Longmont Quilt Retreat

Hello.

I just had the most wonderful long weekend with an amazing group of 28 women at the Longmont Quilt Retreat. The Retreat was held at the Highland Presbyterian Retreat Center in Allenspark, Colorado, organized by the Longmont Quilt Guild. Get ready for uninterrupted sewing time with meals provided. Yay!

The retreat is a load of fun. What I enjoy the most about retreating is the camaraderie among quilters. As quilters, we are unique. We have style and preference. We may fall into general buckets, such as traditional, modern, or fiber arts, etc. that define our style, but at this retreat, we ALL appreciate what we all create. It doesn't matter the level of the quilt, we all like to share. There's no quilt snobbery here. There's no room for it, because we love the art of making quilts and enjoy the fellowship with one another. That's why I love coming back to the Longmont Quilt Retreat!

As for the process of getting ready for a 4 day retreat, and yes, there is a process, I begin by determining my projects about 2 weeks out. I cut before the retreat actually starts. Sort them into shoe boxes or plastic bins. This may not seem like much, but I'm sure my husband would differ. He thinks the retreat actually last 2 weeks. :) I'm a planner, to cut before the retreat begins provides me a place of feeling organized and ready. Then, I pack up the car the night before. The morning of retreat begins with plenty of hugs and kisses with my family and a stop at Starbucks.

Thursday is "settling" day. I take the nearly 2 hour drive to Allenspark, unload, arrange my workstation and mingle. Here's a picture of my workstation. There's the bins organized and sorted by quilt project at the lower right and in the distance near my camera bag.

Friday is "time for business." Zone out to some tunes and crank out projects. We woke up to snow. During breakfast, I announced a special project and asked for volunteers. There was an overwhelming response. The response really touched me and made this retreat very special. I'll write more about this project when the quilt is finished.

 (Friday morning: We woke up to snow.)

Saturday is "harmony." For me, after two days of going to bed around midnight and waking up at 6am, the exhaustion begins to set in. There's visiting and time out to do other things. For me, it was joining some of the quilters for an hour long all body workout.

Most of the retreat was spent on the Loyal Union Sampler. By retreat end, I completed 32 blocks. I have to say, it is the hardest sampler I have ever worked on. More difficult than Tula Pink's City and Farmer's Wife. Those are the only two I've completed. But, I ended up impressing myself with my skills. I really pushed myself to make magic happen. I'll take individual pictures of the blocks and post about them soon. In the mean time here's a pile of them.

Sunday is "time for rest." After a long weekend of late nights and early mornings, we're tired and ready to connect with our families. It's time to wrap it up, pack, say our goodbyes, and hurry home to give our people a big hug and kiss.

Here's my vantage point all weekend.

A picture of my scraps from a weekend of working on my Loyal Union Sampler.

The last day was beautiful. I was ready to see my family. I missed them tons. Thank the Lord for video streaming.

I do have to say, I did have to 'adjust' back to normal life. I'm still adjusting and exhausted from the weekend. 4 days of retreating is tough stuff, but I'm already thinking and planning out the next one. I must get to bed early tonight.

In retreat recovery,
Sandra





Straight-line Stitching

I don't have a lot to show this week. Much of what I've been working on is for publication.

This week I straight-lined stitched a quilt. The design simply called for it. Honestly, I don't prefer to straight-line stitch. No matter how much I iron and pay great attention to detail during the spray basting process, I always come up with problems, such as the stitching pushes the quilt top too far, causing a wavy seam line or I have to ease in bulk. Although straight-line stitching is fast, easy, and doesn't tire you like free motion quilting, I do prefer to stay away from it.

When I was straight-line stitching, I started to think about quilt density. I stitched the quilt in a plaid like pattern, which left a consistent area of two inches unstitched. I reviewed the quilt over and over, thinking I could add more stitching, but I like the simple line of the quit. It worked. Plus, I already had areas that I had to 'ease' in and, really, I didn't want it to get worse.

Normally, I machine quilt my quilts quite dense, meaning within an inch. I love the feel of a dense quilt. It seems to be crisp and strong. Not quite the best words to explain the feel of a snuggly quilt. I'm at a loss of words of how to explain it. I know I love it, but once it goes in to the wash, it soften right up.

