Summer Retreat

The Renegades spent most of this week on retreat. We went to our usual place, Linda's, and sewed and sewed and drank some wine and sewed and laughed a whole lot and sewed and one of us had a milkshake.

This retreat was a precious one for me because I'd had to miss both the Renegades' Spring Retreat and the Guild Retreat. Come to think of it, we were invited to join MaryEllen's Retreat and I had to miss that one, too. So I needed this getaway.

I'd picked up Boardwalk from the machinist on Monday morning before heading out and I was mighty pleased with how she'd turned out. So that was my first project. For reasons I no longer recall, I wanted to round the corners, which meant I had to make bias binding. I did that, and I got the binding machined on, easing it around those curved corners. Boardwalk is huge.

I imagine I'll get her pressed tomorrow and begin the hand-stitching soon after,

In a little over a year, Caroline will be going off to college and of course she'll need a new quilt to take along. We had a conference a few weeks ago about colors and designs and stuff. We settled on sky-blue-pink batiks and Kristy Daum's wonderful Mazed pattern. A lot of colleges provide beds that are extra-long twin size, so I figured I'd need 165 6" blocks, set 11 x 15. My work was made easier by the purchase of a jellyroll of the desired colors, easily cut into the 2-1/2" segments I'd need, and a few yards of Kona snow was picked up for the background. I pieced and pieced and pieced and ultimately had the 171 blocks I wanted (always good to have a couple of extras). Here's a partial mock-up of how the quilt will look. Assembly will happen during the winter.

Someone I know is expecting a baby girl this winter and I got to thinking that I hadn't made a sheep quilt in a very long time, so I dug out my paper-pieced patterns of the ovine variety, planning on a flock of six. I got five done and decided that that there sixth sheep wasn't all that cute . . . .

I like to set the blocks for a sheep quilt in a long column, so that's what I did, and with two-inch spacers between the sheep, I had what I decided was the perfect length quilt. 

Well, last night it was getting late-ish, but not late enough to go to bed. I knew I'd be leaving early in the morning and didn't want to start anything complicated. I'd brought along two potential projects and decided -- of course -- on the William Morris fat quarter pack that had come in the mail on Saturday. This is my second quilt from the Crossroads pattern and four blocks in, I'm utterly smitten. Which should surprise no one.