Hooray! I’m going on a quilting retreat with friends! Here are a few of the things I have to take:

1. Projects organized in boxes. I take one more than I think I’ll need, just in case I “get ahead of myself”.
2. Chocolate. Because!
3. A little lamp, because you never know what the lighting will be like. I have multiples of these, but probably will take the “daylight” one I got at a guild sale last year.
4. Things I’m through with that other people might want, especially books and patterns. The best part is that I never bring any back with me; one of the ladies takes any leftovers on to another group!
5. A flannel-backed plastic tablecloth to use as a “design wall”, even if I have to lay it out on a bed. If I have a partially-finished project when it’s time to leave, I just roll it up in the tablecloth and it’s ready to go again when I get home!
6. And a little cash “just in case” we go to a quilt shop or two!

Of course, these are just my projects and extras. Karen (Just Get It Done Quilts) has a more comprehensive “Quilting Travel Kit Packing List” of things she keeps ready to go on a moment’s notice! I don’t have enough duplicate tools to do that, but I get the point–no chance of leaving anything behind.

What do you like to take to a retreat that Karen and I might not have included?

I got out the rest of the “studies” from Tara Faughnan’s Block Studies class and put them up on the design wall to consider.

The coral and grey composition didn’t fit in with the others, so I layered and basted it, then practiced some quilting. As you can see, I ran out of steam before it was all quilted. It was just for practice, so there was no rule saying I had to finish!

Then I removed some more blocks that didn’t play well with others, and I’m thinking about what (if anything) to do with the ones left on the board. They may need to go to my friend who wanted orphan blocks…we’ll see.

In other news, I finally did my part of the quilting and put the binding on this quilt.

Succulents in Pots, 52″ x 61″

“My part” of the quilting didn’t amount to much! A friend outlined the cacti and pots and did some very nice leaves on the rest of it. I just put a little design on each pot–ha!

And by the way, this was made from a very OLD paper piecing pattern from a magazine, so if you want to make something similar you’ll have to draft your own pattern. Even if I could find the magazine again (oops–lost it), you probably couldn’t locate a copy!

I’m trying to get all the small quilts finished up since October is the next delivery for Ronald McDonald House. That means it’s time to quit procrastinating and start binding! So I guess the fooling around with the leftover Tara blocks was avoiding binding…

And what are you procrastinating about?

A link to this tutorial landed in my inbox, and it looked interesting. I love disappearing blocks, where you make a big block and then cut it up to make something different. So I made this one just for fun.

Meanwhile, a friend asked if I could spare any orphan blocks. I hope she has plenty of room for them!

I didn’t count them, but I did note that they varied in size from about 2″ x 2.5″ to 30″ square. She agreed to take the triangles, too. I put a few up on the design wall just for fun. I hope she likes variety!

This is the oldest block in the stack. I made a series of these quilts in the very early 1980s. Yikes!

And I added the block I made today to the stack, so the collection spans 40 years.

I recently took a class, along with some friends, at Calla Lily Quilts in Greensboro. Here’s the result:

Strip Quilt, 60″ x 80″ (yes, I forgot to remove the row tags before the photo)

I limited the palette to blues and greens with sparks of orange and yellow, and I like the result.

The blocks are built on fusible interfacing, which makes them stable but a bit thick. That plus having 12 fabrics come to a point at some of the intersections…

caused me to get out the leather mallet and board I use to pound those seams flat where they meet!

This top is going to the friend who quilts our group’s donations for Flying Horse Farms, so you won’t be seeing the finished product here. I hope it will be a cheerful surprise for some kid at the camp.

So, have you made any strip quilts? Did you use a base, and if so what was the material? Any suggestions?

And by the way, I used scraps for this but look at what was left!

Of course we all know that old story.

Yes, I’m familiar with the “don’t ask me to hem your pants” mantra, but my church asked those who could to host activities as a fundraiser, so I offered a mending clinic. My blogging friend Mariss, in South Africa, teaches mending, so I thought I could, too. If you click on this link, you’ll see that her mending class is much more structured than mine!

I just told people to bring what they wanted to mend and we’d figure it out. Most of us had fun! Here are a few of the successes:

This older commercial quilt had been attacked by a dog; the patch was cut from a piece of fabric I quilted years ago.

There was a little hole in this favorite T shirt, so the owner covered it with a pretty coordinating fabric that ended up looking like a badge or pin.

This fleece blanket had somehow been split down the middle; the owner fixed it by sewing wide binding to both sides.

