The Final Days of the Retreat

Hi Everyone,

I'm back to fill you in about the last two days, Saturday and Sunday, of the retreat.  I was still working on my Talkin Turkey quilt.  On Saturday, I began assembling all the units for the blocks.

The block begins with a nine patch.  Those were easy enough, and I made all 30 that I needed.  The next step was to turn it on point by sewing 4 of the string-pieced triangles to each side.

After that step, the block looks like the one above.  Doing this step was actually a bit slow as I removed any tiny triangles that were left in the corners of the string-piecing to help control bulk.  I did get all 30 done.

The next step is to frame the block with all of those flying geese.  For the first 2 sides of the block, you sew 2 geese units with a rectangle in the center.

The third and fourth sides need a strip set like the one above but with two squares on each end.

I began making all of these strip sets with piles of geese, rectangles, and squares next to me.  Lots of things were going on, though, and we were visiting, etc.  The next thing I knew, I had sewn a whole lot of strip sets consisting of two geese with a square in between.  That would not work!  I had to rip.

Along about that time, I thought I would try to get half the quilt together, since I knew I wouldn't be able to get the whole thing done, so I framed only half (15) of the blocks.

This is what the completed block looks like.

Sunday morning, our last day, I borrowed a design wall and set about laying out half the quilt to see how it would look.

I was loving what I saw, but I realized that I had more construction to do.  I needed to sew two red squares to the end of the cream scrappy sashing strips.  That went quickly, mostly because I did only half of them.

Next I was going to sew the sashing strips to the sides of the blocks.  I picked up a sashing strip and a block and lined them up, and they didn't fit!  They were too short!  I did some measuring and checking and found that I had cut all of those scrappy cream sashing strips 9" long, not 9.5" long.  Ugh!!!  That was pretty much the end of my retreat enjoyment of Talkin Turkey!  I packed it up to work on at home and got out a few other things, but nothing really interested me after that.  I felt like I was cursed or something.

All in all, it was a really awesome retreat.  I also was realizing towards the end of it that I probably wouldn't be back to the next one, and that was sad, too.  I have made so many great quilting friends here in Virginia and it is going to be so traumatic to leave them this summer.

I haven't given up on Talkin' Turkey, though.  I started re-cutting sashing strips when I got home, but since then, I had to focus on my Blogger Girls BOM quilt.

Have a great day!
JoAnne