WIP Wednesday

 I'm packing for a weekend retreat, so my house is turned upside down! I want to bring everything, but that is just silly. How do you decide which projects to bring with you to retreats and sew-in days? To complicate things, this is the retreat that I organize. And. Julia is meeting me there, so I need to bring projects and supplies for her, too. Yup. My car will be FULL!

I did finish a quilt this week- last year's retreat project. I wanted to have it done for show & tell. It looks a little odd, but it makes more sense with Julia's quilt next to it (which is not done yet). Read more about them here.

Holy crap! I just found a 24 year old UFO! I made this wall hanging top with leftovers from the first quilt I made by myself after I took a beginner class in 1990. So this is probably from 1991 or 1992. My points are bad, and the fabric screams 1990's, but it's a good design. Maybe I'll reproduce it this weekend with modern scraps. You know, because I don't have enough projects packed already.

I'm going to pack some more. I'll be surfing the linkup when I need a break.

Setting In Circles

 Last weekend, Julia and I worked on our retreat projects from last March. During the retreat, we made the jelly roll race tops. Pat Harrison's design had a lovely swirl of circles that were set in using Sharon Schamber's piece-lique method. Julia and I thought we could arrange our circles so the quilts would work together. I first thought of a yin-yang type deisgn. The heart was Julia's brilliant idea.

The original method requires cutting holes in the background first, then piecing in the circle. We reversed that and prepared the circles first by pressing under the seam allowance. Then we glue basted them to the background and cut away the inside of the circle from the background. Finally, we machine stitched the seam. If you've done any piece-lique, this might make sense. It's hard to describe, but it worked for us. Anyway, don't our finished tops look cool together?

When I went to my stash to look for a backing, I found my bin full of Anita's Arrowhead blocks and batik squares waiting to be pieced. About a year ago, I cut up my entire batik stash into squares for these blocks. I pulled all the yellow, orange, pink and green and went to town piecing blocks. I absolutely love making these blocks! Anita's process makes me happy! Now I have a pieced backing that will make this a two-sided quilt.

The binding is pieced from scraps leftover from my circles.

My top, backing, and binding are ready and waiting for me to buy some batting.

I set aside all the blues for Julia, but she won't be able to work on hers again until Spring break.