A Great Day or a Workshop

Today was my Quilters By the Sea guild workshop. We were a small but mighty group today but we had a great time. Our guest was Sylvia Davis and the workshop was stained glass. This is the small top I made. It of course is not finished yet, I will be adding a border and will then quilt it. But it the mean time, I think it's pretty darn cute.

Here's a group picture of some of the others.

Enjoy,

It's A Giant Easter Egg!

It's hard to believe that it's almost Easter. It seems like just last month that I visited with my sister Melinda and my niece Christina in San Francisco, but in fact it's been an entire year. My sister came to California for a visit so I flew to San Francisco from where I live in So. Calif. Whenever we get together we try to work on a project or two. We've made quilts, bears, decorated clip boards and on and on.

Last year I had purchased a really cute table runner pattern from Monica's Quilt and Bead Creations in Palm Desert California, so that turned out to be one of our projects. Off we went to Joann's and bought various fat quarters and some off the bolt pieces of Easter fabric. Then we headed back to Christina's to make three table runners. We made half-square triangles, flying geese and simple strips and put them together every which way. We only had one sewing machine but we each managed to made one for our dining room tables. They each came out really cute. As my sister and I aways say, the same but different. So here's mine.

I love having a variety of table runners. It's a simple way to change the look of my dining room as the seasons change.

Enjoy!

Quilted Charity Quilt

As I told you before, my friendship group had a challenge using a paint chip as our color pallet for a quilt to be given to charity. I made the quilt a while back, but waited to quilt it at the "Quilting in the Pines" retreat last week.

After practicing on small quilt sandwiches, this was my first attempt at an actual quilt. I first quilted in the ditch to form a grid that would stabilize the entire quilt as I continue to free motion quilt the rest of the top. I quilted big loops in the round portion of the drunkards path and spiky things on the other side. I then quilted a figure 8 design in the first two and last two borders. The middle border was quilted by practicing leaves and loops.

Overall all I'm pleased with the results. I know someone will love it, but for now I'll be happy to get rid of it. It was never my colors so I'm happy to send it on it's way.

I'm Back! And I'm Machine Quilting!

I'm back from a wonderful quilting retreat in Cambria, California. This retreat was focused on machine quilting with our regular sewing machine. I have quilted a lot of quilts on my HandiQuilter but have only quilted a few things on my good old Pfaff. I was skeptical that I would be able to do anything that would look half way decent. Well I was surprised! I still need lots of practice (as you can see) but I'm determined to keep at it, and with practice I'll do better.




A big thank you to Frances Moore for her patience, she is a great teacher.



So here's my mini quilt show:













Above are my practice samples.







Remember my 81 patch? Here's the quilting.






Here' my disappearing nine patch. It's hard to see the quilting but here is a closeup.



I guess it's still pretty hard to see but there are loopty loops in the stars, stippling in the white and leaves in the border.

I also quilted a charity quilt, but I'll save that for next time.

Disappearing Nine Patch

Disappearing Nine Patch

On Sunday I will be heading up the California coast to Cambria for a quilt retreat that Two Wacky Women is facilitating for Frances Moore. As well as hosting our own retreats we also offer to facilitate retreats for other instructors like Frances.



81 Patch????

The focus of this retreat is to learn and/or improve your machine quilting skills. Most of our work is already completed so I am hoping to have time to sew and maybe finally learn to do a decent job of quilting on my sewing machine. I always say I'm a great piecer, a pretty good designer and a really good teacher, but a machine quilter I'm not. I'll let you know in a week if I can change that last one.



So.......I've been going through the supply list and getting things ready to go. She's asked us to bring 8 small quilt sandwiches, two of which are suppose to be pieced. I have already made a nine patch quilt that is made up of nine patches, does that make it a 81 patch? I needed one more when on one of my yahoogroups list someone posted a link to a blog showing a Disappearing Nine Patch. It was much more interesting then anything else I had come up with so I made one tonight to take to the retreat. Here is the link:
http://blocksnswaps.blogspot.com/2008/02/disappearing-9-patch.html

Now all I have to do is quilt them.


Wish me luck! Robin

Zippered Screen Bags

I've been a very busy little bee. Two Wacky Women is facilitating a retreat next week for Frances Moore called "Quilting in the Pines" and focuses on machine quilting. Whenever we host a retreat we put together, what I think is a pretty darn nice, welcome package. This time one of the items to be included is a zippered bag made from pet screen.

As with so many things, the first one took a while but then I set up a little assembly line and put the rest of them together. Each is slightly different so you can tell them apart.

This is a fairly small group so I should have time to participate in the class. I have never been comfortable quilting on my regular sewing machine so this should be good for me. I need to do my prep work so I'll be all ready to go next week. I keep telling Frances, if she can teach me to machine quilt, she can teach anyone.

Not Just Another Note Pad

Periodically we offer a free pattern on the Two Wacky Women website. I just had my husband John (the TWW webmaster) change out the previous pattern to "Not Just Another Note Pad". There is a button on the home page called "Free Pattern" (isn't that clever), just click on it and it will open a PDF file with the complete instructions. I have found that you really want a spiral notebook with a heavy cover on it. So far, Staples own brand is the best.

Two of my favorites

As you can see the inside looks nice also.

Enjoy, Robin