Saturday Sewing

Our Saturday group met today. We are glad to have Kathy back with us; she has been tied up for a while with caring for her dad. She tried to step back and get herself out of the picture but Fran snagged her and gave her a hug and I snapped the picture. Kathy is the shorter one here.

Jan brought her Happy Village piece from last month. She and Lori are at about the same stage of adding doors and windows and roofs. It makes me want to locate my pieces and parts and get to work on it.

We got started on our collaborative quilt project after everyone was there and we stood/sat around and chatted and caught up with the latest goings on in everyone's life.  Lori and Diane started putting blocks up on the design surface and arranging them and Judy set up her machine and started adding frames and pieces to make smaller blocks fit. These 3 did  most of the work of arranging and putting the top together. The rest of us were not idle; there was a lot of discussion about how it looked and what to do about a border and we critiqued Jan's happy villages and Lynn made some wonky stars and houses and we discussed lunch.

Lunch is always fabulous; the food is always  good  and so is the  conversation. We always linger over lunch and it is hard sometimes to get focused again on our work.

After  lunch Judy started sewing the blocks  together with the help of Diane, Kathy, and Lori.  Before long they had the whole body of the quilt together. There was a discussion about the borders and I am not sure what decision we came to or maybe we didn't make a decision.

While the quilt top was coming together Fran, Jan, Lynn and I did  some planning for filler strips or border strips. Fran came up with a easy way to make them and we are all going to bring the strip tubes next month for slicing up "bargello style". 

There was  also talk about the "next quilt" so we will be doing this again. We will be needing another quilt in which to use those filler/border strips. I heard some talk  also about 12", 9", and 6" blocks. Judy is going to email all of us the particulars on that. We didn't really have any sort of plan for this quilt other than bright colors and 6 inch blocks. Now that we have done this one the ideas are starting to flow. Sounds like some fun coming up.

Saturday No Sewing

Today our loosely organized quilting group got together but we did not do any sewing. Actually  we didn't really plan to sew this time. Our plan was to work on fabric collages using the book "Happy Villages" by Karen Eckmeir as a guide. One person actually got her pieces cut and organized on her collage surface and fused down, two people worked on cutting their shapes, some people looked  at picture quilt books and planned quilts, some  people talked. It is always good to get together we find inspiration and encouragement and affirmation from each other. I've read that girlfriends are good for each other and I believe it. Lunch is always good. It  is usually unplanned and everyone brings whatever they want. A few months back almost everyone brought dessert; another time we were heavy on the salads. Today we had a nice variety; a little heavy on the fruit but that is better than heavy on the desserts which makes for heavy on you know who (pointing finger at self). Lunch was really fun with everyone sitting together around the table talking and laughing, lots of laughing going  on.

 There are always quilts  to show. This is Fran's Disappearing 9 Patch made with 6 1/2 inch squares in the original 9 patch block. I love all  those blues and I  like this quilt done with the larger squares.

Diane brought her practice pieces from  a machine quilting class with  Patsy Thompson. Diane's work is beautiful I wish I had taken a picture to show. Some of our other people took the same class and I saw their work at another time and it was beautiful too. I have to say that Patsy Thompson must be a  very good teacher.

Diane also brought her finished Diva quilt from our Diva challenge. The quilt on the left is the front and on the right is the back of the quilt. Both sides are wonderful. I think she might have used every motif on the panel and then added a  lot of other elements. Good job, Diane!

We had the big reveal for the Diva challenge back here in July 2010. The reveal was previously scheduled for January 2010 and originally scheduled for a time before that. There are still 1 or 2 quilts not finished. No matter, we will enjoy them and exclaim over them when they finally show up. As I said we are loosely organized. Maybe that is why we have so  much fun.

Diva Challenge

Our Saturday basement study  quilt group met last Saturday for the Diva Challenge reveal. Not everyone finished and one person was missing and one person just couldn't get started. All of that is OK, life happens, motivation/interest doesn't come, inspiration takes us in another direction. We get together because we like to experiment and we like each other and we have fun. We started playing with all the different elements in the "Beyond the Block" book by Linda K. Johnson and Jane K. Wells and then we started playing with the parts department elements from "Collaborative Quilting" by Freddy Moran and Gwen Marston. When someone found the Sewing Diva panels the challenge was born.

 These are the rules

1) Use at least 3 motifs from the focus fabric

2) Add not more than 20 additional fabrics
3) It has to be finished and quilted by the next, Amish Retreat January 29 2010 or the next basement meeting following that.
4) At least 4 techniques from the book.

5) At least one embellishment

6) There is no size or shape requirement.

7) Keep it a secret until the reveal.

Kathy said she can see everyone sewing and hiding at the retreat. It should be noted that Jan and Ruth do not like the 10 extra fabric limitation (you can see above that the limit had already increast to 20) and Syd does not like the embellishment requirement.

Kathy said any correctionsor comments would be considered. 

This first quilt  of Judy's is really only the motifs and elements so far. That is Judy standing on the right and Jan sitting down helping to hold the quilt and admiring Judy's work. It looks like Judy is using a lot of different elements and her quilt will probably be "over the top" which is par for the course for her. Jan didn't finish hers and didn't bring what she had;  we will have to see it another day.

                                                                                                

The next quilt belongs to Kathy who is hiding behind it. Kathy keeps us informed about what is going on and sends us reminders before the meetings and newsy emails afterward. She is the one who wrote down the rules when we made them up and sent them to everyone so we all knew which ones to break what to do. She has dentil moulding and chevron elements in her quilt, which is finished and quilted.

Lori's finished quilt is below, she used squares on point and checkerboard and sawtooth borderes. She liked the same blond with the tomato hat and the sunbather that Kathy did.  All her Divas had really sparkly jewelry embellishments.

 Fran's quilt top below , like Lori's has checkerboard and squares on point frames and she framed it out with a narrow yellow border with some elements sticking out she likes the same blond and sunbather as Kathy and Lori

Lynn's quilt top uses Liberated stars along with her Diva motifs. Like Lori she also used a Diva from a different  panel, and there is that same blond again. I'm not sure if she used the sunbather as I didn't get a picture of the whole quilt. Some of her Divas are enbellished with sparkly paint.



The last quilt is my finished quilt. It is a self protrait (or maybe my complete opposite).
I use the required  3 motifs but only one Diva.

I wish my photography was better so you could see some of the details.

We all broke some of the rules and none of us finished by January 29, 2010.  Oh wellllllllll.............