Retreat

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:

Some of them, anyway. They will get stems between the pairs of leaves, and neutral sashing between the columns. I have random numbers of the different colours, so would need to make more blocks if I wanted to continue this arrangement. I also had been intending to add flowers to the tops of at least some of the "plants", so this one is still under consideration.

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.

Variations

I have to make a small item by next weekend. I've had most of the year to do it. But I've just started.

 
Here are the pieces all cut and laid out ready to sew:

After I had started assembling it, I thought maybe it would look more interesting like this:

Or even this:

Or, the final possible variation, this:

I made a decision, and one of these is the final layout. I'll show you which one in a few days when it is finished.

Retreat

 Over the weekend I attended a "stay at home" retreat. We hired space in a local school where we could sew and talk and eat and generally catch up on nearly two years. 

Saturday was also when the first clue of Bonnie Hunter's new mystery, Rhododendron Trail, was released. So that was the first thing I did at the retreat.

This is before they were trimmed. I'm making roughly half the quantity again this year.

The placemat challenge entries were displayed and voted on:

We had a competition to guess who made each one, as well as voting for our favourites. The winner is in the second photo - the Santa with the falling-over tree and presents. Second place was the one in the foreground of the last photo, with the reindeer and tree.

On the second day of the retreat I did a bit of hand sewing and a lot more talking. I attempted to pin baste a quilt, but I will need to do it again at home, due to wrinkles.

There was so much talking. Everyone had so many stories to tell from 2020 and 2021. And I must have done too much talking, as I ended up with chapped lips and a slightly hoarse voice!

Progress

 Can I get this placemat bound by Saturday?

I quilted it on Monday, but haven't made the binding (or even decided which fabric to use) yet.

Thanks for all the kind wishes about my mother. I got a phone call from the hospital yesterday afternoon to say they were discharging her, and this morning I was able to go and visit her at the nursing home again. She seemed in pretty good shape after her ordeal, although quite tired.

Challenging Times

On Thursday night I had another call from the nursing home, wanting to send Mum to hospital because of her fever. By that time I had had a chance to talk to my sister, and we both agreed that Mum should be left where she was. If she was dying it was better for her to be in a familiar place with people she knows caring for her. So I told the nurse to leave Mum there, and I would come and see her in the morning.

As I was getting ready to visit on Friday morning, I got another call from the nursing home to say that they had just sent Mum to hospital. 

After many phonecalls that just rang out, I eventually spoke to someone in Emergency. Mum was being attended to, but I was not allowed to go and sit with her, as they were awaiting the results of another covid test. (The nursing home had given her one on Thursday because of her elevated temperature.)

Later, Mum was admitted to the hospital, where no visiting is allowed at all. That is part of why I hadn't wanted her to be sent there.

I spent a bit of time soothing my mind this afternoon working on a Christmas placemat challenge that I am meant to have finished by next weekend, but hadn't started.

I got this far today.

Late in the afternoon, I had a call from the hospital to tell me I am allowed a compassionate visit with Mum. I didn't feel up to the drive then, after having had a sleepless night last night, but will go and see her tomorrow.

Alice Challenge

Ballaarat Quilters' annual challenge was this year based on Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland. My memory of the story was hazy, so I read "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" (for the first time since childhood) to remind myself of the details and look for inspiration.

My inspiration came from chapter 10, "The Lobster Quadrille", in which the Mock Turtle sings a song beginning:

"Will you walk a little faster?" said a whiting to a snail.
"There's a porpoise close behind us, and he's treading on my tail."


Later in the chapter, as the song is discussed:
"If I'd been the whiting," said Alice, whose thoughts were still running on the song, 'I'd have said to the porpoise, "Keep back, please: we don't want you with us!"'

'They were obliged to have him with them,' the Mock Turtle said: 'no wise fish would go anywhere without a porpoise.'

'Wouldn't it really?' said Alice in a tone of great surprise.

'Of course not,' said the Mock Turtle: 'why, if a fish came to me, and told me he was going a journey, I should say "With what porpoise?"'

*************

So I went looking for a porpoise pattern of some kind, and rather than finding a porpoise-related quilt design, I found this cross stitch pattern for a patchwork dolphin. Dolphin, porpoise, close enough. I've never done cross-stitch before, but I found it a very relaxing process.

Week One (27th March):

I read about gridding the Aida with fine fishing line, but buying a whole reel for this little job seemed like a waste. I used some Bottom Line thread, which did slide out easily, but also was possible to pierce with a cross stitch needle, so it wasn't ideal.

Week Two:

Week Three:

Week Four:

Week Five:

Week Six:

This could be a "spot the difference" puzzle, because looking at the photos now I can't see the difference between weeks five and six. Maybe I did the white stitching that week? I can't tell from the photos.

Week Seven:

Week Eight:

Week Nine (22nd May):

And there he sat for a few months. I eventually stitched the quote, and then last week I popped him in a frame:

Not a great photo because of the reflective glass. But I'm pretty happy with the end result!

