End of the Guild Season

Well this past Saturday was the last meeting of my guild for the season. I had a good time at the meeting- I handed off a donation quilt and got rid of some fabric and tools from my sewing room as well. We have a "free table" at every meeting and members bring in fabric, notions and whatever for it. I usually get a pretty good haul of stuff and this month was no exception, but this month I had some good things to give away as well.

At the end of every guild year we make quilt blocks for departing Board members; we're assigned the patterns ahead of time and bring them to the final meeting.

This is one of the blocks and

this is the other; variations on the same pattern in different colorways. They were easy and fun to piece up and I got to use some scraps which is always good.

I got to show off the two things I've completed recently- the Crumb Stars and the unfinished top from the retreat. Here's a picture before I actually stitched it together:

I have a few other things to work on first but I'm hoping to get it quilted up before the fall. I'm planning to back it with some special fabric. More on that later.

The guild also introduced two challenges for the summer, neither of which I'm participating in. I did agree to take a round robin quilt home and quilt and finish it over the summer months, so that is my contribution to guild activities.

As always it was so great to see everyone and I had a great time. Cheers to our Board for doing such a terrific job for another year.

From Queen Size to Comfort Quilts

 So a while back I wrote about how I had a queen sized Double Irish chain quilt that I hated, and how glad I was to be able to pass it along to a guild friend who was going to quilt and finish it for charity.

 

 

 

 

Well here it is - or here they are, two of the three quilts she created from my original top. I could not be happier. They are off to their new homes or will be soon.

 Here's the label she made with my name and hers.  So great. Thank you Jody! You're the best.

Good News for an Old Project

 I pieced this Irish Chain using blue scraps, many of them batiks, a light blue tone on tone print for the background, early in my quilting career. It's queen sized and shown as an unfinished top on my bed. It's not a great picture. I never really liked it; I thought the color scheme was going to work for me but it just didn't, and it's so huge. It is too big for me to quilt on my domestic sewing machine, and it would take me like 10 years to hand quilt it. So it's just sat in a pile in a bin for literally years.

Until last week anyway, when I finally gave it away to a friend. Originally she was going to use it for an idea she had for our guild's summer challenge, but she decided against it, and another guild friend stepped up and offered to quilt it on her longarm for charity.

I am so happy about this! 

I get to pass along a UFO I didn't like and may have never finished, and someone somewhere will get a quilt! A huge queen sized quilt too! 

Everybody wins.

Thank you Chris and Jody for your generosity in helping this quilt find a forever home!

Crumb Time!

For this month's Block Lotto challenge, our guild's vice president, Bruce, gave us the task of making a crumb block or "made fabric" block and inserting a tree branch. 

Here is my crumb block. I love doing crumb quilting. It used up quite a bit of my green scraps but don't worry, there's plenty left. 

His sample was around 12x17 inches so I made mine about the same size (improv needs to have some rules) but I used a marbled brown fabric instead of the solid he suggested. I don't think I own much brown solid, just a fat quarter somewhere, and I didn't think I could cut a long enough strip from it for this project.

Here is my completed block. I'm so happy with it! I've never done a Block Lotto before and I've been a member since 2016. So that was fun! I hope I win the lot!*

*For those of you who don't know what Block Lotto is, it's a monthly challenge where we are assigned a block and for every completed block you bring to the meeting, you get a raffle ticket. Then someone draws a ticket and the person with the number on the ticket wins all the blocks!

Guild Meeting and Stuff

 

 

This past Saturday was the March meeting of my quilting guild, the NYC Metro Mod Quilters Guild, in Manhattan. So fun! I love seeing my pals, hanging out and talking about quilts and quilting- and of course seeing everyone's awesome work.

I brought my latest herringbone to show and tell and got some nice feedback. That was nice, and I picked up a bunch of free stuff from the giveaway table. Someone gave away what must have been $100 worth of thread! I got that along with a bunch of fabric.

Pictured above is a quilt pieced by Eva, our guild's secretary, with orphan blocks a bunch of us donated at the last retreat. That is my cat block in the center!! And my book block on the right hand side. But I was so, so happy to see my cat block in the quilt and featured so prominently. I made that block along with some other Alice in Wonderland themed blocks a while back and left them in a pile because I didn't like them, and I liked the cat least of all. It's so nice to see it brought back to life. I don't know where the quilt will end up but I have to say, I really, really want it. The chances of me getting it are slim to none, but still.

We also heard a detailed wrap up of the recent Quilt Con show in Houston, which is the annual quilt show put on by the Modern Quilt Guild. It was really neat to see photos of many of the quilts featured in the show, including several by our members, and hear our members' experiences of attending.

