My Retreat Results

      First, I sewed the corners on some of my kaleidoscope blocks. Then I sewed a group of them together, about 1/3 I guess. So, that is all in one piece now. I wanted to do more, but then I got antsy, and went on to something else.

      The reason that I got antsy is that I approach retreats differently than so many of my friends. They use the time to finish up UFOs. A worthy pursuit to be sure. But, when I'm at retreat I love to treat myself to starting something new.

     Several years ago someone gave me this piece of fabric for my birthday. I have held onto it, waiting for the right idea to strike. It is a really large print, and if I cut it up I would loose what is special about it. So. I cut the yard into fat quarters; and went around each piece with 3 borders.

It's not like me to have such large pieces in my quilts, but I have been wanting to experiment with using the prints of some of these elaborate designer fabrics for my design element. I have 4 of these, so the next question was how to lay them out and what to do around them.

I think I will lay them out like this.

 This is a painting by Gustave Klimt. I have always thought it would be fun to make a quilt based on it because it kind of reminds my of a quilt. I thought I could use some of these patchwork looking elements in the spaces around my blocks.

This is the drawing I came up with. I will put the square in a square block around my big blocks. I will put rows of equilateral triangles in opposing corners, and 1 1/2" strips in the other corners.  I will put 2 1/2" strips down the length of the quilt on either side. The different strip sizes remind me of the different size rectangles in the painting. I hope this makes sense. I think I will be able to communicate it better as I progress with it. It is still very much in my head.

     In the center, I just wanted a big piece of swirly fabric. Some of the ladies were taking a rode trip to a local quilt shop; and I asked Mary to keep an eye out for a likely candidate.

      She came back with this, which I thought was just perfect!

     Since I was planning all along to work on this quilt, I had brought a pile of fabrics that I thought would go well with it. I cut strips from them, for the corner elements.

 
     I cut 4" strips to make the square in a square pieces, and equilateral triangles from. The 1 1/2" strips are for the smaller rectangles; and the 2 1/2" strips are for the larger rectangles. Eleanor gave me those orange print pieces on the top. She won it in the fabric swap that we had. What a pal! She said she picked it because she thought it would go good with my quilt. I agree.  

     I made these strip pieced units for a class I am teach soon. I am doing a trunk show and class for the Heart of Georgia Guild from Macon. The class is Indian Summer which I showed you a couple of blog posts ago. I am trying to show other motifs that could be done using the same technique. When I first got this idea; I was going to do it in Batiks. I have a better selection if batiks; but I have been using batiks a lot lately. They are just so easy to work with. So I am trying to do something different here, but I'm not sure my motifs are showing up as well as I want them to. They are supposed to look like stair stepped triangles.I think I will have to make some more, I am not ready to give up on the idea yet. If nothing else, I think it will be rich looking.


     I also worked on my solid quilt a bit, but I just mostly used it as leaders and enders, so I haven't taken a picture of it yet, since I didn't progress much. 


     The time goes by so fast when your at retreat. You never get done everything you think you will. Or, maybe that's true for sewing at home too. There's just not enough time to sew all these quilts I have in my head!