UFO Sunday--Feathered sprays

Welcome to UFO Sunday as I'll be linking up with Leah Day's review of what we've been up to this week in our free motion quilting journey.

What a glorious weekend of quilting with friends! I attended the Emporia Regional Quilt Guild's weekend retreat held in town at a local church. The basement fellowship hall is huge and easily accommodated over 30 quilters for the weekend. The doors opened on Friday at 4pm for setup and to get started on our projects. Dinner came about 6:30, and then the stitching continued until they locked up at 10pm. Saturday morning bright and early, the doors opened again at 8am. The committee treated us to a variety of crockpot soups for lunch and a build your own salad and baked potato bar for dinner. The stitching continued all day with lots of sharing, helping, talking, laughing, and a fair amount of teasing with what's become a regular joke with a rubber rat that appears under someone's sewing table. Sunday morning we returned at 8am, enjoyed a delicious lasagna, french bread & salad lunch, and then started wrapping things up so everyone could help with clean up to be out by 4pm. The ERQG holds these retreats quarterly, providing a fun space to work on our projects together and occasionally hosting a national teacher. Last November we had Pat Speth from Nickel Quilts teach for the 3-day weekend and it was wonderful! We learned to much and had so much fun!

I spent my time working on Cindy's Comforting Words quilt so I can get it finished and mailed off to her before she starts chemo. I got it pinned Friday evening and printed out the feathered sprays that I wanted to FMQ in the borders from my EQ Quilting Designs collection onto foundation paper. Saturday morning I ditched first, quilted the diagonal lines through the Irish chains and echoed the embroidered motifs. With the main part complete, after lunch I started the stitching over the foundation paper on the borders and before I left at about 9:45pm, all of the borders were quilted!

Wow! A picture of ME at work! Fun!

Follow the lines--figuring out where to go to make the stitching as continuous as possible.

And then removing the foundation paper to reveal the lovely quilted feathers.

Most of the gals in my guild send their quilts to long-arm quilters rather than FMQ their own projects. I had lots of people coming to watch the process and it was fun to share the techniques I've learned over the last few years with them. Sunday, when I wasn't off visiting at other work stations or looking at other projects, I was tearing the foundation paper away from my feathers. It's a tedious process, but I've learned that taking smaller stitches and staying on the lines makes tearing it away much easier! Practice makes perfect and before long it was all done and the quilting looked beautiful!

Comforting Words for Cindy--trimmed and ready for binding

Nice shadows showing the feathered sprays that are in all the borders.

Before packing up to head home I managed to get the quilt trimmed and now all I have to do is prepare and attach the binding, stitch it down, and attach the label. Whew! In just over a week this project has come from conception, design, production, and nearly completion. In many ways it feels like this quilt made itself. Even when piecing the back, it came out the same size as the front without planning it that way, and when pinning, it lined up so well I was able to trim right where I had planned without losing anything on the backing. Indeed it is a comfort quilt designed by God that flowed through me to fruition. Blessed be!

Here's a few fun shots of the retreat weekend. There were so many great projects being made!

Joan getting ready to pin her hand embroidered bluework tea time.

Lyn showing off her grandson's Indiana Jones mini-quilt. The animals are all paper pieced! This is my favorite of the weekend!

Queen size Neighborhood quilt

Hexagon puzzle--reminds me of the Card Trick patterns

Sharon with her Turning-Twenty Wizard of Oz quilt that she's added several embroidery designs to for added fun

Sherry with her second Quilt of Valor top finished this weekend

Becky busy on her quilt top

Trish finished adding the 9-patch corner stones and stripped sashings to her finished blocks

Kathy giving her top a good press before...

she taped the backing to the floor to pin her mom's Cardinal quilt.

All in all, we had a wonderful time! Everyone got a lot accomplished and Linda even started to learn FMQ, first using the walking foot on a printed panel top and then switching to the open quilting foot with the feed-dogs down to echo the characters. She is just starting out, but wants to keep at it and become comfortable enough to finish some of her own quilts--probably the small ones to start with. :-)

With tables set up along both walls, as well as a few down the middle, plus ironing and cutting stations, there was plenty of opportunity for stitching and visiting. I can hardly wait for the next one in May!

Back to unpacking and cutting binding strips to finish the Comforting Words before tonight's Downton Abbey comes on.
More snippets from the sewing room soon,
Liz

UFO Sunday

It's a jammies-and-slippers kind of day at my house. My sewing buddy left this morning early and instead of going back to bed (my first choice), I decided to just go into the sewing room and spend some quality time working on projects. With the iTunes cranked up on my Eric Clapton playlist and the window open, I was ready to go to work. It's not really raining here in Emporia, but it's damp and breezy, so a good day to stay in.

After reading Leah Day's UFO Sunday post about finishing a sweater for her son, I looked at the piles of projects in the corner and decided to pull out the baggy with the Advent Calendar panel I had purchased at least three years ago. A month or so ago I used Heat-n-Bond to fuse the cookies to the stiff craft felt I had purchased with the kit and got them cut out. There are 24 cookies that tuck into a bowl and each day you move one a numbered pocket until all are gone, and then, like magic, it's Christmas! I just love the variety of cookie shapes and all decorated with frosting designs.

When I looked at the main panel, it was totally skewed from being folded up for so long. It took a lot of steam, spray sizing, and pins on the ironing board to get it squared up. Finally, I think it's ready to put together!

 

The bottom was the most stretched section, so I worked on it first. Each row had to be folded up to a fold line marked in the margin so that the frosting squiggles match up between each numbered block. I got them all folded, pinned and steamed, and then basted the pocket rows closed with a long stitch that I can easily remove later. This way they will stay in the right shape until I get it assembled and quilted, making the individual pockets permanent.

There is another bowl that gets turned into the pocket and appliqued onto the bowl on the top of the printed panel. I went ahead and backed it with muslin and a piece of batting to give it body, and sewed it together, turned it, and hand stitched it closed. Then I decided I wanted to free-motion quilt the ribs on the bowl to give it more definition. It's now ready to applique on after I get the main body backed and quilted.

And it's ready to quilt. It's small enough to fit on my sewing table, so I taped the backing down, layered it with the batting and top, and it's all pinned and ready to go. I'm not sure I'll get much farther with it today, but at least it's ready to go.

It's going to look so cute next December hanging in my home! And by then Jacob will be 1-1/2, so he'll be big enough to help me move the cookies and count the days to Christmas.

More snippets from the sewing room soon,
Liz