Great Retreat

 Hi all -

I hope everyone is doing well! Things are good here. The weather is nice, but it's really smokey here. I feel really bad for those people dealing with the fires in Utah, New Mexico and western Colorado! I was looking at the map on my fire app (Watch Duty -- I highly recommend this app) and it's amazing and scary how much is burning now! I hope everyone stays safe!!

I attended a really good quilting retreat last week. It was put on by our local sewing center, Twisted Stitches. It's a great center with great lighting, plenty of irons and power outlets on each table. And if I get there early and can get a table where it's not in the way, I can bring my little portable sewing table so I can sew with my machine sunk in the table. I started by working on the baby quilt I'm making for my great nephew who is due in October. I'm making him Night Howler designed by Art East Quilting Co.

Night Howler

I did all of the cutting before the retreat, so was able to dig right in with the piecing and finished the top on the second morning of the retreat. It was made with all stash fabric and I love how it turned out! This is made using the stitch and flip technique like Elizabeth Hartman uses. I created additional half square triangles from every corner that was large enough and will use those on the back of the quilt. I decided to not piece the backing at the retreat because I like to be in my own space when I'm doing improvisational piecing.

When I finished Night Howler, I moved on to Lilah, which I had started piecing at a guild sew day.

Lilah - Progress From Retreat

I had started the star blocks at the sew day. At the retreat, I was able to finish the star blocks and then make a start on the other blocks. These blocks took quite a while to make because all of the flying geese, half square triangle and square in a square units had to be trimmed after sewing. But I made some good progress at the retreat! After the retreat, I decided to finish up the blocks.

Lilah - Finished Blocks

Now I can start assembling the quilt at another sew day.

While I was working on the Lilah blocks, I also pulled out one of my leader/ender projects. I had forgotten to bring this project the first day so didn't make any progress on it while working on Night Howler, but I made some progress while working on Lilah.

Leader/Ender Progress During Retreat

When I got home, I made more progress on these blocks while finishing up the Lilah blocks.

Leader/Ender Finished Blocsk

With this project, I generally try to have all completed blocks before I put it away. These blocks are quick to make and it's easier to organize things in the project box if I don't have to store partial blocks.

The last project I worked on at the retreat was my Wild Women Don't Get the Blues quilt designed by Karen K. Stone. At around 2:00 on the second day of the retreat, we lost power. The area around the retreat center was affected, including all of the traffic lights. Not knowing how long the outage would last, I first ate my lunch and then pulled in my had project from the car. The outage ended up lasting only a little over an hour so I was only able to get one block finished during that time.

Wild Women Don't Get the Blues -- Retreat Block

The power went out again on the third day at about the same time, but that day we were only going until 5:00 so I decided to just make it a short day and head home. The power actually came back while I was putting the sewing machine in the car, but it wasn't worth the effort to bring everything back in and get set up again. I don't know what was going on with the power, but hopefully the power company gets it figured out!!

At home I went back to working on my Grand Illusion quilt designed by Bonnie Hunter. 

Grand Illusion - Some Quilting Designs

Grand Illusion - More Quilting Designs

This is a large quilt so there's a lot of space to fill with quilting!

Finally, I finished the next round of my current rosette for my La Passacaglia quilt designed by Willyne Hammerstein. 

La Passacaglia

This is my second of four large rosettes for this quilt and I just have a partial round of star units to do to finish it. I generally work on this quilt at our English Paper Piecing (EPP) group meetings, but this rosette has gotten too big to fit in my regular project bag without folding, so I want to finish it up at home so I can move on to the next rosette. I hope to get those added next week.

Nancy