Quilt-In was Fun!

Yesterday my guild held it's first Quilt-In, a twelve hour retreat, including breakfast and dinner, 4 optional classes, open sewing time, an onsite  quilt shop vendor who brought fabric to sell and lots of time for socializing with old and new guild members.  Twenty-nine smart people took advantage of this opportunity and by lunchtime the talk was "What are you going to teach next year?" and "We HAVE to do this again next year".  So, yes, it was very successful.

I taught a class on hand piecing, the Antique Rose Star.  The template comes from Material Obsession in Australia and the quilt is featured in the book, Material Obsession 2

Here is my sample: 

Class was fun, some of the 16 students had never hand-pieced before, some said they did not like templates but were willing to give them a chance, and all of them had a good time and several said they learned more than they expected to.  That is always my goal--I try to incorporate as many tips as I can throughout my classes.  Because I had used both hand and machine piecing in this quilt, I demonstrated how to machine piece the units at the end of class.  It was a fast-paced 3 hours--next time I teach this it will be a four-hour class, students will get at least one major unit done in 4 hours.

Here are some scenes from our classroom:

Sixteen surprise gifts I  brought--fun to share my excess notions

Cutting and marking the small kite pieces

Everyone kept hard at work

Using the template to cut those pieces

Part of their kit included 3 colorful Ziploc bags to stay organized--the bags were a hit

Biggest pencil case I've ever seen

My demo pieces

First block laid out

Making those small stitches

After lunch, which we ordered in, I had free time to sew.  I was thrilled to get 4 of my 9 sets for the "baby" Color in Black and White quilt finished.  The big quilt has blocks 28" x 24"--the baby has blocks 14" x 12":

I wrote about the big one here and here.  This week I will add the border I decided on for the large quilt, stay tuned for photos of it. 

The day was fun and productive and the food was excellent--our 2 chefs did a great job.  It was hard to stay mindful of my healthy eating plan and I did cave on the Key Lime pie, but it was worth it.  Back to the straight and narrow today.  I've lost 20 pounds since the end of tax season so I'm headed in the right direction.

Everyone should get a chance to sew with friends and learn new things.  Let's Quilt!

Barbara