightful!

I vowed not to buy any fabric even though we stopped at 2 quilt shops on the way. I have more than my sewing room can tolerate as it is! but we had a vendor at the retreat with really good prices on really nice fabric and since my batik and 30s stash is pretty meager, I purchased 5 yards in 1/2-yard pieces (middle row in the photo). Then we played a hand of "Batik Poker". There were 15 of us taking part so 5 of us tossed a fat quarter of batik into the pot and drew a card. Highest card won all 5. I won with a King! This was repeated with 2 other groups of 5. At the end there were 3 of us with 5 fat quarters each. All 3 of us set our winnings on the table for an all-or-nothing draw of a card! First card was a 9, next card was a King, my card was. . . an ACE!!! I won all the fat quarters!! There they are along the left side of this photo.

Then we had an Auction with all proceeds going to the American Cancer Society. There were about a dozen wonderful prizes on display at each of us could bid on. Where do the prizes come from? They're donated by us quilters, of course. There were big baskets of yummy foods, fancy bags of fabric, home and yard decorations, anything you could think of! I had my eye on the fat quarter tower that came in a delightful basket-purse and ended up the high bidder!! (Its on the upper right in the photo next to the column of fabric that came inside it). I also bid on a basket full of wonderful Sunsweet items donated by a lady who runs the Sunsweet Growers Store in Yuba City, CA. It's the best gift shop I know and I use their shipping service every year to send delicious and useful items to loved ones at Christmas.

So all totaled, 13.5 yards of fabric!! I should be ashamed of myself. . . 

 I figure I sat at my sewing machine for about 28 hours from Friday afternoon until Sunday at noon. WELL--a girl's gotta EAT! I brought 4 projects to work on but only ended up doing two: an apron from a darling pattern I found, and the 1st and 2nd months in the BOM I'm starting (a Nancy Rink pattern through ThimbleCreek Quilt Shop in Concord CA) and a paper-pieced pattern I've been putzing with for a couple of years. 



I started with the BOM because the quilt has 68 fairly intricate blocks and this BOM is only 6 months! Yeah. . . do the math! I spent the first 13 hours making the blocks you see on my design wall. That's all of month one and 1/3 of month 2. But if you see the finished quilt you'll know why I couldn't resist!


Next I made "My Neighbor's Apron", a pull-over-your-head apron sort of like a smock and just adorable! Well, that left not too many hours to sew. I did a little paper-piecing on an on-going project the rest of the time. 

Aren't retreats the greatest?! Why not sign up for one yourself? And take a look at Judy's Design Wall Monday while you're at it!

Wagon Wheels

I took a wonderful class last Saturday with Sandy Klop of American Jane! A more delightful speaker/teacher you'll never meet! I know you've all seen her charming and fun designs full of nostalgic 50s and 60s kids and animals with the bright colors of that day reproduced.

Sandy spoke to our guild the night before the class giving us the story of her journey of becoming the beloved quilter she is today. She showed probably 40 of her colorful quilts--EACH and EVERY ONE of which I LOVED!! Take a look at her blog and the American Jane pattern and book page.

Anyway, the pattern we made was Wagon Wheels, a 15" block that's a mostly paper-pieced design. This photo shows her fabrics but I had this Fat Eighth bundle of Barbara Brackman's "Metropolitan Fair" line (which I fell in love with several months ago) and felt this pattern was perfect for it. I also changed it to be totally scrappy (my blocks are below) which I really like.There are 57 pieces in each block and curved piecing so I was only able to make 2 1/2 blocks in the class. But I continued for another couple of hours when I got home and ended up with 4. I plan to make 9 total.



I'm off on a 3-day quilting retreat to the Mt. Shasta area so will have time to make more of these blocks. I'm also bringing 4 other projects along so I can bounce around as the mood strikes. Should have a lot to show at next week's Design Wall Monday!

Two Tops and Three Tops-

Two tops--My quilting group, The Calendar Girls, got together all day Saturday and sewed quilts for community service. We'd independently been making 9" blocks for a couple of months in two color-ways, red, white and blue and batik and white. We had a little contest to guess how many total blocks would be turned in to make the quilts and I was overwhelmed with the total: 141 blocks were made by the 15 people in the group! No one came close to guessing that many. After 7 hours, we had 6 tops made! Here are 2 of them, before borders.

Three tops--
Remember that duct tape dress form class I took a couple of weeks ago? I put it to good use this last week and had a great time making 3 tops that I LOVE! The white one with the red and pink border is made from a vintage linen tablecloth from the 50s. The blue one is the same Simplicity pattern made of a flowy rayon. The other is a gauzy fabric with a Butterick pattern that wasn't so easy to work with but I Frenched all the seams and it will be nice and cool in our 100+ degree summer.
 So, did you post to Judy's Design Wall Monday today?

Round Robin--FINISHED!