What a fun afternoon!

Winter Retreat!

So last weekend I got to go to a three-day retreat in suburban New York City with my guild, the New York City Metro Mod guild. People come from all over New York City, Long Island and New Jersey- last spring a member flew in from San Francisco, and this year our Boston guy showed up too. That's how great our community is and how committed our members are. 

Anyway I was debating what project to bring, and I settled on my crumb project. At home, I can do a crumb block in about an hour. I had 19 crumb blocks to make to complete the quilt and I thought I could at least get a start on it over the weekend. At the retreat, I was making three blocks an hour and I had all of my blocks completed before lunch on Saturday.

I did bring a backup project- this little charm pack quilt- but I was done with that by dinnertime on Saturday.

The fabric was a charm pack I picked up in the Berkshires last year and the pattern is here if you want to check it out on the SewMeBlog.

I was lucky enough to find a half-jelly-roll of Christmas fabric at the giveaway table Friday night and so I started a partial-seam herringbone just before dinner on Saturday.  I got all of the pieces sewn into four long strips by bedtime. Which is whenever you want at retreat but for me was around 10pm.

My husband often comes with me to retreats because he can do work or read with no distractions and it's a great break from the routine for him. This time he worked on a big project for his job in between saying hi to my pals and relaxing.

But unfortunately we had to leave first thing on Sunday so I cleaned up my machine and doodads on Saturday evening and we headed out right after breakfast. We had a death in the family on New Year's Day and needed to do some family stuff. 

Despite everything I had a truly wonderful time with old friends and new ones, and got so much done. It was a great weekend and I can't wait for the next retreat!

String Blocks for the Guild Board Members

So in my quilting guild we have a tradition where we make blocks for our board members when they step down.

Board members serve two-year terms in whatever position- President, Vice President, Secretary, Treasurer and Membership Chair. The terms are staggered so when you're President you serve one year with one cohort and one with another and so forth. I was President for two years and it was awesome. It was a lot in some ways but it was also pretty great. As an introvert I didn't love the public speaking/running meetings part but I got used to it. I did like picking out fun outfits. And of course the best part is always getting to know our cool members.

Anyway so this year our President, VP and Membership Chair stepped down and we were tasked with making three blocks.

We were assigned string blocks. String blocks are great- they are fun scrap busters and a nice improvisational exercise. They were 8 1/2 inches square and we sewed the fabric to paper foundations.

Fun!

Sew Much Going On

 First of all last weekend was my guild's retreat and it was awesome.

Of course Eugenie came with me and helped me with my projects. She's the best!

It was sew amazing to catch up with my friends. I have not seen most of these folks in person for over two years and I think none of us missed a beat. I love when you haven't seen someone in ages and you catch up like no time has passed. Of course it would be better to just see everyone on the regular but who does that anymore?

Anyway it was great. 

These are the two quilt tops I completed during the weekend; both of them are made with precuts and have been "maybe someday" projects for me for a while. Sometimes the easy projects take the longest to get to because you just think, "oh that will only take a minute, so I'll procrastinate!"

The peachy pink quilt on top was made with a charm pack I got in a subscription box from Fat Quarter Shop and some scrap yardage. The pattern can be found at this link.

The purple and orange quilt was made with a Halloween layer cake called Spooky Hollow and a pattern from Moda, which you can find here. This is my favorite go-to pattern to show off a cute layer cake. I've used it at least twice already.

Both patterns work up fast. I completed the peachy quilt on Friday afternoon into the evening and easily completed the second quilt top by lunchtime on Sunday. The peachy quilt will be donated to a guild charity drive and the Halloween quilt is destined for a friend.

Special Saturday: A Guild Meeting & A Workshop

A very rare Saturday treat- I got to actually attend a quilt guild meeting *and* a special workshop.

My guild meets on Saturday mornings via Zoom and since I work Saturdays it's been basically impossible for me to attend meetings. But I asked for a day off this weekend to attend the meeting and a special paper-collage workshop with artist David Owen Hastings. 

Hastings is a Seattle-based fiber artist, gallery artist and graphic designer. The paper collage is one of his signature workshops.

We spent 3 hours stitching paper scraps to paper frames. It was pretty fun. It gave me a lot of ideas involving Christmas cards, maps, various bits of decorative paper I have hanging around. I used to have a stash of decorative paper but I got rid of it when I moved. But you can use anything- envelopes, magazine pictures, whatever you want. 

