For the first day of our "stay at home retreat" I did a workshop with Suzanne Lyle on improvisational piecing. It was really interesting, although challenging to get my head around. The main difficulty I (and others) had was with cutting pieces the correct shape to join to something already assembled.
Here are a bunch of my "bits" spread out, not in any particular arrangement:
As you might be able to tell from the general wobbliness, sewing those random curves together was not easy. Anyway, it was an interesting session, and I'm glad I did it. Who knows, I may even use some of this in some way in future.
In the evening our small challenge pieces were unveiled. We had to try to guess who made each one, and vote for our favourite. A storm was approaching and I was worried about driving home through it. So I left before it arrived and missed the judging. Here are all the entries:
Not great photos of some of them, sadly. It was fun to see them all. Some people put a lot more effort in than I did!
Today I mainly spent seeing what everyone else was doing (wandering around chatting, in other words). However I did take the opportunity to spread out my Rainbow Scrap Challenge blocks to work out how to put them together.
Hearts:
I have made 6 of each colour of the hearts, but I think columns of 4 set on point will give me a big enough donation quilt. I'm planning to put sashing between the hearts. I'll add the sashing before I decide totally, but if I do go with columns of 4, the left-overs will make half of another the same.
And here are the Scrappy Sprouts:
The last thing I did during the retreat was to finish the cross-stitching on my Ukrainian bookmark,
which I started way back in April, and almost finished as I sat beside my mother in her last days. Now I need to decide what I will do with it.
All in all it was a great weekend, although now I am worn out, and will not want to do anything social for a few days to recover!
Linked to the RSC ScrapHappy Saturday post for this week.
7 comments:
What were the challenge requirements. Looks very interesting. Hope you got a plan in your head for the RSC.
What fun! Your bookmark looks great. I made mine into the top of a bag. The hearts and leaves are so colorful.
I so love that bookmark! It is beautiful. And your hearts and leaves are also so pretty in rainbow colours. Happy Stitching from me!
Complex curved piecing, looks good so far. You will probably get the hang of it after a while, don't give up.
Sounds like a great weekend. I had to go looking for the bookmark photo, it is not showing in my version of your post. Worth the hunt, it's beautiful.
Your group challenge looks interesting…
Your RSC Hearts look lovely together and I look forward to seeing the other complete.
Beautiful book mark.
Loved all the gorgeous blooms in your previous post.
Such a variety of challenge projects and I love how your RSC projects are coming along!
That looks like an very interesting improv class! Since it is improv, there shouldn't actually be any "correct" way to piece the curves right? I mean, you're allowed to just chop or ease till it fits, yes? Loving the pieced Rainbow Hearts reminds me I need to get back to mine (some day). Also love the pieced Sprouts --- hadn't seen those before. Hmmm, I could see adding some improv pieced flowers to the tops of some them and call them the "leaves". And cross stitch too?!? This was a great retreat and you didn't even have to travel!
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