In quilting, we quilt with a quarter inch seam, but doesn't that quarter inch ever make you worry about the longevity of a quilt? I realize that many battings today, especially the cotton and poly blends have a quilt density of 10 inches. Wow, that's crazy to me. To me, the measurement is based solely on the technology of the batting. Meaning, it won't fall apart or beard within 10 inches, but what about the quilt top? I don't have much comfort that my quilt top will last as long as the batting.

There are ways to eliminate bulk and prevent the long seam lines from waving.
     1. Make sure your quilt tops have been iron flat.
     2. Baste well. Double check the straightness of the long seam lines.
     3. For extra credit (for spray basting), take the quilt sandwich to the iron. Yes, iron it. Start from the center and work your way out. Don't use steam. The steam can remove the stickiness of the spray baste. I don't worry about ironing out the quilt back, just the front.
     4. Throughout the stitching process, double check the quilt to make sure it is straight. There are times when you have too reset the quilt top, because the quilt top will move as you stitch.
     5. Work in one direction. For example, I start and stop at the same side for the whole side of the quilt. I don't flip flop sides. Some prefer to flip flop sides to distribute the ease of the quilt evenly, but it hasn't worked well for me.
     6. For borders, cut them cross grain. Cross grain has the least amount of pull.
     7. Perhaps the most controversial, I stitch at 3mm. The longer stitch length is much more forgiving than a 2.5mm when you desire the appearance of a perfectly straight seam line and for easing in bulk.

I hope these are helpful tips for you as straight-line quilt your masterpieces.

Retreating in 3 days,
Sandra

Firefly Quilt

 

Hello World,

 

What a week of snow? The snow impacted our family here in Denver. Delays. Cancellations. The bright side of all this snow is having the moment to snuggle in a quilt with my daughter after a snowball fight. My daughter is a riot. This was the first time she really played in the snow. We all played. Although, we were completely productive by shoveling off the cement. I do enjoy shoveling, it's a bit endearing for me. I remember the best times with my brother and dad, growing up in northern Illinois shoveling the sidewalk and driveway. I remember throwing snowballs at each other and making up races to see who could shovel the fastest. My dad saying, it's a great workout, which I say to people today. Then, when we were done with the job or frozen, my mom would have hot chocolate or a Korean soup ready for us to gobble up. 

 

 

 

I finished the Firefly quilt this week. All done. I designed, pieced, and quilted it. Check it off the list. Just in time to snuggle on the couch with my husband as we watched Whiplash last night. I thoroughly enjoyed it, but it's intense (the movie is intense). Next up, Birdman.

 

 

For the next week and a half I have two quilts to finish for magazine publications. I am pushing myself to have the 'deadline driven work' finished and shipped before my QUILT RETREAT. Retreating, I want to focus on the Loyal Union sampler and another sampler for my blog. I can't wait to show you the latter. It's a free sampler on my blog. There are 9 blocks, measuring 16" x 16". I'm shooting to kick this off in April/May.

 

Staying cuddled in a quilt,

Sandra

Loyal Union Month 2

Here are the next 5 blocks for the Loyal Union Sampler.

Organizing and Evergreen Bowties

Hello snow.

Today, my family and I woke up to inches of snow, but I realize it's nothing compared to out east.  But, we are enjoying our day doing what we can to work from home and keep our daughter busy with active play.

This past Saturday, I went up north to Longmont, Colorado, for the day.  I wanted to check out the Presser Foot's moving sale. Presser Foot sells Bernina's, fabric, and all kind of notions/accessories. It's about a 45 minute drive from my home, and well, I wanted to make the best of the drive. We visited a dear friend, and played tennis at McIntosh Park, where I made a little picnic for my family on the court. Audrey and Garrett received a few things from me to say Happy Valentine's Day. Then, I proceeded to play my first set in years to beat my husband 6-1. In his defense, he is recovering from an Achilles tendon surgery. My husband is athletic and although, he may not look the best in his tennis form, he can get his racket on everything to put the ball back into play. As a female player, I like to hit the ball hard and well, from my years of competitive tennis, I could hit the ball hard to win the point. When I hit the ball hard to Garrett, it always comes right back twice as hard. So hard that in one rally, I broke 2 strings. It felt good to hear the pop. Nevermind that I hadn't change those strings since Audrey was born.

