Quilt Retreating

I had a lovely two days of quilting with my quilt guild at a retreat center in nearby Carlisle.  It was so restorative for me....  Most of the time I carry a lot of shame and guilt re: my love of quilting.  None of my close friends or family members are quilters, so I feel like such an oddball.  I rarely share that piece of my life with them because many of them they just don't get it, and even if they can appreciate quilts, I still fear being viewed as what..., I don't know.  So often, I'd rather hole up and sew because of how beautifully it nurtures my soul and spirit, but then I feel guilty - guilty that I should be getting my wreck of a house in order, guilty for not keeping up with the outside work,  guilty for not putting more effort into meals, or guilty for not reaching out to someone who might exhaust me.  And then, there's always the guilt about the money this wonderful hobby sucks out of from my bank account.

But, after sewing for two days straight with these dear ladies who love and think about quilting as much as I do, I felt revived, restored, more normal, more OK with who I am and what I love.  I didn't feel an ounce of embarrassment for a change.  And, I felt God's pleasure as I did the "good works He prepared in advance for me to do."  

I came away with a renewed determination to shut down these feelings of guilt and shame related to my love of quilting, and to make this amazing process of creativity a higher priority in my life.  As I've attempted to get back to physical health over the last few years with little success and a lot of money getting flushed down the toilet along the way, I'm wondering if the answer has been lying right under my nose all this time.  Is is possible that the creative process is the very thing that will bring the most healing for my body, will bless others as they look on, and will most honor and glorify God as I savor and share my love of quilting?

I've also been contemplating Jen Kingwell's approach to quilting, and was again inspired to simply enjoy the process and not be embarrassed that I love to make quilts that tend to be more intricate and time consuming.

OK, Enough reflecting!!  Here's a few photos of what I accomplished:

I finished piecing the final 20 6" blocks of my Modern Building Blocks quilt - whoo hoo!  It was so nice to plug away at them while chatting with my quilting buddies.

I couldn't resist taking them outside for some photos since the weather was so lovely:

I also stitched the binding on my "Canning Jars" quilt:

And, I assembled the rest of my basket blocks:

A quick trip into town to the local quilt shop yielded this retro print from the sale table: 

It will make a great quilt backing!

(The fat quarters are compliments of Narda's stash.)

:)

Finally, I stitched away on some more "Ugly String" blocks that are hopefully destined to become this quilt.  

With Gloria's encouragement, I decided to forgo the foundation piecing.  (When I made string blocks for this quilt, I had stitched them onto paper.)  I simply used a paper template to gauge the length of the strings needed, stitched the strings, then trimmed the blocks down to 8 1/2" square.  Certainly beats picking all that paper out of the seams!

We're talking about a lot of strings!!

This was my Juki's first trip to a retreat, and she flew through these string blocks!

Thanks, ladies, for a wonderful time stitching together!

I even woke up and was motivated to do some Pilates this morning - who would have guessed?!!

:)

The Down Side of Belonging to a Quilt Guild

The downside of belonging to a quilt guild is that you get inspired to make yet another quilt.  I blame it on Cherry.  Last year she was working away at string blocks like these, pulling fabric strings out of a brown paper bag without making any attempt to coordinate colors or prints.  They weren't fabrics I liked.  But, I was still drawn to the quilt.  Unfortunately, I couldn't get the idea out of my head....

So, instead of starting on one of the fabulous quilts on my Quilting-to-Do List, such as the Moda Modern Building Blocks quilt, Camille's Swoon out of Anna Maria Horner fabrics, or working with Kaffe or Denyse Schmidt fabrics, I'm stitching these UGLY(!!!) string blocks!  What is wrong with me??!!

What is wrong with me?  Well, let me tell you....

These ugly fabrics represent too many memories.  They are scraps from sewing oodles of appliqued cardigan sweatshirts (all the rage in the 80's!!), an extended family quilt project, a nightgown I made for my mother, scraps from lots of quilts I made early in my quilting journey, t-shirt quilts for others, and much, much more.  I can't bear to throw them away, and they are too ugly to give away.  So, it's up to me to turn them into something that will draw me in vs. repulse me.  I figure I'll plug away at them when I'm too brain dead to work on something more creative.

photo credit - C&T Publishing

I also blame Christina Cameli.  I recently purchased her First Steps to Free-Motion Quilting book in preparation for the machine quilting class I'll be teaching to my quilt guild and a few local ladies.  In her book she has this lovely "Wiggle-Bottom Cushion" - a chair pad made from a string block.  I love the FMQ on it.  I can envision that fabulous stitching transforming my ugly string blogs and turning them into something wonderful.  Maybe??  Am I being unrealistic??

One thing I did do - I did separate out the bright, clear, true-color scraps from the ugly 80/90's scraps.  That helped.  At least the ugly fabrics aren't contaminating the scraps I do like.  But, I'm still left with this garbage can full of strings - yikes!

(Don't let this picture fool you - the can is way bigger than it appears; it's the large IKEA pail, not the smaller one!!)

This smaller bucket of strings will become a Spiderweb Quilt, inspired by the one by Crazy Mom Quilts.

Who else can I blame??

:)

Update, 1/26/15 - After seeing Sherri's string blocks today, I am even more convinced of the ugliness of my blocks - whaaaaahhh!!

String Quilts Extraordinaire!!

Narda, the most seasoned and most inspired quilter in my quilt guild, brought these quilts tops along for today's "show and tell".

She's been working at using up her bags of "strings".

I am simply amazed at the designs she came up with and how much she accomplished in the past two months!!!!

This quilt uses the same basic block design as the string quilt I pieced last winter, but I love how she sashed it.

Some more pictures for my Pinterest "String Quilts" board!

:)

String Quilt Photo Finish

Two of my neighbors were great sports about helping me get some outdoor photos of my string quilt today.

First, next-door neighbor Andrew used his work break to help me out with these photos.

Then, the sun came out.  My neighbor Alisha had stopped by, so I nabbed her for another try. 

But, it was a bit too windy by that time!

However, the wind...

.... allowed us to get a picture of the snowman in the background!

I'll post more details on this particular quilt later!

String Quilt

This is where things stand on my string quilt as a result of my New Year's Eve "sew in".  :)

I'm gonna make 6 more blocks and call it done!

Strings!

I was cleaning up my quilt studio this evening, and decided that instead of putting this pile of strings and strips away after pulling them out and looking at them yet another time, I would finally do something with them! 

(I had purchased them from this Etsy shop a year and a half ago.)

The scraps quickly became a number of blocks similar to this one.  This is the quilt that inspired my project, and I used the same tutorial by Film in the Fridge that Kati of From the Blue Chair used.

To keep things easy, I simply used some 8 1/2 x 11"" scrap paper (from a previous job a number of years ago that I'd like to forget I was ever dumb enough to accept!), trimmed to 8 1/2" square with a dull rotary blade.

The center white strips start out at 1 inch.

Since my strings and strips were fairly narrow to start with, I decided to use a 1/8" seam allowance.

But, after this experience, I wouldn't recommend such a skimpy seam allowance, especially when needing to tear away the foundation paper.... 

This cool modern block was included in with the scraps I had purchased; I'm planning to incorporate it into the backing.

Not sure how big this quilt will end up being - the supply of fabric scraps will dictate that, although I did pull some more fabric from my stash to allow me to make a few more blocks!