Canter's Cave Quilt Retreat

Last week was a wonderful week of quilting and fellowship at Canter's Cave. Some gals stayed Monday through Friday, but I could only make it Tuesday through Thursday. Regardless of the length of the stay, the sewing was fruitful and the camaraderie was outstanding.

I will simply show the pictures I took, and give a bit of info of pattern and maker. I know I didn't take pictures of everything made. I think I am getting worse about recording details for blogging purposes! Oh well, what follows will give you a decent overview of our activity.

Sheryll finished off this quilt just as I was arriving on Tuesday. The black background makes the jewel tones of the chains really pop.

Terry worked on many mini quilts. (Say that 10 times real fast!) The one above features single chains across the quilt. She cranked out several more, but no pictures of those!

Jan came to camp with the appliqued center of this quilt finished, as well as a good portion of the pieced border blocks. The main push was finishing the top construction. This is an absolutely stunning quilt, and if she can get it quilted in time, the plan is to enter it in her guild's quilt show later this summer.

A special guest at camp this year was Anita, the camp director. She shared this barn quilt with us. The panels are all farm and country scenes, and the sashing fabrics are a great combination of Kansas Troubles fabrics.

Quilters I did not represent here were Helen, Becky and Susan. I do apologize, ladies, for ignoring you with my camera.

I worked on finishing my 9-patch quilt using the blocks that we exchanged a couple of weeks ago. I had half a quilt already done, and when I got the exchange blocks, I was able to move forward to the finish. I did find that I needed more background fabric, so if you look closely you will see a different background in that bottom row. Not an exact match, for sure, but with a scrappy quilt, I didn't figure it made too much difference. I hadn't thought I would add a border, but I am currently considering it.

After finishing her Nutcracker quilt, Jan went to work on her exchange quilt. While mine is set with a print setting block, Jan opted for an "X" block which gives the 9-patches an entirely different look. It will be fun to see how all the other girls finish their quilts.

After finishing my 9-patch quilt, I pulled out Blue Lagoon, a jelly roll quilt I planned on making last fall. I knew it would go together fast - totally doable at quilt camp. My jelly roll is a Minick and Simpson from several years ago - Lexington, maybe?

Most of the rows are sewn together in this picture. All the rows are made and I finished attaching all on Friday here at home. It is now waiting on borders. I will post pictures when those are attached.

Quilt camp is always tons of fun. Of course, this year will be memorable as I took ownership of my Featherweight (see previous post). Several of the regulars were unable to attend, or could only attend briefly. Maybe next April will be better for everyone.

Happy Quilting, Friends!

Made at Retreat

In yesterday's post I shared the projects I worked on at retreat - the finishes, anyway. I have a couple of WIPs that saw some action, as well.

I took my Village house parts with the idea of sewing quite a lot of them together. Alas! I only brought house bottoms - no roofs anywhere! So I will be busy with roof construction in the next few days. The pattern calls for 132 houses, but I will end up with just under 100. If I can piece together more parts, I will, but for now, I think I have used about all the Coriander Quilts charm packs I had.

Fortunately, I'd brought along another project just in case. Remember when I cut out the wrong quilt for a retreat challenge two years ago? Here's the post explaining it. Well I'd never taken the time to actually sew that fully cut-out quilt, so I can now report that it is in the initial phase of construction. Yay! I am really going to like it, I think! It's called Best of All, a pattern by Country Threads. Each block has 49 pieces (I think) so it is a time-consuming process, but the results will be oh-so-worth-it!

My retreat friends were also ultra-productive through the last week. I was not totally on top of my photographing and record-keeping game, but I have three finishes to share.

First, Terry finished off a jelly roll race quilt in some lovely Barbara Brackman fabrics. We had a good bit of sunlight and yellow overhead lights, so it's looking a bit washed out, unfortunately.

Next, we have a big quilt from Laura, who typically prefers making mini quilts and doll quilts. She has a thing for scrappy, though, and with leaders and enders, she made this scrappy 9-patch.

And last, but certainly not least, Jan cranked out a Friendship Star quilt made from Crown Royal flannel bags. This is a thing with Jan - she's made several over the years, and since people know she collects CR bags, people from all over save them for her.

It's safe to say that all who attended retreat accomplished quite a lot of sewing. We were together from Tuesday through Friday, and we worked very steadily. We are already signed up for next year and I can't wait!

Happy Quilting, Friends!

Canter's Cave Wrap-Up

It's been a week since we arrived at Canter's Cave for our quilt retreat, so I think it's high time I got around to providing my wrap-up of all our work. We certainly were a flurry of activity, have no doubt about that.

First up, I will show you some of the recent finishes the gals had to share as we began our retreat. These are things that were finished before coming, yet needed to be shared.

Susan, a member of the Circleville guild, had the guild's mystery quilt finished. They worked on this when they had their own retreat about a month ago. I would love to make something like this; the construction would be so easy, and the variety could change for whatever purpose you had in mind for it.

