Spring 2014 Quilt Retreat

Last weekend a bunch of women from my guild went to Canton Quilt Retreat for a retreat. I had so much fun. It was really laid back with everyone working on our own projects. On Friday I focused on the Crosshatch Bag from Vintage Quilt Revival. I'm not a huge fan of paper piecing, but I loved this bag enough to give it another try. Catherine (the owner of the retreat center) is a Judy Niemeyer teacher and she showed me the JN way of paper piecing. I can't say that paper piecing is my favorite way of assembling a quilt block, but I'm no longer terrified of it. (Don't tell anyone, but I'm almost excited for the Fall workshop where we'll make a Judy Niemeyer table runner.)

I got all of the paper pieced bits done for my bag. Sadly I didn't check for pattern errors before leaving so I only got this far on my blocks. Thankfully the pattern gives you room for errors so I have enough of the light blue and white to recut with the proper measurements. I haven't had a chance to redo the middle section, but you can see that this block will look awesome when it's done.

Of course Friday before supper we went shopping. I found a cute charm pack for Bluebird Park. (Can I just say hedgehogs and fabric!!!!) I also found a jellyroll of Twenty-Three that had been marked down to twenty dollars and got a spool of grey thread to use for piecing and quilting. I find grey is becoming my go-to thread color for quilting.

Before the retreat I was able to finish piecing the top for my paint chip quilt. At the quilt shop I found a multi-colored pink thread, some batting, and backing so I was able to do the quilting on Saturday. I'm not completely in love with this quilt so I'm just sharing some sneak peaks right now. I tried several new things which I think is why I'm not loving this quilt. First off I used Quilter's Dream Cotton. Normally I use Warm & Natural, but the quilt shop only had Quilter's Dream. I've never had a batting pill as much as this one did. I'm sure it will look better when it's washed, but I've never had to wash my quilts before using them. (I know this is a horrible admission, but our apartment only has coin operated  laundry and we have really hard water here so I avoid washing my quilts if I can.) I also tried spiral quilting for the first time. The outer edges look decent, but it's obvious that I struggled at the start. (Note all those little white bits...that's the batting. Yuck!)

I found this red onion fabric on the clearance table for $3.75. The pinks and reds match the quilt top perfectly so the ladies on the retreat convinced me it was a good back. I'm still not sure about the onions, but they're growing on me. One of the ladies convinced me to use some of the leftovers for the binding. I loved only needing to cut four strips and the fabric looks really cute as a binding.

I'm going to try and get this quilt washed this week and maybe next Monday I'll be happy enough with it to show the final pictures. 

Almost done

The green sweater is getting extremely close to being done. I've finished both fronts and just have the back and collar left. I even made a choice on buttons and should be getting them in the mail soon. I'm not sure where to find buttons on the KnitPicks website without doing a search, but when you do a product search there are 8 pages of buttons! I found some cute Scottish Thistle buttons but couldn't justify twenty dollars for buttons when there were 8 pages of options. I ended up going with the moose buttons. I think they'll look really good with the sweater.

I'm hoping I can get this sweater finished in the next week or so. Once it's done I have plans to cast on for Anne's Cardigan. I really want to alter the pattern and knit it as a single piece to the arms like I did on the green sweater. This would mean I wouldn't have to mess with any seams, but I'm not sure how to alter knitting patterns. Do I just knit across the charts and act like they're all combined, or do knitwear designers add a stitch or two at the edges to leave room for seams? These are probably crazy questions considering the sweater I'm just about to finish, but I've never altered knit patterns. Quilt patterns I see as loose suggestions of what to do, but knitting feels like I'm doomed to fail if I go off pattern. I know this is ridiculous and lots of knitters alter patterns all the time, but it still is very scary to contemplate. 

New Fabric

Thursday was such a happy day. I got a box of fabric from Fat Quarter Shop for two quilts and a box from my MIL full of Halloween goodies. My excitement level was about equal with the fabric box coming out slightly ahead (come on, it's 5.7 pounds of fabric.) When I got home from work my husband and I were digging through the boxes and discovered she sent us individually wrapped peeps!!! I didn't even know they made Halloween peeps let alone individually wrapped ones. The glare on the wrappers is too harsh so there's no pictures of them. :-(

Happily the fabric has no glare so I can share photos of what I got. Every year my quilt guild does a challenge and a mystery quilt. This year they even let me plan the challenge quilt! I might be driving some of them a bit nuts with my loose rules, but I want everyone to have fun. When I announced the challenge I handed out paint chips and participants must find fabrics that match at least three of the colors on their paint chips. Fabrics can be prints so long as the colors on their prints match the colors on their paint chips. We're also able to use neutrals such as black, white, and grey. 

I'm not completely sold on the two fabrics furthest to the right. They lean a little more towards the red scale than the purpley pink I was hoping for. I've decided one of the things I'm adding to my Christmas list is a color card from Kona. I'm really embracing using solids and can't wait to get a swatch of all of fabric colors Kona offers.

I attempted to participate in the mystery quilt along the first year I joined the guild. I did okay with altering the fabric (i did a two-step process of bleaching and then when it was too light coffee stain), embellishing the fabric with quilting, cutting the fabric into seven pieces and reassembling, and adding beads and buttons. My mystery quilt was turning into this cute little bookcase runner with 7 owls. Then the last step instructed us to turn our fabric into a vessel. I couldn't figure out how to turn my bookcase runner into a vessel and the beading on my owl wings was becoming ridiculous. My owl runner currently languishes in UFO purgatory. I have trouble calling projects UFO because in my mind if I intend to finish it and have a plan of when it will be worked back into the schedule/finished it's still a WIP. To refer to the owl runner as a UFO tells you that their hopes of being finished are zilch. 

This year's mystery quilt we've already been told will finish as a quilt. Our guild makes Comfort Quilts for the DA to hand out to victims of violent crimes and their families, and to an organization that assists women and children leaving domestic violence situations. This year's organizers have planned a quilt that will finish 50"x76" which is one of the requested sizes for comfort quilts. We aren't required to give away our quilts, but I've decided my mystery quilt this year will be a Comfort Quilt. 

I forgot to ask when they handed out the first step, but I'll talk to the organizers of the Mystery Quilt and see if I can share the steps here.