The Magic of Stitching Retreats!

I'm just home from a 4-day stitching retreat in rural central Ohio!  Do you have the opportunity to get away from your at-home sewing area and devote yourself to some stitching?  I hope so because I find it's a great way to refresh my state of mind!

I've been hosting and attending retreats for many years.  I've graduated (finally) from taking more than two people could accomplish in the allotted time to a reasonable assortment that keeps me busy and delivers a morale boost of reaching a few goals (not necessarily "finishes").   This time I also limited myself to hand work -- easier to transport myself!

Sometimes I use a retreat as a time to start that new BIG project, but this time I focused on six projects with the goal to make progress on each.  The first was a small wallhanging I whipped up last week from a long-hoarded fabric and maple leaf blocks left over from my big fall leaf quilt finished 15 years or more ago.  Because I didn't have to do any piecing, it was set together in an afternoon and quilted in two more sessions.  I want to hang it during February (the beginning of maple syrup season here in Northeast Ohio) so the first retreat project was to finish the binding and add a casing!

Now it's ready to hang!!

Finishing a project was a great start to the weekend!

And now I can let go of the hoard of "maple sugaring time" fabric! 

Leave a comment below if you'd like to buy a hunk off of me!

Then I turned to an old teaching sample -- these 12 blocks were buried on my UFO shelf with the book.  Before the weekend, I pieced the rest of the background blocks and finished prepping a couple of the circles for applique.  During the weekend, I worked on the applique a few blocks at a time between other projects.  Now all of them are appliqued and ready to be trimmed and organized into a small wallhanging when I get motivated -- having the blocks ready will make it easier to get going again.

Friday morning after a good night's sleep, it was time to take on one of the big goals for the weekend -- get the borders attached to the "mystery" EPP quilt top I made last year. It was designed and shared by Jemima's Creative Quilting in Australia.  

(She will be starting a new one February 6, 2023 -- preliminary info HERE!!)

I appliqued the pointy edges and machine stitched the straight edges so having an empty table to work on was the main reason for doing this during the retreat!?!

I pieced the border print to maintain the up/down direction of the print all the way around the quilt top so to make the best use of the yardage I had.  That gave me the opportunity to share a trick I use when matching for invisible seams with other retreat participants.  I took photos so I can share it with you, too!

My strips are cut from repeated sections of the print and are longer than needed.

Lay the two pieces to be joined end to end, wrong side up and press back about l/2" on one.

Flip both strips to the right side.

Now move the right hand (pressed under seam) onto the left hand strip.

It you focus on the pinkish flowers repeating along the middle of the strip, it will be easier to follow what is happening.

Keep moving the right end towards the left until it aligns with the print on the left strip.

My finger is just under the edge of the right side so you can see how easy it is to achieve a good match.

Without moving the left strip, flip the right strip right side down onto the left strip holding the seam in place so it doesn't shift.  One of the other gals suggested using a temporary sticky thing like glue or two-sided tape -- great idea!!

Time to stitch!

I press the seam open to make it flatter and even less obvious.

The seam is at the end of the pin, but I can't see it -- can you??

Now I need to organize a backing -- preferably out of my stash -- and decide whether to machine or hand quilt this one.

I also layered my Homage to Grandmother's Flower Garden quilt top -- big empty table again!  I've decided to machine quilt this top and have a plan for that in my head -- hope to start next week!  There is a regional show in April where I'd like to exhibit it.

Once I had those four goals accomplished I lost a lot of my focus but I had a couple other projects in progress with me so puttered with them prepping for next steps.

When I got home Sunday noon I was still pumped to stitch so spent part of the afternoon organizing borders for a tablerunner UFO I'm upcycling into a twin size quilt for a charitable project -- more about that another time.  

This week, I'll focus on quilting the Sakura strippy quilt top I made earlier this month out of my 2 1/2" strip stash (see the last post). 

The retreat has energized me and I just want to spend all day with a needle!!

It was great to see what other quilters are doing -- there were some great projects happening and I have a few new ideas (which I don't really need) which adds to the energy!

Have a good week!!

Mary

PS -- If you live in central Ohio, the Central Ohio Modern Quilt Guild is hosting the lovely and creative Nicole Young of Lillyella Stitchery at this event next month!!  

The venue is gorgeous and the tickets are limited to 100 so don't hesitate! 

The Lure of a "Rabbit Hole"

Are you susceptible to the lure of interesting ideas?

I certainly am!!  That's why I have so many "oars out of the boat" all the time.  Something catches my fancy and I'm off like it is the most important thing in the world for me to do or learn.  I love the thrill of the original curiosity and then the conquest of learning about it or being able to do it!  Sometimes that is all I need to accomplish but other times, I fall down a rabbit hole of obsession.

Enter the Forever Friends pattern by Sandy Klop in Sisterhood of Scraps.  It's so scrappy and I just love that!  I've had the book for almost two years and been cutting strips for over a year but I held back (such restraint) during 2021 in my drive to #quilt21in2021.  It didn't hurt that every time I read through the directions, I was puzzled -- the instructions made no sense and that made it easier to delay the deep dive.

