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Thursday, July 23, 2015

Quilting Friends Retreat - 2015

My friend, Joyce, e-mailed me to tell me that my middle name is trouble.  She went on to say that last year at our 2014 retreat to her "cabin in the woods", I introduced her and friend Diane to hexie punches and showed them how to make hexies.  We are ALL now making English paper pieced hexie quilts.  Yep, I did that. 

This year, I bought them each a ruler and showed how they could cut tumbler shapes with it.  I had already been making these tumbler shapes for a quilt.  Yep, hooked them again.  By the end of the three days together, Joyce had already cut each of us 300 2-1/2" squares and we had decided each of us would exchange 300 squares with each other to make commemorative quilts to celebrate our 30th year as friends which happens in 2016.  We had been talking about exchanging New York Beauty blocks - making 10 each so we would each have 30 blocks.  Now, isn't cutting 2-1/2" squares easier?


You can see some of the strips of 4 tumblers in between the boxes that hold the parts and pieces to the quilt I was working on there.  One of those boxes holds the squares for the tumblers. I have to thank Bonnie Hunter for choosing the tumbler block for the leader/ender challenge for the year.  You can read about it here in case you would like to join in the tumbler fun. I also need to thank cousin Sheila who gifted me with a tumbler ruler along with her stash several months ago.


During the 3 days I finished putting together 444 four-patch blocks.  I had about a lot of them all done and the rest were pairs that just needed the final seams.  Then I started adding the half-square triangles to make them into square in a square blocks. This project was found in the April issue of American Patchwork and Quilting magazine.  I just could not get that quilt out of my mind. Usually I don't do projects from magazines, but that one just appealed to me.


After she completed the machine binding on 5 -- yes 5 charity quilts, she brought out this beauty to work on. I wish I had photographed the charity quilts before she packed them up. She had also done the long arm machine quilting on the jelly roll quilts as well as the binding.



After completing the units she was working on for her bow tie quilt, Joyce started joining the blocks that will be the borders of her Civil War quilt.  These blocks are much smaller than they appear in this photo and the quilt is to die for!  Did I mention that my friends are very talented quilters?  You may have noticed that we all love the scrappy look in our quilts.

Our retreats are fun as well as productive.  We take turns making the meals so no one has to spend all of their time cooking.  It rained every day which may not sound like fun to you, but for Diane and I who live where 100 plus days are the norm, retreating to Joyce's cabin where it rains and the high during the day is in the 70's, well, it was refreshing! We sewed and slept with a breeze coming in the open windows!

I hope you have been having some sewing and quilting fun this Summer!

Until Next time,

xoxoXOXOxoxo

Lois