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.



Dresden Ruler

I bought the EZ Dresden Ruler 2 or 3 months ago; we used the Dresden Plate  for our block of the month at our church group. Recently, I have been looking at the Dresden Plate designs that are popping up on some of the blogs I follow. I want to try this one at Diary of a Quilter and this one from Happy Quilting.
There has been an EZ Dresden Challenge and blog hop going on with a lot to look at and tutorials as well. There are others that have piqued my interest and I will be going back to them also to try some other things. It all fits in with our current circle theme with the Basement Divas

This is what I have been doing the past few days. I cut up a charm pack of Central Park and  made all the blades yesterday. I am ready to sew the one on top left together and maybe the one on the left as well. The one on my ironing board (with the gay background) needs some work; I will take out the brown blade. I may add a few fabrics from another line if I can find something that will blend in. I was able to get two blades from each 5 inch square. There were a few blades left over and a few charms that I left out. I am not sure what I will do with these. I made a Jellyroll Race quilt from Central park  fabric so maybe I will make some pillows to go with it or maybe a table  runner or some placemats.
I don't often buy specialty rulers but the EZ Dresden ruler is a  good one to have. I prefer to figure out how to use my basic rulers to cut what I need but when it comes to angles other that 45 or 90 it makes sense to buy a ruler made to do the cutting. I am sure I will get my money's worth out of this one; the Dresden Challenge has caught my interes as I see the neat ideas on the blog hop.
I want to make something in red, white and blue using this ruler. I am drawn to citrus colors right now but after I got out all the summer quilts with red, white and blue colors I realized that this is looks much more cohesive in my decorating scheme instead of citrus colors. I was feeling like my living room and dining room area looked like a flea market. I can hang all  the bright  colors in my sewing room and make it happy and bright there.

More Friendship blocks

I am finally caught up to date with my blocks for Friendship group. we  were asked for 31/2 " and 61/2  inch blocks. The first 3 inch ones turned into 6 inch blocks because Judy asked that the outside logs be at least an inch and I just started out with out paying attention to the size of the center square. It is not a difficult block once I gave it a little thought. Judy gave us a Zip lock with some various size strips and asked that we use those and some of our own. she wanted yellow in some of the blocks. I think the yellow is a great accent color here. I am really looking forward to our Friendship meeting tomorrow I have missed too many meeting this year.

I also got the piece of jewelry sewed on the wedding dress. It was a picky intimidating process. I wanted to do it so it will hold but also so that it can be easily removed it if she changes her mind.

Not much  no more sewing will be done this week .  I have to catch up on some Quilt Camp fabric buying handouts for our fabric meeting with the teens on Saturday (that is also the day of the wedding). After this Saturday I will have two weeks with nothing much to do until Quilt Camp the last week of the month. I am probably being delusional about this there will more than likely be a bunch of things I need to do.

Friendship Blocks etc

I finally got around to making the Friendship blocks that I messed up last month. I got the colors right this time. The first time I made the blocks I missed the line in the instructions that said black, purple and teal. You can see them here . I went out and bought some blue-green and purple and black fabrics  but only used 2 of them after all when I found something I like better in my stash. Of course, now I am second guessing and wondering if they are  really OK. This one on the left below, I sewed the last two rows upside down and I came close to doing it again when I made the second block.These two side by side above are the finished blocks. I made two of each. These will go in two quilts using Bonnie Hunter's Scrappy Trips around the World pattern.

I am getting back into a more normal routine. My son was released from the hospital and is home and I have seen him and I am not feeling apprehensive every time the phone rings.  Ater a flurry of cleaning and baking and doing laundry I ran out of busy things and I just came to a stand still and couldn't do much but get the bed made and fix dinner and sit and worry

Today I made a door curtain for my daughter in law and took elastic out of a pair of pants. Taking wide sewn in elastic out of a waistband is a real pain. It makes me think I should go back to sewing my own clothes.

The next thing I have to do is sew a piece of jewelry on a wedding dress. I intend to do that in the morning when I can take my time.  I expect it to be no problem at all but I do not want to do it in a hurry.

Soon I will get back to quilting. Well, after I make this months Friendship blocks that are due Wednesday.

It was a long week

It has been a long week. Our son was admitted to the hospital 4 hours away from home with Legionnaire's disease. He was very sick when he was admitted and it was a worrisome time waiting for some real improvement. He is much better now and will most likely be on his way home tomorrow.
We did not drive down to see him but his wife and his sister were there all week and kept us updated.

I did a lot of cleaning and cooking and laundry and other busy things this week. I find it hard to concentrate on anything creative when I am troubled or worried. Once John's condition started to improve I began to sew a few things that have been waiting to be done.

 I  had made curtains for my great grandson's room last year and I had just enough left over to make a pillowcase for a small pillow; I finally got around to it yesterday.  This giraffe quilt below is on the wall of that room and there is a jungle animal rug on the floor so this was perfect for the curtains. I had just enough monkey fabric left over after the pillowcase to  make a little drawstring bag big enough to carry a few small cars or transformers.

