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?!!

:)

Winters Heritage House Quilt Display

It was fun to display a few of my quilts again at the Winters Heritage House quilt exhibit here in town again this year.  Last year my quilts were tied up for a trunk show I did for my guild, so it had been two years since I had any quilts in their exhibit.

Numbers 15 and 18 were my contributions.  :)

And, it was fun to again view the quilt I had machine quilted for my friend Laurie last fall.

It never ceases to amaze me how much better a quilt looks after you've taken a break from being too hard on yourself re: your machine quilting abilities.

:)

Another Zip Pouch!

OK, this makes me laugh....  I say I don't like particularly like batiks, but when I went to stitch this project, these batik scraps begged to be used!

My friend Phyllis who is a sewing newbie inspired me to make this cord holder.  She saw the idea on Pinterest and made one, even tackling fusible interfacing and Velcro all by herself!

Again, I had a zipper in the perfect color from my thrift shop stash.

I'm still trying to get the hang of the best way to do the zipper tabs, but I think I like Missouri Star's method the best.

These pouches are addicting....

Nancy Virginia's Hexagons

The time has come for me to finally part with my sister-in-law's quilt!  I had finished stitching it for her back in January, but only now got around to photographing and hand delivering it to her over the weekend.

It's such a dear quilt!  And, its sweetness was so difficult to capture....  

But, here's my attempt!

Nancy stitched the hexagons out of her clothing scraps sometime between 1978 and 1986.  I offered to turn the hexagons into a quilt for her for a Christmas present last year.  

She wanted to use the quilt on her antique sleigh bed, so we configured it exactly for the bed.  We were able to fit all 13 hexagons onto the top of the double bed.  (I love it when things work out so perfectly!)

I simply topstitched the hexagons onto Kona cotton (color PDF) with Aurifil 50 wt thread (I love that thread - it blends so beautifully!), then machine quilted it with a 3-step zig zag stitch using a walking foot, giving it a vintage feel.

Here's a shot of the label (you can never have too many hexagons!).

Because I knew it was going to be hard to part with this quilt, I shot lots of pictures.

A few in my backyard:

Then, a few at my friend Linda's lovely house in town:

She's a wonderful photographer with a good eye for lighting, so I had her snap some pictures for me too:

And, a few pictures at Bryan & Nancy's home. They have a spectacular view of the mountains to the west, but we had to wait until the sun set, and by then, it was almost too dark.  

I would have loved to take a picture right in the center of this field, but that was easier said than done with the tricky lighting and the very limited time we had left to shoot some photos!

So, I was happy to get at least these shots:

This is the reason why it was hard to part with this quilt:

 Nancy's quilt has been perfectly content to lay across this chair right inside my front door since January.  Numerous friends and customers have seen it and commented on it.  I hated to part with it; the longer it remained on my living room chair, the more it seemed like it wanted to stay put.  But, it feels good to have documented this dear quilt, and to have completed my goal of finishing a quilt for each of my sisters and sister-in-law.  (Here are pictures of Renee's and Alison's from previous Christmas's.) 

Nancy, I hope your beautiful hexagon quilt gives you many years of joy!