Bloggity blog blog... from the beach

Retreat is/was wonderful this year.  Three days of fun, sewing and camaraderie at the beach.  The ladies I sewed with were a hoot, every one of them was congenial and fun to be around, even when things didn't go quite right.  Z. forgot her machine's power cord, someone touched M. in her sleep, V. sewed all her strips wrong and had to rip, rip, rip, C's bobbin tension was wrong and sewed 800" of strips with big loopies on the bottom... There were lots of little things that went wrong, and still, everyone had a great time.  There was a lot of joking around, lots of wine, margueritas, dolphins swimming by the house, more wine, much accomplished in the way of finished quilts, more wine, some new techniques learned and mastered, oh, and did I mention the wine?

Anyway, I managed to get a lot done myself.  I put borders on my first hidden wells quilt.  I took a pre-printed border print fabric, separated out the single stripe that I liked and mitered the corners.  Now it looks like this:

I'm happy with the outcome, I think the border sets it off nicely.

Then I made my second hidden wells quilt.  The pictur above is of the strats I used for the strip piecing part of making this quilt.  I tried to make a 'rainbow' of colors from red through blue with a black print on one end and a black fabric on the other.  The finished hidden wells quilt (sans borders) looks like this:

I had a vision of what I wanted the quilt to look like and while the black diamonds pretty much fit with my vision, the prominence of the yellow x's is a bit bolder than I was expecting.  Still, I  like it and I will finish it up with a green (I think) eye-stopper and a border using the focus fabric (the black print with all the colors in it).

When I made my first hidden wells quilt, I had 4 blocks left over, and I made a table runner out of those 4 blocks, and bordered it in orange.  It is now ready for quilting:

I also made a baby quilt for a co-worker of my husband.  The top is done, just needs to be quilted.  It is made from Minkee, satin, flannel and cotton.  The first two fabrics (Minkee and satin) are NOT easy to work with.  The satin frays really easily and the Minkee is very stretchy.  Both require a lot of  pinning to 'get it right'... I hate pinning, lol.  Making this quilt was NOT a labor  of love.

I also made a strip quilt from a pattern called Strip Joints by GE Designs.  I used pre-cut jelly rolls and bali pops, so all I had to do was cut them up to the right lengths and sew them together.  Very quick and easy to do and it went really fast.

 
The two 'colors' of the strip collections were pale neutrals and a Wild Berry bali pop.  (Not sure what the pale neutral collection was called).  It's mostly purple which I like, but with a little too much pink, which I'm not so fond of, but overall, I'm happy with it.

I also pieced two blocks of my Northern Wilderness  quilt.  Northern Wilderness is a wonderful quilt that is on my bucket list but not a high priority - one of those projects that you know will take a long time to complete with it's mix of piecing and applique.  I will use it as a filler project like I did this weekend - completing blocks a couple at a time.  Once all the blocks are pieced, I will start on the applique.  Wish me luck - that's a LOT of applique! 

Overall, it was a good and productive retreat for me.  Most important, it was fun and relaxing.  I will miss the pounding of the waves on the seawall, the smell of salt air, the sharing and caring and laughter.