I got the spiderweb wall  hanging quilted and bound also late in the week. I really like this quilt very much. I love the colors and the pattern; the quilting turned out pretty well also. I first quilted in the ditch around the "stars" and  the wedges. I didn't intend to quilt in the ditch over every single seam  but that is what I did. After I quilted all of the seams in the border I had to go back and quilt the rest of the seams on the body of the quilt. I am glad I did because it is nice and flat and spot on square.                    

I have more foundations prepared and I like this palette and pattern so much I am going to make more blocks and make a larger quilt. I am hooked on the citrus colors right now and I am going to keep on working in these colors until I am tired of it. My favorite color has always been red but I think that yellow is taking over the number 1 spot. I also find I have more yellow shirts than red and choose to wear them rather than red. That in itself was a big surprise to me when I realized it.

scraps

When I was cleaning up after the Spiderweb quilt I sorted the strips and strings by color and anything that was too short to use as a strip I tossed in a box. I put the strips away and looked at the box of short scraps and decided to sit down and make some 4 1/2 inch blocks. I was up early today and I finished up a few more this morning. I am not sure what I will do with them. I think I will make a few here and there, maybe use them as leaders and enders. Or maybe not, if I have to many things going at once something suffers. 

I would probably keep going and make a few more but today is the day the Basement Divas meet and I will be off soon to play with my friends.

Bloggers Quilt Festival

This is my entry in the Bloggers Quilt Festival  over at Amy's Creative Side. During last years quilt festival I came across a reference to Zentangle®  and I looked it up and started  playing. I had some ideas about what I wanted to do and how I wanted to use them in a quilt and changed my mind several times along the way. I did a lot of doodling on paper and I made several smaller pieces that were for practice. This was the first one that I decided was going to be the real deal and not for practice.  It is 24 by 24 inches square.

I traced the circles on fabric using a small bowl and some pot lids; the rest of the drawing was done free hand. I used a very smooth tight weave fabric and Pigma pens for most of the drawing and did some filling in of dark areas with Faber-Castell brush tip pens. It is appliqued to a black and white nine patch color wash type of background similar to one I had used before.  
The quilting was done first with just two layers, the top and batting. I quilted with black thread over almost all of the drawn lines that connected. It was slow going as I had to stop and rest my eyes and often I had to determine what I was going to do in some areas. I needed to do a little bit of hand work in areas that were too large to leave unquilted but had no connecting lines to quilt on.
When I finished all of the detail quilting I layered it up with the backing and  quilted around the circles and in the circles on some of the long lines to hold it more securely to the backing. I quilted the background with wavy lines using the seams as my guide.
If you are interested in seeing more of my Zentangle®  inspired pieces you can click  on Zentangle inspired quilts on the sidebar.

Dresden Plate

 Our group at church met today where are working on a block of the month project; this month it is the Dresden plate. As usual, I did not sew while I was there even though I had my machine with me and set up to sew. I wish I had taken my camera so I could get some pictures. Four of the ladies were working on their blocks and they all looked really good; there were 2 batik  blocks and 2 black and white, one with hot pink and one with red. When I got home Jack  was out so I cut my blades and put them together. Citrus colors again. At least all this stuff I have been working on will go together. I am going to put it on a Kona bone background; I am still  auditioning the  center.

I was looking at some of my favorite blog after dinner and I found these 2 posts. May 12 is a table mat made using the EZ Dresden ruler and it is so creative. The post on May 6 is just as creative. All  I can say is WOW. These two really stand out to me because they are circles and we are working  on circles for the Basement Diva's group. We have some pretty creative ladies in that group too and I am looking forward to next week to see what everyone  is doing.

Ready to Quilt

I am ready to quilt the small spider web piece.I worked on the piano key borders yesterday on and off and finished them up and sewed them on about 11PM. I layered it up this morning and as soon as I put away all of the strings and things from my scrap stuff I will start to quilt. That could take a while as I want to put them away in some sort of order so they will be ready to use again soon. I want to get back to the converging corners quilt.

I had intended to use solid yellow for the inner border but I thought it just washed out. I tried a strip of the orange print to see how orange looked and I liked the print. I decided not to go with a strip of the same size for another narrow border. I will just use the orange print for the binding.

In between working on the borders I took a 6 hour break and we went to the arboretum and then a long ride to see the herons. I didn't get any pictures of the herons because I didn't think there would be anything that was worth seeing that would show up on a snapshot. There was a lot going on but nothing I could have caught on camera. There are babies in most of the nests and with binoculars you can see them sticking their heads up when the parents come with food. There was always one parent standing on the branch where the nest is. 

We did get these shots of one little goose family at the arboretum. We saw them in the same spot a week ago and the babies were half this size. While we were watching them the babies all decided to lay down an take a little  nap.

We really made the stop at the arboretum to get pictures of the rhododendrons. We have been watching them for a few weeks and they started opening a few days ago.