What I Worked On

Hi Everyone,

Hmmm, excuse the improper grammar in my title.  I was an English major way back at University, so I know that the correct version should read:  The Projects on Which I Worked, but that sounds a bit formal.  Anyway, you probably didn't come here for a grammar lesson, so let's get to the quilting!

I did not take my whole Dresden quilt to the retreat for a few reasons.  The first is that my concentration is not what it should be in a group, and the second is that I'm enjoying this project so much that I want to keep it to myself.  Saying that, I did take some of the blades to work on if I got a chance.  Sewing the top, clipping, turning, and pressing can get a bit boring, so I thought that would work, and I did do a bit of it on the last day.  For the majority of the time,  I wanted to take projects that were easy and sort of mundane. 

I know I said that I packed about 46 projects to take, and of course that was quite the exaggeration, but I did take a number of things so I wouldn't run out of anything to do.  Has anyone ever run out of projects at a retreat?  I think we all way over-prepare! 

The major quilt that I worked on I last blogged about in March.  Here is the post if you are interested in reading about it.  Here is a picture of how I left it:

 

It is fairly small here and I was unsure if I would border it or even what would happen to it.  I made it to use the lovely turquoise/ocean-y batiks I began collecting in Hawaii.  The pattern is sort of reversed.  In the original, the background is cream with colored stars, but I wanted the look of ocean and sand, so I made the background the "ocean" and the stars as the "sand." 

 

I showed this to my parents at some point and they fell in love with it and thought it would be perfect for the twin bed in their extra bedroom.  They wanted it to be like a bedspread, hanging all the way down to the floor--not as a comforter with a bedskirt.  It was much too small to cover any bed, so I needed to make it larger.  This is a pattern from one of Kim Brackett's Scrap-Basket books, in fact it is even in her brand new "compilation" book that is just coming out called "Scrap Quilting, Strip By Strip."  If you are interested, you can read about it here.  Her patterns use 2.5" strips, so it was easy to precut all the strips and then subcut them to the size I needed for the pattern, so I went with a bit of a "kit" enabling me to get right to the sewing.

 

My plan was to double it by making roughly another one and sewing them the "long" side together to make a new rectangle.  However, the pattern uses two blocks, one for the inside of the quilt and one for the edges, so I couldn't just make another and sew them together.  I had to rip one of the outer strips off and insert new strips that only had the outer blocks on the edges that I needed.  I ended up with this.  The outer blocks "stop" the star pattern by having more blue in them. 

 

I tried it on one of the twin beds at the retreat, and it is plenty long enough now, but needs to be a bit wider, so I'll make more blocks and rip it apart vertically and insert a couple rows to give it the extra width I need.  I have a small stack of extra blocks, but I used up all the fabric strips that I took along, so I had to stop here.  I did take it out on a couple of field trips to quilt shops (I think we went out almost every day) and found a perfect border fabric for it.  When I get it finished, I will share it AND I'll try to take a better photo.  Remember it poured most of yesterday, so I had to settle for distorted floor shots.

After I finished with that, I was in the mood for something smaller!  I had brought along some of my kits from the Temecula Quilt Co.  I get one each month for a year and they make a small quilt.  They are fun to make because they contain everything you need (except backing.)  I got two of them pieced.

They are small--about 10" x 12" or a bit larger.  I wasn't happy with the setting of the brown churn dash--the blocks were supposed to be arranged on point, but I preferred it this way.

I thought I would have gotten more done, but when you factor in the field trips, meals, visiting, helping others, sleeping, etc. the time really flies!

Anyway, speaking of my Dresden quilt, I've been dying to show you progress all week, but these other posts needed sharing too, so come back tomorrow for a peek at it! 

Have a great day!
JoAnne