Well, I thought I had done more than I have actually done. Or that’s the way it feels.
Half 16 Patch Sashing top #1 – more progress
I put this quilt up on my large design wall and it turns out I have a whole bunch of sashing/blocks left to do.
I put the sashing/blocks along the outside so I could see the full extent of what I had. With so much white, the outside of the quilt melted away into the design wall.
It turns out that I have one full sashing/block on the machine, but I still need about 13. I have more than a week until I want to hand it in at the guild meeting.
It has an interesting look. I think when I make the next one I need to be more selective about the colors I choose. I need to have one color used as alternate patches in all the blocks.
I have made good progress on the Half 16 Patch Sashing Donation top. I used the 2.5 inch squares as leaders and enders as I worked on Old Town. It was getting too big for the small design wall and that helped to spur me on to get Old Town finished. I wanted to see this top on the large design wall. I feel like I am almost finished!
This quilt showed up at the guild meeting on Saturday. I didn’t make the top, but I think I made all of the blocks. I would have to look through all of my donation blocks posts. They all look like familiar fabrics.
I really like the turquoise with the blacks and whites.
I decided that making a pencil roll would fit in with the upcoming Organizer swap and would be good to enter into the fair. I had nothing to enter and needed to make something. Time grew short and my free time became a precious commodity, so here we are.
I spent some of last weekend sewing the strips together after cutting them out at Sew Day. It didn’t all go as smoothly as I would have liked, but it has been about 6 years since I made one of these so some bumps in the path are to be expected. I am thinking black and white for the other pieces. Dots and stripes.
I hope to finish this sometime this week so I can hand it in at the meeting next weekend to be taken to the Fair.
Cyndi has been working on the donation top that she and Tim made when we had our Sew Day at her house.
She brought it to Sew Day last week so we all could see what she had done.
Cyndi’s donation quilt
OMG! She did a fantastic job quilting it. The improv grid is a perfect quilting design. The quilt came out so much better than any of us ever anticipated.
It really is made up of parts that Cyndi was going to toss. This is such a great outcome.
Sew Day turned out better than I expected. I threw a bunch of different projects into my large Chubby Charmers and went to Sew Day. Everything I brought would at least be a start to something.
First, I got out the Old Town instructions and worked out what I needed to do for the border. I am glad I did! I thought there was a Sawtooth border and I was in for hours of pressing and trimming HSTs. Nope. There is no Sawtooth border. It is all squares and I have pretty much made all the pieces. Yay!
After that the real work got started.
Morning Flower Patch & Pencil Roll start
I decided that for the July Organizer swap, I am going to make a pencil roll. I also decided that I would use the fabric I bought at Family Threads for the pencil roll. In addition, I will use more of that same fat quarter pack for the Morning Flower Patch quilt. Cyndi showed me her version and it caught my eye, so I decided to look up the pattern and make one. I was able to cut the 2.5 inch colored squares for that quilt along with the strips I need for the pencil roll. It took me awhile, but that accomplishment got me off to a great start.
MaryC’s medallion
Mary was working on her Tara Faughnan project and really got a lot done. I took a picture from the last Sew Day, but never posted it. The colors she used are very Southwest feeling.
This will be a quilt for her daughter’s birthday. I really like the strong diagonal motifs.
May scrap progress
After finishing the cutting of the Family Threads fat quarter pack, I started cutting scraps. I know I have done this at the January, February and March Sew Days, but I still have not finished cutting up my scraps. This time I made really GREAT progress. I took my Desktop Cube and the adjoining zipper bag of scraps and came home with only the Desktop Cube full of scraps! I feel like I accomplished something.
I made some effort to make some blocks this month, but spent most of my charity time on the Grey Improv donation quilt. I also started working on the sashing blocks for the quilt I saw at the Sonoma County Fair. I have about 3 half 16 patches done.
Last year I went to the Sonoma County Fair with friends from Austria. They
2.5 inch square sashing quilt
have something similar in Austria, but it isn’t exactly the same. Of course, I visited the quilts and found one that I am going to try as a new design for a donation top.
I don’t know what to call this design and don’t know if it is actual pattern or not.
2.5 inch square sashing quilt – detail
The piecing is in the sashing and the blocks are plain. The maker of this quilt, Elysha Ozanian, did a great job making the sashing really stand out. I drew out the quilt and found that instead of making the normal guild donation block, I could make half of one and that would be the pieced part of the quilt. I tried to make a block out of the plain block and the pieced sashing, but it didn’t work, so I will just build the quilt using individual units of the small plain block, the large plain block and the pieced portion using chunking.
The units comprising one plain block, 4 small plain blocks and the pieced sections are over 14 inches. I am not quite sure how big I will make my version. Maybe 4 plain blocks wide with the sashing units on the outside? I’ll have to see.
This might be another option for the guild to make as a donation quilt design.
I have finally finished the Grey Improv donation top and back. It has taken awhile, though much of the time was it hanging on the design wall going nowhere.
I did a good job working through my odd sized grey scraps, which is the whole point of the exercise. I am even more convinced that improv works much better in a monochromatic palette. I think that a complementary color scheme would work as well. I haven’t tried that I think the quilt would end up being bed sized.
Grey Improv back
This quilt is about 45 in. x 45 in., which is on the large size for a baby quilt, but definitely kid sized. Also, in this color scheme I could imagine it working well for a boy.
While working on the Old Town blocks I have been using my grey scraps to add to the Grey Improv donation quilt. I am really enjoying building up the size of this quilt. It takes forever to get the right sized pieces, but all of a sudden it is bigger. It is really fun.
