Sweet Retreat: Part I

I know, I haven't posted in a while! We are currently living through a renovation, and the chaos has pushed off all but the most essential tasks. Which means that I barely spent any time sewing in late January and through February.
But happily, March brought me to my quilt guild's annual retreat, on the shores of Lake Huron. Luxurious days of sewing in my pajamas, stopping only to eat, sleep, or soak in the hot tub. Truly, it's the life!
Vowing that I would use the opportunity to catch up on my incomplete projects, I packed a suitcase full of UFO's. First on the list were a couple of I-Spy quilts, destined for charity. This first one was pieced by my daughter Margaret back in January, at my friend Renske's house. She did a pretty good job for a 9 year old; all it needed was a border, and so I added the wide band of green.
As an update, after I gave the completed top to Renske, she had it handquilted by another acquaintance of hers, and the quilt will be auction this May at the Mennonite Relief Sale & Quilt Auction in New Hamburg. I'm quite excited about this, and hope that Margaret will be proud of her accomplishment (at the moment, she's a bit shy, and only reluctantly agreed to have her name on the quilt label).

That same day at Renske's, I had partially pieced an I-Spy using a sneaky method Renske showed me. I had to finish the horizontal sashing, off-setting alternate rows of blocks, and then apply a border. I thought it turned out surprisingly well. I really like the staggered effect of the offset squares.
My completed top is going to Joseph Schneider Haus, a local museum, where it will be the back-up quilt for the annual Quilting Bee (i.e., if they finish the first top before the end of the designated Quilting Bee days, they will move on to quilting my quilt). I imagine my quilt going on to the Relief Sale in 2014, although it could also be donated to the local hospital (our guild supplies "Smile Quilts" for children in hospital with serious or chronic medical conditions).
It felt great to have uninterrupted time to get these quilts finished! And then, it was on to the next!

Scrappy baby quilt

I promised myself that I wouldn't buy new fabrics this year, other than what I needed to complete existing projects... and technically the fabric for this quilt doesn't count, because I didn't buy it. I was visiting my friend M, and she happened to mention that she had bags of fabric scraps that she was getting rid of... who can say no to someone else's scraps?

It was like Christmas, going through her bag of scraps. Silly, I know. I get so excited when I get to admire bits of fabric: even small pieces of pretty prints or batiks can make my heart go pitter-patter. I was quite excited when I saw that she had cast off a bunch of coordinating strips and squares in cheerful, colourful baby prints. Adding in some fabrics from my own scrap bag, I was able to eek out a baby quilt, in a modern scrappy log-cabin based pattern. My son Connor is holding it up for me to photograph.

It's smallish, so it needs a border -- I hope to find something suitable in the next week or two. Then M agreed to machine quilt it, and we will donate it to the Relief Sale & Quilt Auction for next year.

I know, I cheated: this really qualifies as a new project, and I'm not supposed to start anything new. But it didn't take very long, and it was fun to make... so shh! Let's just pretend we didn't notice me making this quilt.

Quilting Day out at the farm

My friend Renske invited Margaret and I to come out to her farm to sew for a day. She had been given a stash of novelty prints, and had the idea of hosting a small quilting bee, to make I-Spy quilts for charity.
If you don't know what an I-Spy quilt is, quite simply it's a quilt made with many different squares of fabric depicting animals, toys, foods, vehicles, etc., which can be used to play "I-Spy" with a young child. You can say "I spy something orange!" or "I spy a fish!" and the child has to find the fabric containing the goldfish, for example. They are fun and cheerful quilts to make.
Margaret, as you can see by her big smile, was quite happy to miss a day of school to go quilting. She did pretty well for her age, getting three rows pieced and sewn together over the course of the day.

She might have done more, but she was distracted by Renske's cute grandchildren -- baby Evelyn (Margaret is cuddling her in this picture) and baby Jonas. Being the youngest in our family, Margaret hasn't had much opportunity to play with babies, and she was quite enthralled with Evelyn in particular, who was old enough to interact with her.
For me, Renske had set up an interesting quilt. She had all the novelty square cut already, and laid out on a design board. I was to cut long vertical sashing strips, then working in columns, sew the squares of each column down the length of the first strip, about an eighth of an inch apart. For the next column, sew each square on the opposite side of the strip, lining up each square with the one already sewn. Then sewing a second sashing strip to the opposite side of the second column of squares, then attach the next column of squares to the opposite side of the second sashing strip.
Maybe that sounds confusing. I was certainly confused when Renske first tried to explain it to me. So I just plunged in and started sewing, trusting it would all make sense as I worked -- and it did. Here I am holding up my work for the day: all vertical sashing strips sewed to all the blocks.
I took the quilt home at the end of the day to work on the next step -- separating the rows by cutting the vertical strips between the squares. I will then offset the alternate rows, and attach them with horizontal sashing strips.
 The last photo shows all the quilts that came out of that sewing day -- me with my quilt at left, then Renske's daughter Jeanette, Margaret with her partially pieced top, and Renske's daughter-in-law, Emily.
It was a lot of fun! But next time I will have to remember to get up and stretch more often -- my shoulders were pretty tired afterward from so many hours at my machine!