This week has been crazy fun and then back to normal.
The thing I worked on first at retreat was my exothermic wonders quilt borders.
This is as far away from the quilt top as I could get with it on the floor. So the borders are on the quilt, nice and simple.
Like the drawing that I did in EQ a while ago.
And I was attempting to piece the back the next day and instead I created a wallhanging with the leftover pieces from the defunct borders on this quilt.
See my design wall, by the way, 3M strips and binder clips or office badge clips. Non permanent and useful.
On the next day of retreat, I cut out, measured and sewed all the sashing strips to my DNA Steps quilt, and with double strips of sashing along the middle pieces and the border, this kept me pretty busy this day.
The pieces are still in pieces, as I want to quilt this in pieces on my machine then sew it together.
And finally, I was working on the borders of my disappearing four patch quilt, but for the life of me do not know why I only photographed it with my iPod camera rather than my real camera.
So the colors seem more washed out in this last photograph than the first. I may donate this quilt once quilted to a local charity, I like it, but this one is probably meant for someone else. small lap quilt size.
See the darker squares in the end, that’s green donated by my new quilting bud who is a math teacher at the local school system. She and I talked quite a bit because she was an early bird like me. (although way not as early as me).
Silly me, I was going to put red in those squares instead of green. Good thing I had suggestions from others to help me think through that decision.
I was incredibly glad I brought that quilt, because it was a place I was stuck and didn’t know what to do with it and how to measure it and fix it as I ran out of the black and white fabric on the borders.
And when no one else was around to watch, I worked on this and promptly put it away before anyone got up.
As you can see (or not well) I totally need practice. I don’t think I would recommend free motion quilting through tissue paper.
One strike against me, I forgot my Machiniger’s quilting gloves – So I was gripping and pulling the thing under the machine, which completely ripped up the tissue paper on the sides.
A good idea in theory, but the paper would rip way too easily and then occasionally would get caught under the presser foot.
So now I have to move to pens and tracing quilt patterns rather than quilting over them because I think I may have exhausted my available options (no golden threads quilting paper around here that I know of).
Anyway, it seems I got a lot done, but in truth, I had most of the centers and blocks done prior to going to the retreat.
I think it felt a little bit like cheating. 
