Jan 08 Retreat: Caitlin, Sharon and Sue

Before packing up every last bit of our quilting supplies, we put Caitlin's 9 Patch back on the wall, near the ones that Sharon and I were still working on. The coolest thing about quilting is how you can just switch the fabric around and get a completely different look out of the same pattern. This is a great example of that.

Jan 08 Retreat: Sharon's and Sue's 9 Patch

As noted in an earlier post, Sharon, Caitlin and I all took the same class this summer for this curved-piecing Nine Patch With An Attitude. I gotta say, I am really glad there are "only" 36 blocks. The black-yellow-green batik on the left is Sharon's, and the pink-purple-blue-green on the right is mine.

By the way, this is only Sharon's second quilt top. Very, very amazing the skill that she has shown so early in the game. And pretty danged brave to take this on as Project Number Two!

Jan 08 Retreat: Sharon's Wild & Crazy Fish Pillowcase

During our road trip to Gathering Friends Quilt Shop on Friday, Sharon picked up this awesome fabric to make a pillowcase. 'Nuff said!

Jan 08 Retreat: Christi's Sweatshop!

From Friday night through Sunday morning, Christi ran a sweatshop of workers. She, Terry, Erika, and Alisa worked for hours to make this "Square Within A Square" quilt for a friend of theirs who is expected to elope any day now. Although you can see some smiles in the photos, in reality, Christi was cracking the whip every few minutes! By Sunday morning, they had accomplished an entire full-size quilt top.

Jan 08 Retreat: Rita's 3-D

Rita (retreat house owner) stopped by to visit us on Saturday evening, and brought this nifty three-dimensional quilt for "show and tell".

Jan 08 Retreat: Caitlin's 9 Patch With An Attitude

This past summer, Sharon, Caitlin and I all took a Cathy Wierzbicki class at the Calico Hatch, for a curved-piecing pattern called "Nine Patch With An Attitude". The pattern is written really well, and starting it during the class was a great way to really learn a ton from the person who wrote the pattern. For all of us, this was our first time with templates, and first time with curved piecing. Caitlin started on this project right away on Thursday, while I finished up my other half-done projects. By Saturday, she had finished it all up, including mitered borders (another first)! The one on the left is Caitlin's (gold, blue, purple), and the one on the right (purple, blue, pink) is mine. We all used batiks.

Jan 08 Retreat: Carole At Work

My good friend Carole, like me, brings 20 more projects than she can possibly work on too. She started on a batik project at this retreat, and had about half of the very bitty blocks done by the end of the weekend. Carole also added "frame" style borders to her niece Sydney's cat and dog wall hangings, quilted them, and put the bindings on both of them. (See September 2007 entries for Sydney!)