For my pieces I used a combo of origami paper, pictures from a quilting magazine and even a couple of bookmarks. When you cut the pictures down to small pieces (1/2 inch by 3 to 6 inches) you lose the picture and end up working just with color. It's no different from cutting fabric up into small pieces and getting different effects. 

After the workshop I went through a shoebox of paper stuff and honestly didn't find much I'd want to use. I want to do some kind of project featuring old book covers. I've made jewelry with old bookcovers and that was pretty fun. I can see doing an "art piece" or somesuch.

It was a fun day! Thanks to David and to our guild for organizing it.

Sewing Update

So I guess I haven't been much of a poster lately but I am chugging along on my projects.

• I finished my black & white cats quilt, which I don't have a real name for. The pattern is called Row of Cats by Gingiber. I'll have a picture soon.
• I made six pillow cases for a charity drive initiated by a member of my guild. The tutorial I used is from The Crafty Gemini. It was a lot of fun to make these and learn a new skill. I made a couple to keep for my home in addition to the six for charity.
• I'm just about to finish piecing the top of my Tomte quilt. It's up next for machine quilting since it's a Christmas gift. You can find the pattern at Rebecca Mae Designs.
• Still working on my 12 Days of Christmas redwork series. I just started Nine Ladies Dancing. I just looked it in the hoop though I'm thinking I might need to start over. It's not looking that great lol.

This past weekend I had a lot of fun visiting the Brownstone Quilt Guild's show in Allendale, New Jersey. Allendale is a beautiful suburb not far from NYC and my husband and I enjoyed viewing the spectacular quilts, shopping the vendors and taking in the fall scenery. We even found a new-to-us rare book shop in nearby Teaneck. 

What's up next? Machine quilt the Tomte and start thinking about any small projects I might want to complete for the holiday season. What are you working on?

My First Quilting Retreat

I just came back from my first weekend quilting retreat, with the NYC Metro Mod Quilt Guild. I'm not an official member yet; I attended two meetings this spring and plan to join officially in the fall, when they recommence. Nevertheless when they announced the retreat plans I signed up right away because I didn't want to miss the opportunity to get to know this community of crafters.

The retreat was held at the Ladore Camp, Retreat and Conference Center in Waymart, PA, about a three hour ride from NYC. Lots of people carpooled and I traveled with four other quilters, three of whom live in my neighborhood in Queens (the driver is from Manhattan). We left on Friday morning and arrived mid-afternoon after a nice ride including lunch in Stradsbourg PA, a pretty town with a fabric store right on main street.

My finished quilt top

Since this was my first retreat I made a number of misjudgements when it came to packing and equipment. I didn't bring my extended sewing table or have a decent ironing station, so next time I need to remember the table, which is just a plastic surface with little legs that attaches to my sewing machine and gives me a larger flat surface to sew on. And I need to find (or buy) a sew-and-press station, which again is a small surface with a cutting mat on one side and a soft pressing surface on the other, and a travel iron to go with all that. I have a small iron designed for applique, which I did bring and use, but my improvised pressing surface was insufficient to my needs and the iron was adequate but not really that great.

My worktable at dinnertime on Friday

I also did not bring enough work to do. I brought a small quilt to put together; I had pieced the blocks and sashing strips in advance, and just needed to assemble them. This turned out to be roughly three hours or work, which would seem like a lot stretched out over a couple of days of sewing time at home but went by very quickly indeed when I had nothing else to do but sew. I finished early Saturday morning and then had exactly nothing to do afterwards.

Selections from the scrap tables

Which was a blessing and a curse. The weekend included several group activities starting with a scrap challenge where we took a paper bag filled with scraps and had to come up with something in 45 minutes; I made two blocks which I later combined into a long piece perfect for purse making. I also spent time experimenting with the generous scrap pile up for grabs and trying out some of those tutorials I'd been saving on Pinterest forever. And I did some reading, and since the weather was glorious I did a lot of that outside.

This is what I ended up making from the scrap challenge. It's the perfect size to be made into a small purse using the Clobird Fallon pattern, available on Etsy and Craftsy. I have made several bags with this pattern before- it works great.

I also stitched a label for the "Where are my dragons?" quilt.

Next time though I'd bring more work because it really wasn't a nice feeling to be struggling to fill the time.

We also did a Yankee swap (I came home with a gag gift for my husband), a raffle of handmade items and a block lotto, which I did not win but to which I contributed one of the blocks I made from Pinterest tutorials over the weekend. The doll pictured above was my contribution to the raffle.

And of course I got the chance to meet lots of quilters in my guild, which was the main reason for going in the first place. And that was the best part! I would love to do another retreat this winter but I'm going to plan things a little differently!