What I was getting at with my trip to the Presser Foot, is that I bought some more feet for my Bernina 820. I'm not all that excited about the storage that came with my machine to store feet and accessories. When I'm working, I like to slide, stack, and toss things about.

The storage unit that came with the box doesn't allow for that, and really doesn't fit my working mojo. In fact, I gave up on it months ago. I opted for a little zipper bag I made to store the feet and accessories, but I didn't like how the items banged against each other. After getting some more feet and accessories at Presser Foot, I was motivated to organize my items in a neat and orderly way. I combed the web for ideas that matched my working style. I decided on jewelry storage boxes. Sunday, I rushed over to Michael's to select my storage. There was an endless amount of options, but I opted for a medium sized box with removable dividers. A large was to big to slide, stack and toss about, but a small seemed too small. A medium box was just right.

 

Meanwhile, I managed to finish another quilt called Evergreen Bowties. I did this quilt for Craftsy as they will be selling the kits for the exact fabrics you see in the pictures below on Craftsy's website.

 



 

 

Staying warm and cozy,

Sandra

Briar Rose Quilt Sampler

Hello.
This past week was a bit unusual as I had lasik surgery on my eyes. The hardest part of recovering from lasik wasn't so much the eyes, but so much more about recovery. Doctor sent me home with what not to do: no running/exercise, no monitors (aka say no to computers and emails), and no sewing. Say what? I did manage and pretty much listened for 3 days.

It was difficult to not sew, not run, and not go through emails. By the next morning, I was twitching of boredom. I'm a busy body. I cannot stay still. I'm always on the move to something else. I'm the kind of person that when it is time for bed, I lay my head down and I'm out in seconds. Instead of sewing, running, and emails, I organized and purged junk from the house.

I love to play outdoors, especially with my family. I live in Denver, and well, the entire weekend was 60's to 70's. I obeyed doctor's orders for 2 days, but by the third day, my husband and 3 years old where out playing tennis. I did wear my fancy new sunglasses, so that makes it okay. :)

Before surgery, I did manage to get a quilt done. In fact, I finished the binding just 10 minutes before my husband took me to surgery. It had been pieced together for sometime, but I spent last week quilting it. It turned out wonderfully.

Here, I mostly used Heather Ross's Briar Rose fabric, thus the name, Briar Rose Quilt Sampler. The white background and sashing came right out of my stash. The quilt finishes at 80" square. I used Warm & White batting by the Warm Company and Aurifil thread.

I am putting together a pattern for this. It is drafted and going through final review. It should be published by the end of this month. The pattern is written fat quarter friendly, other than the sashing. I hope you'll give it a try.

 

Still in recovery,

Sandra

Repeat Patterns

Hello, World.

 

All I have to say is I'm addicted to repeat patterns. I probably spent way too much time this past weekend playing on Adobe Illustrator, but you'll have to confirm that with my husband.

 

The past few weeks, I have been focused on learning Illustrator for fabric design as well as coming up with my own color palette. My skills finally came together this past weekend. Honestly, I came up with a dozen patterns, trying to focus on different tools within Illustrator. All of these where made using either the pattern maker or manually making my own pattern in Illustrator. These are the four I'm most proud of, along with a narrative on each pattern: 

• For the first, the chevron, I thought, everybody loves chevron, so I'll create my version of it. Here I built a shape and repeated it.          
• The second one, who doesn't love a bunch of flowers? Well, I do. And why not mix shapes into them. I drew the flowers with my Wacom tablet. The rest where shapes built in Illustrator.
• I saw some jewelry out and about that inspired me to come up with the third one. This must be an addiction, if the first thing I want to do when I return home is to open up the computer to illustrate. Here, I use the rotate tool.
• The fourth one consisted of a lot of methods. I do love photography and the flowers are from my front yard. I use the image trace in Illustrator to come up with what you see there. The bird I drew from a how-to-draw book and the wreath of leaves were hand drawn, too. I used an oval as my guide to draw the wreath, then deleted the oval when I was finished with it.

Although I have a long way to go, I'm making progress. Illustrator is a language of its own. I'm no expert right now, but with the help of internet searching and how-to books, I'm coming along. Next, I'll continue working on Illustrator to develop my signature style and more dimensions to my patterns.

 

 



"Creativity takes courage" - Henri Matisse 

 

Sandra