There was no organized Community Quilt project at the Retreat this year as both Community Quilt chair people were otherwise occupied and didn’t attend. Despite that, the group made (or brought) ~15 quilts to hand in. First, I brought the White Strips donation quilt, but couldn’t hand it in, because nobody was there to collect it. Oh well, I’ll hand it in on Saturday.
Lee Ann put the finishing touches on the Improv quilt above. I made a number of the pieces and it was fun to see them. She said it has been sitting around for awhile. I was really glad to see what a great job she did.
Lee Ann’s Flying Geese quilt
Lee Ann also put together a Flying Geese quilt for the Community quilt project that was really interesting.
Peggy gave her the mauve-y red awhile ago and asked her to do something with it. The color wasn’t exactly Lee Ann’s style, but recently she got a layer cake that included fabrics she used for a background. This isn’t a quilt I would make, but I think the combination works really well! Lee Ann did a great job on the piecing. She ran around the room with the quilt fluttering behind her like a cape when she finished! It was a joyful act.
Anna’s heart quilt
Anna also finished a donation quilt that has been hanging around. We all helped her arrange the last few blocks, so she could get the quilt off her UFO list. I thought it was a Pulse quilt that Anna wasn’t able to finish, but she finally figured out it was intended for the victims of the Las Vegas shooting in 2017. In looking through the posts where I communicate the call for victims who need quilts, I was reminded how many times recently there has been some tragedy where a call has gone out. This quilt will make someone very happy. As usual, Anna did a great job.
Melinda was on a binge. She made 10 baby quilts (~34 inches square) from a tub of children’s fabric she can’t remember buying. LOL! I didn’t get any photos of her quilt tops and backs because she was so fast at showing them. She was pleased with how much she got done, but disappointed that she didn’t use up more of the fabric.
Pillowcase donation top
I made a donation quilt with some of the leftover fabric from the pillowcases.
I got the black and white triangle (pinwheel?) fabric from Melinda. She was happy to offload it. I added it to the pillowcase fabrics to make the quilt slightly larger.
As you can see, I messed up the layout somewhere along the way. Someone will like it.
Lynette’s Pillowcase quilt top
I wasn’t that happy with the black quilt once I saw what Lynette made with the other pillowcase scraps. She added a cream background fabric from Melinda to really make the pillowcase scraps shine.
Lynette is a on a potato chip quilt binge. I may have heard of Potato Chip quilts, but I have never made one. I might now that I know how great they can look.
Lee Ann’s special 4-patch donation quilt
Lee Ann found this block somewhere – I didn’t hear the story and made a donation quilt out of children’s fabrics. She added some solids and the quilt top looks really great.
I didn’t bring a scrap bin or my 2.5 inch squares bin and I was sorry. I had to scramble around for leaders and enders and that wasn’t easy. I got quite a bit done using other projects for leaders and enders, but it was difficult. I was shocked at how ingrained sewing with leaders and enders is for me!
Last weekend was the guild‘s quilt retreat. It was great to get away and sew for 10 hours per day. Like last year, we went to the St. Francis Retreat Center in San Juan Batista.
This is a picture of all the attendees with some of our projects.
2025 Retreat setup
The room had a different setup than last year, but we had plenty of space to work. There was a tall table where people sandwiched quilts and laid things out. There was a couple of design walls and two cutting tables.
2025 Retreat – my space
My space was more than I needed, but I used it all. LOL! I plunked my machine down when I got there and just used it in that space. I had a whole 6 ft. table to myself and could have moved it over to have more space on the left. It worked pretty well. I got plenty done.
Julie sat across from me, so we were able to chat and get opinions pretty easily.
Hats on machines
Fabric on machines
People started putting ‘hats’ on their machines at night. I am not sure what sparked that, but I saw it a few times with fabric and bags. Keeping the dust off? The machine with the fabric is SueG’s machine and I think she just wanted a decoration for her machine.
They fed us very well. Nice healthy meals even for me. I felt good after the retreat from a food point of view.
Julie and I brought some cocktails and drank them before bedtime. Such a good way to sleep well.
I was very cold the first night. I got up in the middle of the night and put on my fleece jacket. The next day I remembered doing that last year as well. I’ll have to make a note about it for next year.
All in all, a good layout, a good weekend and a general good time.
After finishing the White Strips #3 donation top, I needed another leaders and enders project.
This grey improv scrap top has hung on my small design wall for almost a year. I am shocked at that! I didn’t realize how much time had flown by.
My grey-black-brown drawer isn’t crammed full, but it isn’t empty either and I decided that I need to work on this project to get it off the design wall and to someone who needs it. Also, it will be a relatively quick win on my fabric used spreadsheet.
At the moment, as leaders and enders, I am sewing together all the scraps that are not strips. I am sewing them into pieces that I can then sew on to the top above. You can see pieces I have placed, but not sewn. They are just temporarily in place until I can add more pieces to them to make a unit large enough to expand the top. It’s a lot of piecing, because the pieces are small.
The main piece I have already sewn together is about 32 inches wide. I need another 10 inches, at least. I’ll probably have to dig into the strips to make the quilt big enough.
I finished White Strips #2 and was able to hand it in to the Community Quilts Committee at the Retreat.
I was not surprised, but rather disappointed that my white scrap bin does not seem to be emptier. As I said before, I have a lot of plain white scraps so I have to decide what do with the plain white scraps. I am going to work on some other scrap quilts until I decide.
