Sewing With Sharon

While I don't often report on our sewing together, Sharon and I do still regularly meet to devote time to our projects. We both have plenty of UFOs, WIPs, new projects, and plans for new things. Typical quilters, right? UFOs (unfinished objects) and WIPs (works in progress), regardless of how diligently we work on them, seem never to totally disappear because the thrill of the new project or the project on the horizon is just too alluring.

And sometimes, the project of the day is simply something totally unplanned and spontaneous. Like the wall hanging Sharon worked on this week.

First, though, we need to revisit one of her projects from retreat a few weeks ago. She was in the midst of creating a small wall hanging for her daughter's new cabin. Using scraps from her stash, she came up with this sweet little piece, and stopped when she ran short on one of the fabrics.

While it is a scrappy project, she controlled the stem fabric and the borders. In the few weeks since retreat, she has finished this wall hanging and it looks spectacular. 

What a wonderful finish! Sharon's daughter will be lucky to have a freshly made piece for her new home. Sharon just sent this photo, and I will diverge from my topic momentarily to show you just how challenging it was for her to get a picture!

 

Any quilter with cats knows the uncanny way they gravitate to a project being spread out on the floor or the bed or a table! Their instincts are freakish.

 

Now back to Sharon's sewing - the spontaneous variety, in this case. After finishing this little leaf quilt, she still had so many fall-inspired scraps left over. What to do? Put them away for another day? Let them lay around begging to be used? 

 

NO! Make another quilt, of course! And this is what she worked on while we sewed on Tuesday. She was totally making up the design as she sewed based on a picture she'd seen online somewhere.

 

 

This would have used quite a good bit of scraps, wouldn't you say? She says she already knows where it will hang, and I am sure she is motivated to finish this off since autumn is fast approaching.

 

These 2 projects remind me of my own effort at fall-themed stitching. I had a quilt top hanging on the design wall for over a year, and just this summer quilted it. You may remember it. And yes, it contains a lot of scraps.
 

We all seem to have an endless supply of scraps. I always feel so good about using them; I just cannot stand the possibility of wasting fabric. And no matter how diligently we pull the scraps to use them up, they never seem to totally disappear. I didn't ask Sharon how deep her fall stash is now after these two beauties have been stitched. Hopefully she's seeing some stash reduction. 

 

Happy Quilting, Friends!

 

Jayne 

Wensleydale Update

I've been home from retreat for over a week now and just as I suspected, the output of Wensleydale blocks as significantly diminished. Too many distractions here in my own home keep me from settling into the quilting room for long, productive sewing sessions.

Alas, I am still making progress! Tuesday, Sharon was here to sew, and that made for a very productive day. I left retreat with 31 completed blocks (shown above) and my current total is 45. Only 15 more to go!

I carried this neat stack of blocks into the bedroom to lay out all 45 for a visual of my progress. This is a lot of blocks, and 15 more will be quite large!

Most pictures I see of finished Wensleydale quilts show the blocks in a horizontal setting. I have always preferred the vertical setting, so that is how I've laid these blocks out. I might try it the other way, just for comparison's sake. Who knows, perhaps I will prefer that. 

Here are a couple more looks at the layout at this point.

 

This is going to be a great-looking quilt, I just know it. I love each block as it comes together. I have two or three cut and ready to sew; that helps me to be ready to sit down and sew in random snippets of time. 

If you want to make this quilt, I will provide some links here for easy access. I believe these have helped me greatly, especially the YouTube about cutting. This video from The Quilted Chicken absolutely moved me to action on this quilt. She provides easy-to-understand cutting instructions that keep fabric waste to a minimum. Waste was one of my biggest concerns, so this really assured me that I could minimize it. 

If you'd just like to look at the orginal book in which this pattern appeared, take a look at this video from now-defunct Martingale Press. Quilt Recipes has been out for a few years, so it might be hard to find; this will give you a sampling of both the book and the quilt. 

And of course, you must visit designer Jen Kingwell's webpage. It's a veritable feast of colors and designs. Wensleydale can be made using paper piecing, which I am doing, or templates. I'd like to see how the templates compare to the foundation papers. The website lists other products available to assist in making her quilts. Since she's in Australia, you'll likely want to buy from your local quilt shop, as I did when I bought my foundation papers in Columbus.

 I hope I can keep myself focused on the last 15 blocks. My desire is to finish it, so I anticipate that I will do it as quickly as possible. I have quite a few distractions in coming days and weeks, but always, I will return to the Wensleydale blocks 46-60.

Happy Quilting, Friends!

Jayne 

Retreat - Lisette, Susan & Jan

Our final installment of last week's retreat will include our 3 remaining seamstresses, Susan, Lisette, and Jan. 