Tonight was the challenge reveal. I wasn't the only person who hadn't made a quilt; the eighteen entries included cushions, an embroidered hanging, an actual clock, and a bag as well as quilts of various sizes. An amazing array of creativity. I really should have taken some photos.

Christmas Challenge

This year's challenge theme was, "What's in your garden?" Around the time the theme was announced I first saw the Hoffman "Dream Big" panels, and had the idea of using the panel for my challenge. In early March I bought the "Opal" colour:

I thought the panel needed a little something to properly represent my garden, so I purchased from Spoonflower a piece of fabric featuring large bees.

When I buy plants for the garden, one of my considerations is whether they will provide food for our bees. For example, all my dahlias are open-centred, not the pom-pom type that the panel appears to be. So I planned to quilt the centre to look more like an open-centred dahlia that bees love.


Last month I fused the bees to the panel, did a bit of free-motion embroidery on them, then started the quilting.

17th November:

On the 19th November, I had lunch with a couple of quilting friends, and while they admired my quilting so far, they pointed out that the bees' eyes were a problem. Jenni pinned a piece of black chiffon over one of them, and it was instantly improved:

Blurry photo without the flash, but you can see that the dark eye is much better. Jenni gave me a couple of pieces of chiffon so that I could fix the eyes.

I continued with the quilting. By the 29th November, I was reaching the edges of the panel:

I changed threads as I quilted from the centre to the edges:

The quilting was completed on the 2nd of December:

Photo outside in the evening, making the colours look a bit cooler.

But the white eyes were still there, waiting to be fixed. I used a technique learnt in the Christine Lethlean workshop in August. I covered the whole area with the chiffon, stitched it in place, then cut away the excess.

Eyes fixed, batting and backing trimmed:

Flash photo inside.

Measuring the quilt top, I discovered it was 100cm from top to bottom, but 106cm from side to side. It looked a bit odd; not square, but not rectangular enough to look like a rectangle. It was meant to be square when purchased, so I don't know if it shrank with pre-washing, or if the quilting pulled it in more in one direction than the other. I eventually decided to trim 6cms from the width to make the quilt square.

That was a bit painful!

Hand sewing the back of the binding on 4th December:

And today, after completing the binding, here is the finished quilt:

 And here it is flapping in the breeze in the sun, so you can see more of the texture:

Tonight was the challenge reveal.

I did not win the prize.

Around the Garden

The theme of the guild Christmas Challenge this year is "In My Garden". This pin is in my challenge piece:

Yes, today I was basting my quilt. I now have 19 days to get it finished! A bit different to last year, when I was quilting my Christmas challenge quilt in August.

Here's some of what is happening in the real garden.

The roses seem to be slow this year, but a few are starting to get going.

 The rose above is "Raspberry Tiger", and the one below is "Granada".

 Both of them are from the lucky dip box of end-of-season roses.

"Margaret Merril" is not new this year, but I don't seem to have ever posted a photo of it before:

"Friesia" is gorgeous every year:

The rescued Chinese ground orchids were taken out of their pot and planted in the garden earlier this year. They've just started flowering, too:

The most striking thing in the garden at the moment is this:

 Maybe it doesn't look too amazing there, but what if I step back a bit:

It's a monster echium! I'm hoping it continues to grow tall, and doesn't meet the same fate as last year's.

Challenge Revealed

Tonight was the Ballaarat Quilters' Christmas do, where our annual challenge pieces were revealed. The challenge involved making something using only the colours of the birthstone and flower associated with the month of your birth. As my stone is emerald and my flower is lily of the valley, that gave me only green and white to work with.

I decided to be quite literal, and make a representation of an emerald. Using a free downloadable program called Quilt Assistant and starting with this picture:

I created a paper foundation pattern for an emerald-cut emerald. And then at the AQC in April I saw Kat Jones's Bling, a giant cushion-cut diamond done by paper foundation piecing. In that post I wrote, "No one will believe me now, but one of the challenge pieces I'm working on this year is somewhat similar in concept to this. But I really did start working on it before I had ever seen pictures of Bling." There is really no comparison between Kat's diamond which is over 2 metres square and my 40cm x 60cm emerald. But as paper-pieced representations of precious stones, they are similar in concept!

Here's my emerald:

I used nine different green solids, plus white.  Here's a photo taken during construction, which I posted in June:

I quilted the whole thing with a variegated green and white thread. It is all straight lines, about 12mm apart on the stone, and 2 or 3 mm apart in the background:

This photo previously appeared on my blog in August.

I tried adding a facing to the quilt to give it a modern look, but it just didn't work with the matchstick quilting. I couldn't get a sharp edge when I pressed the facing back. In the end I removed the facing and added the binding instead.

It was fun to see how other people tackled this challenge. No-one else was born in the same month as me, so there weren't any other green and white pieces to compare with. The winning piece was a gorgeous cushion-cover in orange and aqua hexagons, which more than one person told me they thought was mine. But that quilter was born in December so had turquoise and narcissus (daffodils) as her colour source.

The winner gets to choose the next challenge. It  will be interesting to see what she comes up with!