But last weekend,  as I hid in the sewing room (in an attempt to reverse a mental health downturn) I decided to tackle the instructions the way my mother taught me -- read one sentence, do it, read the next sentence, do it and so on.  The first block took three hours on Saturday afternoon and I was exhausted mentally!?!  But when I returned on Sunday, my inclination to build a personal work process enabled me to complete two blocks in just two hours.  The instructions were beginning to make sense and they are thoughtfully written.

Since the weekend I've been up there every day, cracking out another block (or two) and I'm in love with the results and the process.

So I decided that I'd share some tips on pushing through the early stages of this project in hopes that it might either give you the courage to try this pattern or to push through to understanding with a pattern that has you intimidated.

As a quilt making teacher for almost 40 years, I saw lots of students and customers suffer from the intimidation of trying new patterns because "it didn't make sense".  As a pattern writer who traveled regionally to teach those patterns, I learned that how each of us approaches instructions is based on how we were taught to read instructions and the skills we learned.  While my local students could take one of my patterns and whiz through it because they learned their basic skills and terminology from me, students in other regions who learned a different sets of skills and terminology were puzzled.

So it might not be you and I hope that encourages you to try!

This isn't a call to change the way you work through a new pattern.  I'm going to share the reasons I was puzzled by these instructions and how I moved through them as an illustration for you to consider how your skills and work habits influence the way you approach a new project.

To begin, I was trained by Mary Ellen Hopkins to be a machine piecing teacher and learned to cut as you go.  We never cut all the pieces for a project before doing any sewing.  The reason for that was we didn't have 1/4" presser feet, so seam allowances varied a bit from machine to machine.  We cut the first step, stitched the first step, and then measured the results before cutting for the second step. 

The result of that is that I'm skeptical of any pattern that tells me to cut everything up front.

And so I always skip that step which is okay because it works for me!

(BONUS -- if I get bored with the project, I can quit and repurpose easier with no guilt because I don't have all that fabric cut up.) 

Second, when my mother taught me to knit and sew, she waited to explain things to me until I had attempted to figure it out for myself.  Read one sentence, do it.  Read the next sentence, do it.

Often, we read all the instructions before starting a project and they make no sense because we can't visualize how the process is working.  But if we go sentence by sentence even though we don't understand why we are doing something, we get to the end and can look back to see how things went together and THEN we understand the process because we've experienced it.

Finally, I could be wrong but I'm under the impression that the restrictions of editors on pattern writers (especially in books) can oversimplify explanations that might benefit readers so it might not be that the designed is a poor instruction writer - there could be other reasons. 

(That's why some elect to self-publish!)

I've watched quilters work through this pattern on Instagram and all seem to work block by block but when I read the instructions (over and over), the implication is that all the strip sets are made first ("make 252 each of A, B, C, and D units") and then arranged?  

Where's the "shocked" emoji??

So I began with my chaotic pile of strips (see first picture) and proceeded one sentence at a time for just ONE block even though I could not make sense of how it would come together.

It took three blocks before the process made sense and it's brilliant.

Here's the block I just made in place on the work wall.  Notice above that the center of the block stops at the green round and the four corners are different.  

Each adjacent block shares two corners and with the addition of sashing units, a new Trip around the World motif is created.   Now I get it!!  The more "blocks" I make, the easier the process becomes and I'm happy with the results.

If this beauty is on your "want to do" list -- here's a couple tips. 

Page 38 to 40 -- Steps 1 through 4 make the central "trip" motif and use 4 fabrics.  I pick those as I'm finishing a work session so they are ready and waiting when I return making it easier to dive back in.

This is a dull combo but that's the beauty of scrappy quilts -- the dull has a place!

Steps 6 through 8 make four corner units and four different ones are needed for each block.  After the first block, you always have at least two corner units already done each time you start a new block.  Since these units use three different prints, I set aside groups of three that catch my eye as I'm rummaging through the pile so they are ready to pick up and stitch.

And most important, follow the pressing directions to the "T" -- they are thoughtful and will make the assembly so easy but if you ignore them . . . . . . . . . . big mess!!

I set aside strips once used so they aren't repeated too close together.  Last evening, I returned all the strips used for the first 9 blocks into the "stash of strips" and sorted them out into color families - yes, on the floor -- which will make it easier to pull combos (and less messy).

(Notice the two "corner combos" in lower right corner that I pulled during the tidy-up.)

As soon as I finish editing this post, I'm headed back up to the sewing room to crack out another block!  My original idea was to make a lap robe size quilt with 20 blocks but I might go bigger depending on how much fun I'm having at the 20 block mark?!?

(Those units pinned to the wall around the edges are corner units waiting for their block to be made.)

And I'm not falling behind on my Homage to Grandmother's Flower Garden because I can use it for "leaders and enders" as I assemble the Forever Friends blocks!!!

Part 7 almost finished.

LOL -- at this rate, it won't be long before I have another 21 quilt tops stacked up?!?

Enjoy your weekend and try to get outside especially if you are up "north" -- it's good for our mental health!!  My foray a couple days ago led me to this group of tundra swans resting on the ice out on Lake Erie!  One never knows what wonders are waiting out there even in crummy weather!

Back to puttering around in my current "rabbit hole"!

 Mary