Lisette did lots and lots of small blocks for School Girl Sampler. This is one organized quilter - just look at the labeling and orderly stacks.

She also needed to attach a border to this gorgeous quilt. What a great eye for reproductions she has, as seen in the close-up.

Susan finished off a baseball-themed quilt, a snowball quilt and a reproduction quilt with dozens of flying geese units.

 

Susan hoped to finish this quilt and discovered that she did not bring fabric for the last of those flying geese. It's almost done!

Here's the snowball quilt. Her task for part of one retreat day was making a zigzag border. I really didn't pay attention when Susan shared details on this quilt, so I have no further tidbits to add. I do like the looks of the blues with the tans. It's a great look.

And here is her baseball quilt. I think she shopped locally for the border and added it at retreat. She also prepped the backing for this quilt.

Jan worked on 2 quilts from beginning to end - and by end I mean that she not only attached all borders, but also prepared backing and binding for each. 

From this organized and well-sorted supply of parts, Jan built a Courthouse Steps quilt that looks amazing.

After finishing the Courthouse Steps, Jan pulled out a jelly roll project with some panels stitched into each block. The result is a fine looking Christmas quilt.

And that concludes my wrap-up of last week's retreat. What fun we had. The food was great; the conversations were all over the place; we did a bit of shopping; we did some dreaming and wishing for future projects. Successful in every way.

Happy Quilting, Friends!

Jayne
 

Retreat - The Handwork of Becky and Sheryll

Two sewists at retreat came without their sewing machines. They are so dedicated in their handwork these days that machine sewing was just more than they wanted to manage. When you see their fine workmanship, you'll agree it was the right call.

Sheryll enjoys working with wool and flannel applique. This design is one she's had for quite a few years, and it was originally intended for a sweatshirt. She opted to turn it into a wall hanging and intends to frame it, if possible. She has alternate plans if framing doesn't work out. She needs to add fine details - more leaves on the trees, a bird or two, and other bits of embellishment.

Becky's handwork of choice lately has been EPP. She has several projects underway, and rotated through them as she needed variety.

She's been making this beautiful star quilt for awhile. Becky's fabrics of choice are reproductions, and she has a vast supply with which to make these stars.

The remaining EPP projects from Becky involved 1-inch hexagons. There are no less than 3 projects in the works. This first one is a single flower. 

This next one is a double flower - that is, two rounds of color around the center. This is a jell roll-friendly project; Becky is using a line by Minick and Simpson.

This last project will be diamond-shaped hexies. She'g got a good start, and a tub fill of fabric for making more. 

Like I said in a previous retreat update, I am quite unreliable about recording all that everyone worked on. There is a strong likelihood that everyone worked on more than I share here. 

Happy Quilting, Friends!

Jayne 

Retreat - Projects of Sharon & Terry

It seems ridiculous to group things this way, but I took a picture as we began our retreat. And since Sharon and Terry are in the photo, that seems a random enough reason to share their projects in today's post.

And I will say from the get-go that I did not get pictures of all they accomplished. Actually, for someone who wants to eventually blog about what all we accomplished, I am rather haphazard in my information gathering. My apologies.

Sharon, in the foreground, had as she called it, utility quilts to make. She was attempting to whittle down her tub of flannel fabrics and made some pretty decent progress on a couple of quilts that will undoubtedly make for cozy TV watching.

Layer cake squares went together fast for a floral beauty. Another, which I apparently did not take a picture, is a Rail Fence pattern of brownish/burgundy and off-white. 

A wall hanging for her daughter was also on Sharon's agenda. She made this as far as she could go with her fabric on hand. One more row of leaves across the top will be added, and then it'll be ready to finish up.

Last, her wonderful "WOW" quilt is another Alpine quilt. She's made 2 of these already, but wanted one for Christmas. These trees are stunning! Click here to see one of her previous versions of Alpine.

Terry worked on a complicated-looking quilt called Michigan by Laundry Basket Quilts. She did quite a bit of prepping before coming to retreat, so getting her quilt top together took just a couple of days.

This is an example of the prep work done ahead of time. Small units were ready to go at retreat which made construction all the faster.

 Don't you love the alternative color choices? These blues, greens and browns are much more suited to Terry's color palate than the corals on the pattern. It looks spectacular.

After finishing this, she stitched curved basket handles for a quilt she has in progress. And last she was concentrating on tracing a rather involved applique for a Christmas quilt. I do not have a picture of either of these efforts. I will surely see her working on them again, though, so stay tuned. 

