Tree Crazy

Notice the little house? The original tree block was too small to use so I created a little house with the "lumber" from the surrounding forest.

Some of you may recognize this design as one of the projects I worked on at Campers Retreat in February. Most of the time the blocks were on the floor as they would not stick up nicely on the (un)sticky design wall.You may have stepped over them!
I decided to make the design again with the trees being lighter and the backgrounds darker. Lots to learn here about mixing fabrics, color and scale. The forest doesn't grow in an orderly fashion either!
Happy Earth Day!

quilts by Alicia Merrett

I came across the work of Alicia Merrett, and was reminded of the kind of map quilt that Janis was working on at the retreat: http://www.aliciamerrett.co.uk/ Go to "Galleries" and then the "Mapping and Recording." Some of her other work is interesting also.

I happened upon her work, as I'm doing a workshop for my guild on curved piecing, and she has a set of three tutorials. You can find them through youtube: http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=alicia+merrett&aq=f

Photos of Pillowcases

Here we are again,
when we last left our fearful blogger there were no photos. After a call to Penny and a bit of back and forth in a telephone call...VOILA!!
I know two little boys who will love their new books at naptime!

Thanks for the fabric!

I don't know who contributed the big piece of blue/white loosely woven cloth to our "giveaway" table, but thanks! I've been wanting to make a round tablecloth for a long while, but never made it past the hesitancy of trying it out on a piece of fabric. Having the fabric come to me free was just what I needed for a first try. This fabric was 54" and the table is 42" wide; not quite as much drape as I would like, so I'll buy something larger next time (or piece something together). The very large circle is easy to make with a yardstick ruler. Fold a square of fabric into eighths, the way you would for making a snowflake, and then use this tool to trace an arc for the outer edge:

Here's a better picture of how you set it up (a Grifhold Yardstick Compass).

Retreat 2010

I didn't think to take photos until Saturday night, so I missed the gorgeous blocks Amy was working on, but here are the rest of us who gathered at the Loretto Center recently. Here's Gini, with some of her great silks:
Janis did work on a quilt begun at another workshop. The center is going to be re-drafted:
Mary Beth is relaxing with a lot of "teeny 'tinis." Imagine stems for martini glasses below each row:
Dorothy worked on multiple borders for a beautiful broderie perse applique project:
Kathy worked on a modification of a quilt from Kaffe Fassett's Passionate Patchwork:
Louise shows a quilt she developed at the 2009 retreat:
Penny shows a quilt she made about a year ago:
Sharon shows solids!
And here are the blocks we brought/made for the Habitat for Humanity quilt that Dorothy will put together:
A great time was had by all!

Details--finishing the edge

I keep thinking about Bill's retreat presentation on the importance of all the little details as I have worked through a decision about what kind of binding/finishing to use on my small "Stonescape" quilts. I tried out a regular (but very narrow) binding, a hand-done satin-stitch edge, and a pillowcase binding. None seemed quite right. Then I came up with another solution--turning the front edge over to the back, resulting in an 1/8" "binding" on the back side only. The photo above is a comparison of a pillowcase finish (top) and the front-to-back finish below. I think this works, but would appreciate your thoughts also! For a sense of scale: ach of the individual squares are 1-5/8 x 2"; this method would only be appropriate for a small quilt, one that wasn't going to be handled very much. Back side below.

About the quilting: Top one is hand-quilted, bottom is machine quilted with invisible thread on the front. I've decided instead to do hand-tying at the corners.

Stones

Since the retreat, I've been working mostly on compositions with rectangles from my hand-painted fabric. Here's a version of the composition I did on the Friday morning of the retreat, putting something together in time for Bill's critique. See more versions and comments over on my StudioNotes blog. One thing I asked Bill about was the size of the composition. I was inclined to add lots more rows and columns, but Bill suggested keeping it the size it was. You'll see that he was correct!