Quilt Camp Day 5 2012

We finished up yesterday at Quilt Camp, it was a whirlwind day with everyone working to finish. Everyone had a finished quilt; we count as finished the one that still needs the binding and one that will be quilted on a long arm. We didn't want to rush to do the binding. Joanna will come back to our regular group meeting in 2 weeks and we will help her finish.

This year our additional helpers made it so much easier; I hope they know how much we appreciated them.  I hope they had enough fun to make them eager to do it again next year.



 Friday  Day 5 2012 Quilt Camp



I made this collage in Picasa but I was really trying to make a slide show.  I  am not familiar with Picasa and yesterday wasn't the time to figure it out. I am using it anyway because it shows the quilts a little better than the group pictures. I didn't get as many pictures as I expected because we were spead out over 3 rooms layering and tying. We had a pizza party at lunch time and then the cleanup began even while some of the quilts were being finished. 



All the participants and their quilts



All  the participants and adult helpers minus 2



Two of the adults were not able to be with us on Friday. Beth was driving to Hiltonhead with her sisters and Loi had to go back to work. I know for sure Lori would have had more fun working with us.

So...... another year of QC is over

 and we have a a lot of nice memories that will stay with us.

Everyone received thank you notes

 from the quilters they were assigned to work with.

My thank you notes were very touching;

they made me kind of teary eyed. 

It really has been a good week, 

certainly worth the time and planning that goes into it.

 Some of us are already thinking about next year.

Quilt Camp Thursday

Peace and quilt at 9AM

At 9AM this morning there were only 2 of us adults and no young quilters yet. Our starting time is 10 O'clock.You can tell that there has been a lot lot of progress because the design walls are either empty of hold mostly finished tops  need borders or only need a few more blocks sewed into the body of the quilt .
I know there was a lot of activity all day but I got only a few photos because I spent a lot of time today over in another room. We had some big tables there for layering the quilts. Everyone is moving along and getting their quilts nearly finished. We are having most of the quilters layer their quilts and turn them pillow case style. One of the quilters wants to finish hers with binding; most of them are happy to turn them and just stitch along the edge to finish. With the time restraints we have we had to make some decisions about how much we could realistically accomplish in 5 days.

Layering

3 PM Empty design walls are showing our progress.  



Her way



One of our  young quilters was determined to do it "her way". In the end I  gave up and let her do it. It didn't require any extra work for the adults and it worked with her backing and with the size batting that was precut. Truthfully, I kind of like it. the design has good balance and the new pattern does have a logical flow. When I took this pic she was sewing the pair of blocks together for the left upper corner.  

Tomorrow is our last day and we hope everyone will leave with a finished quilt. Anyone who hasn't finsished can come to our regular meeting on July 14 and we will help them finish.

  Come back tomorrow to see the finished quilts.



                                   

Quilt Camp Day 3

Today was our third day of Quilt Camp and and everyone really accomplished a lot. I took a bunch of pictures but I left my camera at the church so I won't be able to post those till tomorrow.  I do have a few more that I uploaded to my computer yesterday. This one on the right was pretty far along yesterday.

The one on the left  was this far along before lunch yesterday and she had the blocks all done and was putting on the borders today. This one has 2 borders and will be quilted by someone on a long arm for her.

One of the girls had to leave after lunch on Monday and I pictured her as being behind everyone the rest of the week; however, she really stayed focused on what she was doing and hers was the first one we layered up today. Here she is late yesterday with only one more vertical row of blocks to finish. She will be ready to start tying her quilt tomorrow

Almost everyone will be tying their quilts; we do not really have enough space for proper set ups to quilt 13 quilts and one week isn't enough time to make the whole quilt and machine quilt it.
We have been blessed this year to have more adult helpers. Four of us have been working at QC since the beginning and the second year we picked up Cathy (with a C when we lost a couple people, Debbie came either last year or the year before.  Gail, one of the new ladies in our quilting group at church, came to help us this year as did Lori and Kathy,two of the ladies from the Basement Divas group that I meet with once a month. Kathy (with a K) brought her sister Margie along. Margie came all the way from Madison, Indiana to help us.

 Kathy gave us all a little scare at lunch when she inhaled a bit of raw carrot. It all turned out all right but we were ready to do a Heimlich if necessary.
Come back tomorrow for more pics; there should be a few finished quilts to show. 

Quilt Camp 2012



9AM



Today was our second day of Quilt Camp at our church. We have 13 young people from those going into 6th grade to one just starting college in the fall. I think this is our 6th or 7th year. Yesterday was our first day but it was a busy day and I didn't get any pictures.

9 AM

 These first 2 pictures are of a few early birds. You can see her strip sets up on the design wall and below that the strips are cut and the blocks are laid out on the design wall later in the day.



later in the day.



Below are some of the young quilters and adult helpers cutting the blocks from strip sets and squaring them up. 

the quilt in the background is one that one of the adult helpers made and we have it as an example of the group quilt that we are making. We made the blocks as practice for strip piecing and 1/4 inch seams before we moved on to their own quilts. the young quilters made the 4 patches and sewed thenm to rectangles contributed by the adults who cut them from their own stash. Everyone will contribute some blocks to the group quilt and after we are sure they have enough fabric for their own quilts we we collect some of the 3 1/2 by 6 1/2 inch rectangles from left over pieces for the group quilt. We are using Bonnie Hunter's Bricks and Stepping Stones pattern for the group quilt which will be auctioned at a Youth Group fund raising event in the spring. 

The other photo on the right is one of a couple of the quilts starting to develope.

On the left is one taken toward the end of our day and is one of the more colorful. To tell the truth, when we were cutting the strips for this one I was a little doubtful about how it would turn out. I really like it and it shows that even young people with little experience can select their  own fabrics and come up with something great. We have a fabric meeting before Quilt Camp starts and they are given very general instructions about fabric and they do a good job. I think they all did a good job with their fabric choices.



3PM ready for tomorrow



On the right is one area at  3 pm  just before we turned out the lights and left the room. Her area is all cleaned up neat and tidy and ready to work tomorrow. All most of them look like this one.

Come back tomorrow to see our progress.



Done, really....

 

2012 Quilt Camp Rail Fence 52 x 65



I finished the rest of the grid quilting and I am happy that I added the extra lines. I think that now the quilt looks finished.

I used a variegated yellow, lime and orange Signature cotton thread for the quilting. I sewed the binding to the back,  turned it to the front and stitched it with the # 4 stitch on my Bernina. It adds a little whimsy and makes an easy finish that looks good on both sides.

This is the back of the quilt; the colors show up more like they do in real life. I bought what was left on the bolt of the green and white check, which wasn't enough. I used all the ends of the strip sets and extra strips I had cut to make a strip to widen the back. It took me longer to make the back than it did  the front.

Done! Not done.



Larger Grid



I thought I was finished quilting the Rail Fence sample quilt; I even have the binding finished. I tried to talk myself into thinking it was OK to quilt a grid of wavy lines using the white rectangles as a guide but  it is not enough quilting so I started quilting wavy lines halfway between the lines that are there. 



Smaller Grid

I still have about 14 lines to quilt but I think  it is better . I have always quilted Rail Fence quilts in the ditch  but I wanted to do something  different and I didn't want to meander all over it or do some other all over free motion pattern.  I wanted to do something easy,simple and fast.    This was easy and simple but I am never fast.