Is there a better feeling than completely finishing a quilt? I finally had time to finish the round robin quilt I made in a series of classes at Thimble Creek, that wonderful quilt shop in Concord, CA. We started with a center block of our choice and had four more rounds. I was inspired by Freddy Moran's love of "brights with black and white"so that's what I made for the center. I also told everyone that I wanted this quilt to be small so I could hang it in our foyer. Boy, did everyone come through! the first two borders were made by the quilt shop's owners, Roxie and Joe Wood--aren't they cute?! The third border, sorry to say, was made by one of the other talented round robin-ers whose name I can't remember--sorry! At that point, I was ready to say that I didn't want a fourth border I loved it so much as it was but Sandy Klop (of American Jane fame) said, "Oh, I know what I'd do with it!" Tell me, would you say 'no' to having sweet, wonderful Sandy add something fun to your quilt? Me either!! And look at the adorable 'twister' blocks she added for the perfect finish!

I love my round robin quilt! It measures 41" square, perfect! And I quilted it really nicely with little circles in the yellow border and following the peaks in the colored points and making flowers in the colored squares all using variegated thread. I certainly do have an easier time completing smaller quilts. I tell myself over and over to just do small projects. Hasn't worked very well.

Get over to Judy's design wall Monday post and see what other clever people have finished!

Duct Tape Dress Form

Two things to show you this week: the "colorful" duct tape dress form I made in a group class and my finished "words" quilt top.

I used to make lots of clothes, way back when I was in jr. high and high school especially when Home Ec was still an important part of the curriculum. I'd always wanted a dress form and I finally got one about 15 years ago. Dress forms are made to be shaped to fit you with wheels and cogs you turn until the measurements are the same as yours, You can also elongate or shorten upper and lower torso. But there are essential measurements that have to be padded and shaped that are much tougher to do. For instance, I've always had trouble with sleeves and I suspected my shoulder angle was the problem.

So, when a couple of my friends decided to go to a class to make personalized duct tape dress forms, I was IN! We donned an old t-shirt and started wrapping each other starting with a criss-cross and filling in with smaller, 3-inch pieces around the "round" parts, then covering all this again and yet again before slitting the whole thing up the back, taping it back together and stuffing it.

It's sort of ridiculous-looking but, can you see why I've had trouble with sleeves? First, my right shoulder is lower than my left and when I put this over my dress form at home, the edges of my shoulders were a full INCH wider than the form I'd been using all these years! My shoulders are more square too so I'll have to pad them higher on my form. Now, I can't wait to make some clothing!

I titled my 'words' quilt "Hyphen Comma Hashtag". When I went to my favorite quilt shop (Thimble Creek in Concord CA) to get opinions on how I should border and bind it, they all said I SHOULDN'T add borders, that it would take away from the 'modern' look of the quilt, that I should just bind it, as is, with one of the gray fabrics in the quilt. Well, you don't have to tell me twice not to add to a quilt, not to make it any larger so it's more difficult to quilt on my domestic machine!

I'm going to have to wait for the fabric I've chosen for the backing to come in. It's so perfect for this quilt! It's Windham fabric's "Type". What do you think?

 Go see what other creative people have on Judy's Design Wall Monday blog!

Getting There

I've finished all the words and have sewed a frame around them all and am filling in the rows with color blocks. I'm almost done sewing the words together into rows and will surely be able to get the top done by the end of the week--finally have a pretty empty week!

Although I don't have a good photo of it, I attended a class today in El Cerrito that the Spindles and Flyers Spinning Guild put on teaching us to make a duct tape dress form. We donned a close-fitting t-shirt and started wrapping the tape around us fitting it closely to every contour of our bodies. The 'bumps' and 'valleys' needed small pieces of tape and I probably tore or cut 150 pieces for mine. Because we needed to make the form quite thick to be sturdy, we each used 2 whole rolls of duct tape for the process! With the great patterns of fun duck tape available now, I used pink and purple!

At the end, we cut the whole thing, t-shirt and all, up the center back and will tape it back together and stuff them for use in making future garments. Can't wait!

Take a look at Judy's 
blog see what everyone else has on their design walls!

This Word Quilt is FUN!

I've been very busy this week flying to L.A. on quilting business, making a presentation closer to home and teaching a class all day Saturday so I haven't started anything new. That doesn't mean I'm not quilting.
    Yes, I'm still working on the "word" quilt! I'm telling you, Tonya Ricucci's "Word Play Quilts" book (see here) is such a fun way to put fabric together! If you think about it, quilting is usually very precise: measure this, cut that, sew this, all VERY exacting. But making letters by this method and turning them into words of totally freeing and I'm loving it!

I'm up to 16 words now with only 2 to go (poem and screenplay). I'll put them them on my design wall and get them arranged the way I want them then I plan to put 'frames' around each word and somehow construct a quilt top. I'll show you the process the whole way!

Come back week to Judy's Design Wall Monday and you'll see my next step.