FRIENDSHIP

Friendship and quilters just naturally go hand in hand.  I have had the great pleasure this last year to go on several retreats with lots of different quilters in several different places. 

Each retreat has its highlights and special memories.  It would be difficult to pick the one I enjoyed the most.

This past November I went with an awesome group of women to Grand Oak Retreat Center in Scottsboro, AL.  These gals call themselves the Lotus Blossom Quilters.  Each one of us made a rail fence block using fall colors with a neutral as the  center bar to put our autograph on.  After arrival we then exchanged these blocks with each other and now each of us has enough blocks to make a small wall hanging; or, we could add blocks to it and increase its size to bed size.

 
 
 
 

My blocks had my name and the name of the group with the date.







I decided to take the suggestion of my friend, Linda, and I made 9-patch blocks which I then "fractured" to make new blocks.

Putting them together became a fun little project and I chose to use asymmetry for a couple of rows.  That offsets the predictable, traditional style of this pattern.

 

 

Each block echoes the style of the maker.  It is such a fun quilt to look at and enjoy with each person's name and her fabrics.

 

I quilted it on my domestic sewing machine with concentric circles and pebbling in the centers.

 

 

No project is ever complete without LilBit's approval!

 

                                   -sandi

www.grandoakretreat.com

 

 

FROGPOND QUILTERS' RETREAT

It was a beautiful, spring morning in April 2013 and the Frogpond Quilters were gathering for their first annual retreat at Grand Oak Retreat Center in Scottsboro, AL.


Everyone began arriving. 

KARA

CAROL

RUTH

PHYLLIS

SUZAN

BARBARA

ROBBIE

LINDA

SHARON

JEAN

JUDY

 

PAM

 

LINDA


After everyone arrived and settled into their rooms and their work areas, the sewing began.

More to follow including projects.

 

 

-sandi

 

 

 

CHILLING OUT ON A LILY PAD!

Over here at the Frogpond Studio we do this frequently.  I will spend my weekend getting last minute details taken care of to head to Grand Oak Retreat for four glorious days of eating, sleeping, and stitching with fifteen wonderful gals next week.

I am taking a few of my WIPs with me.

Easy Street designed by Bonnie Hunter.

My ticker tape project.  Love these colors.

STILL working on Farmer's Market.  Maybe this will be the week it gets finished.

I have another project or two I will toss in "just in case" I run out of something to do.


                                    -sandi





 

WIPs TO FOCUS ON

 

ALL OF MY UFOs AND WIPs ARE FINISHED!!

 

Gotcha!  April Fool's!?!?!

 

Now for the truth of the matter.

 

 

Every year I take time to re-assess my WIPs list.  It is quite a long list.  I simply re-arrange the order of the list and continue to do new projects.  Since I will be going away on four retreats this year, I have chosen to focus on some of my specific
WIPs with the idea that they will get finished.  I do not know which is the better way to approach this:  Do I start with the most current and work my way back to the oldest one?  OR Should I go back to the oldest one and work my way forward?

 

After looking at the list of the seven projects that I chose to focus on, I have decided to start with the most recent and work in that direction.

 

In November/December 2012 I started Bonnie Hunter's latest Mystery Quilt called "Easy Street".  This year I knew that I would not have much time to devote to it as it was happening so I decided to do some of each step.  For me that was not the best idea.  It has taken me more time to sort out what number of components are lacking.  In the future I will know that is not a good style for me.

Here is a sample of some of the units I have done.

 

 

 

 

Another Bonnie Hunter project that is still sitting in its little box is "Virginia Bound".  This one was started at a Workshop I attended in Pelham, Alabama when Bonnie came 2 years ago.  In reading her blog and checking her calendar I discovered that she would be coming to a "town near me" and I contacted the sponsoring guild and was able to get the last slot.  That was a really fun day.  It was great to meet Bonnie and to see her style of teaching a Workshop.

I have about half of the blocks done for this quilt that uses strings.

 

 

 

 

 

My landscape quilt and my kaleidoscope quilt are both small pieces and only need to be quilted and bound.  This should not take very much time.

 

 

 

 

 

 

A third Bonnie Hunter pattern that I have going is the Lady of  Lake Erie pattern that appeared in Quiltmaker Magazine.  A few years ago I made a picture of the produce section at my local grocery store because it inspired me to think of a quilt pattern to use these colors. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 I have chosen to use the Lady of  Lake Erie pattern and am naming this project "Farmer's Market".  I have about a third of the blocks completed and the rest are cut and waiting.

 

 

 

The topic for our projects for this month in my Art Quilt Guild is collage.  I have a fish collage that I started over five years ago.  It needs to have the thread embellishing done and it will be complete.

The first retreat is early in April and my guild meeting is at the end of the month.  This really could get finished.  Of course, that means I will be changing the order again of when to do these WIPs.  But isn't that what life is about?  Being flexible and willing to make changes?

 

 

 

 

 

And, of course, I don't want to forget about my Ticker Tape quilt. 

 

Now I am motivated to get started.  I wonder how many of these I will get finished at the first retreat in April????

 



 

 

-sandi

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

GOING SCRAPPY

Last weekend I went to the Grand Oak Retreat Center in Scottsboro, Alabama for four wonderful, fun-filled days of sewing and creating.

There were ladies from Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi working on quilting.  We did have a lady from Alabama who was a scrapbooker.  She did some beautiful alphabet pages for a gift for a friend's Christmas.

Look at this beautiful view overlooking the Tennessee River.  We gathered on this porch most mornings to have our first cup of coffee, tea, or soda.

This was our workroom.  There were fourteen of us having a ball.

All of us worked on our individual projects.  I took a project with me that was very scrappy -- anything goes kind of scrappy.  I was working with split-nine-patch blocks with a few regular 9-patch blocks thrown in.

I spent two days before retreat cutting out several hundred squares and making a large number of half-square triangles so I could start right into sewing. 

I lined up everything on my sewing machine table and started making my blocks.

This is what it looked like under my machine as I chain pieced the nine-patch blocks together.

This was my finished top.  I love the friendship star in the center.  I don't think I will add any borders.  It looks more interesting without a border.

Now on to doing the back and binding it.  Looking at the drawer of left-over bindings and thinking I might could use some of them. 

 This is the second one of this pattern that I have made and each one looks a little different.  I really do like it!!!!


                                              -sandi