A brief recap today, to be sure. We are heading off to pick up our sweet Cate for an overnight at our house! Fun on our horizon, right?

Happy Quilting,  Friends!

Jayne 

Retreat Wrap-Up - My Own Stuff First

I'm just home from a 4-day quilt retreat at Needles N Pines Retreat Center in Nelsonville, OH. We had 8 quilters happily and energetically zipping away on their projects. We got so much done! It has been challenging deciding how to share our various projects and accomplishments.

The easiest way for me is to start with myself, since I know that info best. It'll also give me time to be more thoughtful about grouping the other quilters and their work. 

I went with the plan to make my Wensleydale Quilt with the Tilda fabrics I'd prepared ahead of time. 

The paper piecing pattern requires 5 'rounds' of fabrics, and I followed a fantastically helpful YouTube tutorial by Quilted Chicken. Following her instructions kept my biggest fear at bay - wasting fabric. Tilda is not inexpensive, and my memories of paper piecing years ago involved a whole lot of waste. I don't mind that when I'm using scraps, but with brand-spanking-new FQ packs, I didn't want to waste anything.

All my pieces were laid out on my table in the order in which I would use them. I had my cheat-sheet of sub-cutting instructions nearby, too. I did a lot of fumbling around trying to establish a rhythm for making a block. My first couple of blocks took awhile to finish. It'd been many years since I last paper pieced, so I needed to relearn things. Here are blocks 1 and 2.

 

By the end of retreat (Monday morning thru Thursday morning), I had made 30 blocks - exactly half of what is needed for the quilt. 

I just love how nicely they stack with the foundation papers keeping them so straight and even. The stack above is only 8 or 10 blocks. You can imagine how sweet the stack of 30 looks. (I'll take that pic after I unpack everything.) *wink* 

When I had 28 blocks it seemed a good place to stop and hang them on the design wall. I can see that I will need to be more deliberate in placing these blocks; the bottom row of this particular layout has way too many dark-ish blocks. 

Looking at this layout of 28 blocks, I don't see a single one that doesn't please me. Tilda fabrics are so very versatile when mixing them all so randomly. I'd been collecting Tilda bit by bit for a couple of years with no particular plan for using it. I bought some from Annette at Sewing The Good Life, at quilt shows in both Circleville and Daytona. I also had a bit purchased also at the Circleville show from Mercantile on Main. When I realized that I'd need both more fabric and more color variations, I sent off an emergency order to The Quilter's Shoppe on Etsy. Shop owner Karen was exceedingly fast in delivering my order, and I had it in plenty of time to take with me to retreat. I am so glad I had the array of reds to add to my predominantly blue collection. 

Thirty blocks completed in 4 days is a lot. I know I will not make the next 30 as quickly. If I can average 5 per week, I suppose I would consider that a success. I just won't be able to have such extended time in the sewing room, but I will for sure try to remain focused on finishing these blocks.

Happy Quilting, Friends!

Jayne

A Proper Reveal - Cotton Ridge Farm

Late last month I put the last borders on Cotton Ridge Farm. Hooray!! Then I pressed it and tried to get as many ravelings off as I could. Had to get it all spruce for its photo op!

Any photograph I've taken of this quilt looks like a black and gold quilt. In fact, it is mostly navy and cheddar. It just doesn't show up correctly with any lighting I manage. No biggie, because it still looks good! 

This quilt has been in the planning stages for a long time. Perhaps over 10 years ago, I collected a little stash of navy and yellow fabrics. The yellows go from bright yellow to butternut squash to cheddar. I then waited on the inspiration pattern to come along to move me into creating mode.

 

After a few years, I saw some Pam Buda patterns, and that's when ideas began forming. I originally thought I'd make Grist Mill. But the pattern I borrowed was Cotton Ridge Farm, so I just went with it. (I still want to make Grist Mill.) I sifted through the little fabric collection, narrowing down my options. I am very pleased with the results; just moody enough to give off autumn vibes.

It finished almost to the exact size the pattern indicated - 66" x 74". I have it laid out here on a queen bed. Once I figure out what to use as a backing, I can get her on the long arm! 

A couple of thoughts I had while making this quilt. I was not a fan of her instructions to make larger HSTs than necessary, and then trimming them all to size. However, I did follow those instructions, and I love the result! I cannot think of any quilt I've ever made with this many HSTs and so many precisely matching points. I've never had such great results. There's a lesson here, right? Trimming makes a world of difference in accuracy.

I'm prepping some projects for a 4-day retreat next week. I will share the ongoing activities as I can. For about 3+ days, I'm gonna' have my grandma hat on - Reagan is coming to stay!

Happy Quilting, Friends!

Jayne