A few posts back, I wrote about Sharon O. and her appliqued windows wall-hanging. It was my assumption that her project would be finished with 4 windows, but look - it was to be 6 windows!

The 3-D effects that go into this quilt make it so whimsical and fun. This will be a real treasure for the wall in her dining nook.

Laura brought her work-in-progress to show us. And yes, we all reacted with amazed wonder at this incredible Courthouse Steps effort using 1-inch strips. This is half of the quilt finished. The quilt requires 144 5-inch squares, so she still has 122 of them to make, in other words. Wow. The pattern is by Jo Morton and comes from American Patchwork and Quilting magazine, December 2010. Go ahead and get your own started! *yeah, right*

JoAnn had recently finished this wall hanging, and if it looks familiar, you are correct. I made the same pattern last year at this very retreat. I like her use of pastels for the flowers and green  for the border. Mine has a blue border, a checkerboard-look for the sashing, and brighter tulips. Click here to see mine under construction. Click here to see my finish.

Tomorrow,  I will have the new projects ready to share.
Happy Quilting, Friends!

Flimsey Finished!

My two and a half days at the quilt retreat were very productive, if I do say so myself. I managed to get the entire quilt top together! And here she is.

It was fun to do and I love the scrappiness of it. It did seem tedious at times, but I think that was more due to fatigue on my part than anything else. We put in a couple of late, late nights.

Quilt retreat was lots of fun, and we are scheduling again for next April. It is such a great time to bond with one another, and to produce some awesome quilts. Tomorrow, once I've had time to edit pictures and get myself a bit more organized, I hope to bring you the details of what the other girls worked on.

Happy Quilting, Friends!

Sweet Jan

The world could use more Jans, if you ask me. She is one of those people who goes way above and beyond when thinking of others. I'm blessed to have several people like her in my life, and I hope you know a few "Jans" also.

For the retreat, Jan was in charge of supplying the paper products. Her choosing this obligation stems from her freely admitting, "I don't cook. 'Cook' is a 4-letter word."

So there. Don't expect any part of Jan's sweetness to include homemade goodies. (She will, however, happily go to the market to get you something, or pay someone to make it.)

Back to those paper products. Now I, and probably most of you, too, would have just grabbed a stack of generic paper plates, a package of forks and knives, a pile of napkins and considered the obligation fulfilled. But not Jan. No way. She individually wrapped a knife, fork and spoon in a colorful napkin and tied it with a ribbon and a flower. When we began the retreat, there were at least 50 of these pretty napkins, and they made quite an attractive table alongside pink and green plates.

Here's the going above and beyond part, kicked up a notch. We each had an overflowing Easter basket full of good stuff - not just chocolate, either - waiting at our tables when we arrived. One item in the basket was the pattern and all the necessary parts for making a travel kit for carrying quilting supplies. Yeah, even the see-through, zip-lock dividers. And the batting. And the velcro. And the metal ring. Sweet!

And that's not all, in addition to the basket of goodies, we each got a bright kiwi green t-shirt embroidered with "Canter's Cave Quilt Camp 2015" on the upper left. Don't we look great?

Now, Jan is not all fun and goodies. She gets stuff done, too, by gosh. She is the quilter whom you've met here before with all the Lucy Boston blocks and projects. You can click back to see some of that stuff here and here. This year at retreat, she worked to finish a UFO made of various panels. The patterns for each panel were offered at a number of shops on a shop hop she did awhile back. She had a few of the panels made, and wanted to finish the rest and get the top sewn together while at retreat. She met her goal. Here are a few pics I grabbed of her work. I don't know which were made previously and which were made at retreat, but that doesn't really matter. What matters is that her finish is fantastic.

 

And Jan had a Show and Tell, which I forgot to include in a previous post. This Churn Dash quilt is gorgeous from afar, but take a close up look and see the great detail she added to each block. What a sweet quilt!

I will finish this post about Jan by adding that she also taught a technique. I shared pictures of Laura teaching how to paper piece; well, I did not get any pictures of Jan teaching Lucy Boston. I really wish I'd gone over to learn a few things, but alas, I did not. JoAnn was taking it all in, though, and I think she will at some point have some LB blocks to show off.

 We "heart" you, Jan!

Happy Quilting, Friends!

What We Ate and Stuff We Did - Canter's Cave Retreat

Oh yes, there was food. And there was fun. And there was shopping. And there was Show and Tell. So let's just do a lot of pictures, since I'm running short on time today, and this is late getting posted.

Show and Tell by Jan.

Show and Tell by Sheryll.

Show and Tell by Jan.

Festive table setting for each meal.

Roomy sewing space with good lighting.

Dinner with Terry, Jan, JoAnn and Sharon.

Tomato soup, grilled cheese and dill pickle.

Cheesecake with strawberries.

Sticky rolls.

Scrambled eggs with sausage.

Fabric shopping in Jackson at Guhl's.

More from Guhl's; fabric is less than $5/yard. Lots of variety.

Happy Quilting, Friends!