Catch Up II

Me again - Blogger and Jan have been having words, so I'm sneaking in for a post.  We had a wonderful time in Elk Rapids, MI at Gwen's retreat - it's been about five years since we've made the trip.  Mother Nature blessed us with a sampler of weather - sunny warm temps to driving rain.  We visited favorite haunts and made new acquaintances.  The Elk Rapids Library is an idyllic spot on the edge of Lake Michigan.  It's filled with servicable antique chairs and tables and a wonderful sun porch overlooking Lake Michigan with a jigsaw puzzle scattered on an antique oak table waiting for attention.  We always find treasures in the basesment booksale room.  I'll miss the Elk Rapids Library!  Another favorite haunt is McLean and Eakin independant bookstore in Petoskey - love to explore the 'staff pick' section.  Bowties were my leader-ender project.  I added a nice group to my total.  I'm getting close to the target number to complete this top - Woo Hoo!

Liberated Medallions was the retreat topic.  Spending time with Gwen is a gift!  Jan was a 'smart cookie' and brought projects-in-flight.  I, on the other hand, added one more to the in-flight total.  I worked in solids, which I've collected over the years but have been hesitant to tackle.  My progress doesn't look impressive (since I made the star segments in advance), but those Y seams ain't easy.  The next border will be 'Corn and Beans' (making a zigzag around the center), but the scale of the two border blocks pictured is off - the blocks in the pic are 6 3/4" and the rescale is 4.5" (I think - need to recalculate).  The background of the center is an 'attention' color, but I plan to surround it with saturated darks.  I think the piece is successful because DH's comment was, "It doesn't look like you."

I always want to sew large Flying Geese at this time of year even though I have no project in mind.  Today I made a 6 x 3 sample.  I used the quick piecing method (1 large square for nose and 4 smaller squares for wings).  Considering the large size, I think I'll use the waste method and save the throw aways for a doll or crib quilt.  I'm thinking the Flying Geese will make a great back!

  
I've done a little seasonal decorating this weekend - Autumn is my favorite time of year.  Enjoy this beautiful season! 

 

 

Another Top

This is a finished top from one of Gwen's retreats - the topic was strip quilts (as in bars). I merrily cut/assembled pieces in the most unconventional way, but things went together better than I expected. I seem to make things harder than they need to be. It's taught me to take more time in visually dissecting the layout before beginning. I assembled the borders when I was without my fabric stash, so things grew from necessity. I'm thinking it was serendipitous because I'm happy with the way it turned out.

Below is a picture of my Halloween mantle - Halloween is my favorite holiday. The picture on the right is of my Mom and Aunt trick-or-treating at their grandparents. This must be from the early 1930's. I treasure this picture and look forward to displaying it every year!

UFO's from Gwen's Beaver Island Retreats

Jan and I have attended Gwen Marston's Beaver Island Quilt Retreat a few times (lucky us!). The following UFO's are from two of those retreats.

The first UFO is from the 'Pieces and Parts' retreat. Prior to the retreat we made random blocks of a complimentary size (2", 3", 6"...) with no thought on how they would be used. In advance of the retreat, I made the stars, red-green hourglass (left/top border), 9 patch (right/bottom border), and some strata (lengths of fabric strips sewn together - used here to frame the stars).

Here's a close-up of the 9 patch border on the right. I love the pinwheel/broken dishes tucked between the 9 patch blocks.

And what do you do when your border isn't long enough? You just add one more strip (green center).

The next UFO is from the Medallion retreat. I love this piece, but haven't looked at it in quite awhile. I think I'll leave it up on the design wall to figure out what the next round will be (or call it quits and make a wall hanging out of it).

This is a close up of one corner. Sorry it's so large, but I can't delete it without deleting the whole message (or at least I haven't figured out how to do that yet), so we're stuck with this.

I have finished a project from one of the retreats, but I'll save that for another post.

Bye for now!

Introduction

This being the first post of a tandem blog, I will introduce myself. I'm Jan, and I am a lover of antique quilts, and a maker of antique quilt reproductions. We are both blogging novices, and Vicki is tutoring me on posting. Bear with me as I find my way. These are pieces from my design wall:

This is a leftover from a Beaver Island Retreat with Gwen Martson. The theme that year was "Applique". My project was a four-block Eagle quilt that was started in a previous retreat. This was the center cutout from that piece. It is on my design wall to try to decide how to quilt it. Stop back in the future to see the Eagle top. It still needs a sawtooth border, so don't hold your breath!

Here are a couple more recent projects. The first is based on a quilt I saw years ago at Quilts Plus in Indianapolis. The name is Jewel Box, and this is just my sample blocks. It finishes to 4 inches.

This is my Double 4 Patch, in progress. This will probably be a crib size quilt. I am always saying that I just want to make crib and doll quilts, but somehow they mostly end up large.