Design Wall Monday and Quilt Retreat

I had a great week.  I spent the first portion getting ready to attend quilt retreat.  I sewed strips and cut fabrics for special projects.  Below are the two quilts in progress that I worked on.  Then, I have a slide show of projects I saw during retreat.

First, here is my log cabin quilt I took out of my UFOs to move further along.  I needed to add two rounds to each of the blocks.  I only have 9 circles shown, but I have all 64 blocks completed, enough to make 16 full circles.  I'll lay this out on Friday during my craft guild meeting at work.  I'm looking forward to sewing the quilt top together.

 Then, I worked on the main retreat project for which I prepped the strip  sets at home.  The project is from Ricky Tims' book Kool Kaleidoscope Quilts.  If you haven't tried this technique, please do so.  I must warn you that it can become addicting.

Here is a link of a slide show of some of the participants and projects I saw at retreat.  We had so many projects going on among us.  "Ain't no mountain high enough" to stop the creativity.  For some reason blogger is not recognizing the YouTube video so click here.

To view more design walls, go to Patchwork Times.

--------------------------
Type-u-later,

http://www.teaquilts.com

Design Wall Monday

After showing my jean rag quilt a few times, I began to notice that I had seams coming apart.  I'm not sure if it's because I slightly lengthened the stitch length or if I had a spool of bad thread.  To make sure the entire quilt was in tact, I resewed all the rows.  It has now been washed once.  I'd like to wash it one more time to get the seams to fluff a bit more. 

Saturday we had the first meeting of the scrap quilting club and I posted about it in the previous post.  Here is the project we will be working on as our yearlong project.  It's called Flying In Squares by Melissa Corry and is a pattern on Moda Bake Shop.  Below are my two test blocks.  I also have a few segments of the first block.

--------------------------
Type-u-later,

http://www.teaquilts.com

Scrap Quilting Club

Yeah!  We started scrap quilting club for the 3rd year.  We have 5 new members, Cynthia, Kathleen, Darlene, Connie, and Carol.

Congratulations to Kathleen as she won the door prize!  We started our first project of the year, Boxed In, that in Quiltmaker's magazine 100 Blocks Vol. 2.  The blocks were made in 9", 12" and 15" finished sizes.  Next month I'll post photos of the completed tops.  For now, here are a few of the blocks made in class.


















Then for show and  tell, Lee Etta and Carol brought their exploding star top which was last year's "yearlong" project.

The next set of pictures have nothing to do with scrap quilting club, but I wanted to share this birthday cake my daughter had made for her boyfriend's birthday party we had tonight. Unbelievable!

 Here is a photo of her with her friend.

--------------------------
Type-u-later,

http://www.teaquilts.com

Design Wall Monday

I haven't had time to post but have been busy working on quilting projects.  I had to do some prep work for my scrap quilting club that's slated to begin this weekend.  In  the process, I've made 12 Boxed In blocks from Quiltmakers 100 Blocks Volume 2.  I used scraps leftover from the Frolic fat quarter packet I previously purchased.  This will be my third quilt top and I still have more fabrics left; seems like the fabrics are multiplying.

Then, I finished cutting jeans I'd purchased from a garage sale about 3 years ago.  Why do we purchase items we already have plenty of at home?  Yes, because it was at a price too good to be true. Well,  I decided that these would not go into my normal denim storage so I took them straight to work where they sat and sat.  Finally, during our craft guild sessions it took me three sessions to get them all cut.  Saturday I started putting the blocks together and then decided that the denim was too boring.  Apparently I need color a lot in my life. So, I added lots of machine embroidered appliqued hearts and other machine embroidery designs.  I got bored again and started combining denim, removing pockets and labels and then sewing them back to plain blocks, using scraps of denim for applique, even basket weaving on one.  I decided ribbon would be good too.  I have no clue what I'm doing but the last two days have been fun!  No worries about mistakes; incorporating them in without a guilty conscious.  Sadly, I can't work on it now because of a lot of reasons.  Hopefully, I'll get Recycled With Love completed by the end of the month. By the way, heart embroidery designs are from a variety of designers. I can't remember them all but do recall Designs by JuJu, Affairs of the Heart, OeSD, and Dakota Collectible.  If you're interested in one in particular, let me know and I'll look in my library for it.

Thanks for stopping by. Visit Patchwork Times to see more design walls.
--------------------------
Type-u-later,

http://www.teaquilts.com

Happy New Year

Hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and New Year.  I was busy throughout the entire holiday season.  I hosted Christmas dinner at my home so I had to clean and cook for the 25 or so guests prior to their arrival.  We had a fantastic time and I just hated for all the excitement to end.  I worked Tuesday through Friday and then spent New Year's eve at my niece's home and we line danced our way into the New Year.

For as quilting, I made a few more quilted wallets; that made the total of 33 wallets in less than a week.  I enjoyed making them and have a few in my stash for myself to use throughout the year.

In addition to the wallets, I made this quilt for my husband who watches television in his "man cave."  This should keep him plenty warm. This was a mystery quilt that's now for sell called Friends and Fellows.

I sewed the remainder of the drunkard's path blocks together from a previous project and then sewed them into this quilt top.  It's not very large so I will need more borders to get it to a decent size of lap or twin size quilt.  We'll have to see how this one plays out.

--------------------------
Type-u-later,

http://www.teaquilts.com