Another woman patched her jeans in multiple places, but I failed to get a picture of her her work.

And despite all the mending fun, I got the binding on this little art quilt.

Circle from Ankara fabric, 45″ x 45″

Have you done any mending lately? And BTW, we didn’t hem any pants!

As in very little, 8″ x 10″. I joined a group of friends to learn to make a collage from one of Laura Heine’s kits. We were warned to choose one of her small “Whatevers” so we could finish in one afternoon.

“Amazing Truck”, 8″ x 10″

This truck full of flowers was attractive but a bit too SS&G, as my Mother would have said (Sweet, Simple, & Girlish). So I added an alien who had been dumped out of his spaceship but landed gently on the flowers. He’ll be up and walking again by the time the truck stops.

This was a fun exercise and I probably will make one of Laura Heine’s larger collages using my own fabric. It’s a nice thing to do with friends.

And now for the experiment. You may recall that one of my groups made these blocks:

I decided to make mine into a little wall hanging–in this instance about 24″ square, so bigger than the one with the truck!

I first tried an experiment with some scraps

It worked, so I made a “dimple” in the circle I cut from the strip blocks.

Nip, 24″ x 24″

I quilted this but haven’t bound or faced it because it was just an experiment. I may never “finish” it, or I may use it to try a new edge-finish technique.

Have you tried quilt collage? Laura Heine or other? Did you enjoy it?

I just finished this quilt top and this is the last you will see of it, because a friend quilts all our group’s quilts for Flying Horse Farms. She even binds them, so after I give her the top, backing, batting, and binding, I’m done! Such a deal, right?

Although I like this quilt, I can’t really recommend the pattern because of the way it’s printed. The layout is clever, but the publisher obviously wanted to save paper and ink so the illustrations aren’t placed with the text–you have to keep going to the next page to see what they’re talking about! Thus a pattern that should have been easy was kind of a pain.

Quilt Stats

Name: Tranquility

Finished size: 60″ x 70″ (which was a 6-yard quilt, not 3-yard)

Pattern by: Fabric Cafe, from the book Make It Modern With 3-Yard Quilts

Pieced by: me

To be quilted and bound by my friend Jerri!

One of the groups I belong to recently decided to experiment with adding narrow strips to make a design more interesting. We used orphan blocks for practice. Unfortunately, I didn’t take “before” pictures, but here are the modified blocks. You can click on any block for a closer look.

Our next project is to take the blocks below (made in a previous challenge)

and make them into a finished project, either as they are or modified in any way we want.

Stay tuned!

I had in mind to make 3 quilts for the Quilts of Valor program this year. The last one is ready, so here they are. These are given to military veterans to thank them for their service, but I make them in honor of my parents, who both served in World War II. You can see their pictures in an earlier post, here.

Here are the finished quilts. I’ll now take them to my local QOV representative who will see that they get to deserving veterans.

QOV 2025-1, 60″ x 80″

QOV 2025-2, 61″ x 72″

QOV 2025-3, 61″ x 74″

All these were quilted by Linda Nichols, who is an official QOV longarmer

Now it’s on to the next quilt–you know that story! What are you up making these days?

OK, the first finish isn’t mine, but it’s all the more notable because of that. A friend who had previously made only two quilts decided she wanted to make a sea glass quilt and asked for my help. And by help, I mean I only showed her how to do things; she did every bit of the cutting, fusing, quilting, and binding herself! She just decided she could do it, and she DID.

Sea Glass wall hanging by Michele

The only part that gave her any trouble was the binding, and I think we can all agree that’s a challenge for many quilters.

The second finish is a quilt I made for the Mancuso Celebrating Women challenge.

Full Circle

To make this, I cut up a partial quilt top left by my Grandmother, Mary Lee Ownbey Kimsey. I’ve written before about the dilemma of what to do with the unfinished pieces I inherited, and this seemed an appropriate solution.

Grandmother’s wedding picture, 1908

Granny pieced by hand and her seam allowances were only about 1/8″! However, there was NO chance those seams were coming apart. She took tiny stitches and backstitched frequently to lock the seams. I originally tried taking some of it apart to re-use, but that was almost impossible!

Quilt Stats

Name: Full Circle

Finished size: 24″ x 24″

Designed, pieced, quilted by me, using some pieces joined by my Grandmother some time in the 1950s.

I submitted this in accordance with my resolution to submit more/be rejected more this year. And by the way my entry to the International Quilt Festival was not accepted, but the point is that I tried.