Knotty Quilters November Retreat

This is how it looked outside my house on the first day (Nov 14) I traveled to the retreat in Eagle, Idaho. That's my lavender garden covered in snow.

I left around 10:30 a.m. and got there at 11:30, in time to save the two, who had made it before me, from sure starvation.  We had a fine little lunch and then Mary took a nap on the couch and I took a snooze in the chair in front of the stove, while Marsha took photos of us sleeping.  Around 1:30 I started cutting flannel to make a flannel rag quilt.  Others arrived later in the day and more joined us on Saturday and Sunday.  Sunday morning, Colette and I both had our rag quilts finished! Then we all worked on car blocks for a group wall hanging project.

Colette made the Spidey quilt, on the left, for her son.
I made the Autumn Kitty quilt, on the right, just for fun!

My angry monster robot, on the left, morphed into a "Friends fur ever" puppy mobile.

We Lose Friends.

My good friend, Betty Finnegan, passed away suddenly last Sunday, November 16.  I've never had a close friend die before. It is hard to think that anything is worthwhile, when you lose someone forever.  Those of us who knew her are very fortunate to have wonderful memories of her.  Memories are magical things.

Inspiration from one another (snowmen!)

     Being around other quilters and doing things with other quilters causes a chain of creative events that are immeasurable.  I have a friend that I like to do things with, and we are both quilters. I was out of my favorite strawberry rhubarb jam, that can only be obtained at Cliff's Country Market in Caldwell.  Also, I needed to pick-up a gluten free apple pie.  Cliff's has the best, no. 1, gluten free apple pie in their frozen GF section. 
     We drove over to Cliff's and got yummy things.  Then I thought why not stop in a quilt shop while we are in the neighborhood?  We did.  She behaved, but I had to buy some fabric.  While we were there, another quilter came in and was asking advice on a small quilt she was working on.  I loved it!  It was delightful and simple in design.  My friend and I, headed for the nearest best Mexican restaurant, where we drew the design out on a hastily found piece of scrap paper. 
     A few weeks later, my same friend and I planned a trip to Weiser to visit Judy Ann's Quilt Shop.  What fun we had.  Her niece was running the store, when we got there, at 3:00 in the afternoon.  Such nice fabrics, most of which we had not seen down in the valley.  I spent all my mad money!  I got two different snowflake fabrics.  I found some awesome 50's car hop fabric, and I bought enough to make the front and back of a quilt for my cousin.  Such a nice time we had.
     That evening I took out that piece of scrap paper and went through my fru-fru quilting fabric and scraps and pieced that entire wall hanging.  It took me Monday and Tuesday evenings to sew on the snow man faces; five of them. I got the "Fru-fru Snowmen" wall hanging completely quilted and bound by Friday evening, November 7. 
     Yesterday, I surprised my friend with this darling snowman wall hanging at our "Cindy's Retreat" yesterday afternoon.  I am getting ready to head back there in a few minutes.  I, and even my mother, think it turned out well, even though I used the non-winter fabrics on it.  I sewed the binding on the backside, then turned it to the front and machine stitched it in place with a snowflake stitch!

This is so cheery!

First Liberated Church of Hopscotch

I did make my church block for my liberated houses quilt.  But I did not make it with a blue sky. 

I think it came out a bit small compared to the other 19 liberated house blocks I have made.  I may make another one, but if I make the house bigger I can't put all those crosses in the yard.  I believe this church has a grave yard! It certainly has lots of angels.
     I got the wild crosses fabric at Hancocks, and the blue stripe roof fabric. The hopscotch fabric, I picked up years ago at Joanne's. Perfect for church windows!

Three Projects Finished Last Weekend!

     Last weekend I had the most fun!  I can't remember what I did Saturday morning, but my friend, Teresa, came over in the afternoon and we did a quilted pot holder project.  What I like is that no matter how easy the project, I always learn something new! How does that happen?  I remember that I learned two new things, but now (nearly a week later) I can only remember one of them. Hmm.  Maybe if I look at that pot holder, I will remember! 
     We made the Folded Pot Holder, from Quilt Expressions blog.

I top stitched mine, then afterward noticed the fancy stitching in the photo on the instructions.  They used co-ordinating thread, so it was hard to notice.  The two things I learned are 1) how to make that little angled fold joining the binding up after sewing it clear around the edge; 2) that you can stitch the binding to the back-side, then turn it to the front and use a decorative stitch to sew it down.  I did this on another project to see how that would work, if I used a decorative stitch.

     I had made a kitty quilt for Merlinda, but it needed to be bound.  I had left-over orange binding strips from the pot holder project, so I used the decorative stitch instead of hand-sewing the binding down. On a kitty quilt it doesn't matter which side you sew it to first.  Then I used my special foot, to run along the edge of binding and machine sew the binding on.

Here is the finished kitty quilt with some of the same binding as the pot holder.

 

After those two projects, I used some scraps from Aoi Has Two Sisters quilt to make a pillow cover.  It is a liberated log cabin block.  Liberated log cabin blocks are found in the parts dept. of Collaborative Quilting, that I discussed in my previous post.  Love those liberated blocks!