Quilt Retreats

Two quilt retreats in one month, crazy I know, but the opportunity presented itself and I decided to just go for it.  Both were wonderful times full of friendship, laughter and production.  I wan't quite ready/in the right mindset for the first one so I didn't get a lot done, but boy, on the second retreat I was cranking them out.

Zipper Quilt - pattern from the book The Modern Quilt Workshop by Weeks Ringle.  This quilt is my donation for Bonnie's Team (cancer infusion center) and is fairly small, 36 x 45".  It should be hanging at Fabric-Etc this week along with the other donations.  I put the top together at the first retreat, then quilted and bound it at the second one.

Orange Sunshine (I'm making up names as I go) has been in progress for several years.  These are Friendship Blocks I received from the Moonlight Quilter's guild.    At the spring retreat I got them arranged and the top sewn.  I quilted a large sunflower design on each block with my long arm machine and then straight quilted the sashing on my Horizon.  I still had a few rows of machine quilting to do at the retreat, and then add the binding.  I took this picture without the binding completely hand sewn  because it it large (58" x 72") and there was a great wall to hang it on in the retreat center.

Next up is Crazy Fence.  Most of these blocks were make in a Karla Alexander class (Feb 2011 I think) so at the retreat I finished the last 6 blocks, arranged them and sewed this top together.

I zipped through all my project so fast, now what should I do?  One of the retreat highlights is a trip to Over the Rainbow, an on-line fabric store that allows us to shop in their warehouse.  I repeatedly said I was not going this year, but broke down when I decided to shop for fabrics for this quilt.  Carrie started the zig-zag quilt trend working on one in Halloween fabrics, and Judy followed with red, white and blue.  I decided to make a Christmas one and was a little overwhelmed trying to find 10 coordinating fabrics when I stumbled on this Moda Jelly Roll, all I had to add was the repeating green fabric (and I only used half of the jelly roll). Yep, another top done, guess it is time to get busy with the long arm.