Retreat Pictures

Here are some retreat pictures from the week long retreat Veronica went on.  Here is Jaggie with a few 5" purple Sawtooth Star blocks.

This is the top, minus borders.  Veronica poached fabric from another quilt and got he borders on before she went home.   

This was her next project.  A mini, mini Mariner's Compass.  

As you can see, it is only 6". 

This is her Birds In The Air quilt top.  It is pretty big.  

This is her Blue Ridge Beauty exchange blocks.  She did this exchange with her group from the Bay Area Quilt Guild.  It is from a Bonnie Hunter book.

Here is Jaggie with a 38" Lone Star using Quiltsmart interfacing.  

Here is the finished top.

Here I am with a stack of tops Veronica finished.  

I don't know about you, but I'm pooped.  Here I am catching a snooze while the ladies eat dinner.  

Ok, these are some of the other quilts that were made at retreat.  

This one belongs to C.

This one is V's.

Here is P's.  We really do know their names, but we don't like to put their full names for safety sake.  Better to be safe than to be sorry.

Retreats are a lot of fun.  If your guild has a retreat and you have never been, try it out.  We had lots of laughs, lots of good food, and great memories that we won't soon forget.  Veronica is off to another retreat on Thursday with another group of ladies.  Look for those pictures next week.  

Here is another one of Veronica's tops.  

Here are the stars with the borders.

This is her shades 4 patch.  

What fun we had.  Thanks C. for making room for us at the last minute.

UFO Update

Ok, I've got an update on Veronica's UFO adventure with her quilt guild .  They decided that since not everyone has a quilting machine, they are going to call it done when the borders are finished. Here are a couple of Veronica's completed tops.

This is a King size quilt top.  Veronica thought about putting borders on this and finish out those stars, just like the one below.  But geez, it's huge!  So......It's done!

All done, this one is smaller, so Veronica went ahead and finished the star tips into the border.

Another giant quilt.  Veronica was not going to make anymore King size quilts, but it just grew and grew and grew.  She's calling this one done as well.  How are your UFO's coming along?  More updates at the end of next month.

See you Monday.

What did I do???????????? Jaggie interviews a UFOaholic

Investigative Reporter:  Jaggie the Bear

So Sunday morning I woke I feeling great.  I was going to get a UFO done, finished, quilted and put on the bed.  I had most of my blocks done and sewn into strips, but I wanted it a little bit bigger.  I was so excited. Today was the day!  I pulled out the pattern, pulled out the fabric, started cutting and sat down to sew.  I sewed and sewed and sewed.  I got up and pressed my blocks.

I went downstairs to lay these new blocks down and realized I had made 9 blocks too many.  So now the dilemma is do I make more and make it bigger or do I just use the 9 I needed and keep the other 9 that I "over" made.  Decision made, I set my 9 blocks down on the ends of my row and then, OH NO, the new blocks are too big.  Poooop!  I grab the pattern, check the sizes on the blocks, yep, they're perfect,hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm, must have made the original blocks smaller.

Yes, they are 7 1/2 finished.  Great, now I've added another UFO to my list with 18 new Ohio Star blocks that finish at 9".

So have any of you ever done anything like this.  I think I was just over excited and so eager to get it done, that I never even thought to look at the blocks to check the size.  This is what happens when you're "sure" you know what you did before. You think I'd learn, I did this when I started working on my UFO's 2 years ago as well.  (But I only did it once.)

What happened to those UFO's anyway?  Well, I did get 25 of those UFO's done and then I gave up.                

So here it is, I ripped 8 of the blocks and here they lay.  Then of course, the next thing I wanted to do is put those other blocks into something, but now I don't have enough.  In my brain, I had 8 left, not 10.  So I made one more of the "bigger" size so I could put 9 together.  Then I counted and I had 11, geez, let me go make one more...

I know we're supposed to measure twice, cut once, but who says count first and cut second.  I think my sugar levels are out of whack.  I need a cookie.    

Actually, I tell all of my students that they can ask any question, none of them are dumb questions. If something can be done wrong, I've done it and they should learn form my mistakes.  I actually do learn from my mistakes, maybe not the first time, but I do eventually get it.  Sometimes I come up with something great after I've made a mistake, so they're not all bad and sometimes I get a great laugh at what I've done.  Laughing is good, right?

Veronica Cox, as told to

Any the numbers are...

I told you I would keep you posted on Veronica's use of thread, and here we are half way through the year and her grand total is......22 spools.  All cotton thread, none used for bobbins, as she loves to use pre-wound bobbins on all of her machines.

She'll have another one pretty soon.  This is the way she left her sewing machine when she left retreat.  

So I would say she got a lot done, but nothing really completed.  She's going to get some UFO work done.  She's motivated now.  There will be more spools soon.  Let's see if her year ends with 44 spools.  The pressure is on now...


See you on Monday.

Jaggie interviews a UFOaholic

Investigative Reporter: Jaggie the Bear

We were at Dayton Quilt Guild Wednesday morning and the members presented Veronica with a beautiful quilt as a thank you for being the guild's President for the past year.  Here is a picture of it, isn't it wonderful?

She was also given the extra fabric that was left over from the quilt.  There were a lot of triangles, so I guess this will now be added to the list of UFO's.  Do you ever stop to wonder why we have UFO's? I've never really stopped to think about it, but today I decided to sit back and think about the reason or reasons.  I guess I ran out of time and went on to something else, or I didn't like the technique or class and just quit.  It was never that I ran out of fabric, fabric is something I never run out of. Sometimes I just got bored or lost interest in a project.  There were a couple that I decided were ugly, especially when I let someone talk me into a fabric.  I don't like florals, and sometimes my friends decide I need florals.  There are a couple of quilts that just had their borders ripped off because I just couldn't make myself quilt them.......the borders were florals.  So now I know that I will never let my friends talk me into buying floral fabric again.  I don't think the reason I have UFO's is because I don't have the right ruler, either, I've got tons of rulers.  I think there are just too many patterns out there that I want to make.  I just keep starting new projects and toss the old ones aside.  Well, no more.  I've got my list made, I actually wrote it at the airport Tuesday night as I sat and waited for my flight that was delayed and delayed and then cancelled and then I was moved to another flight and then that was cancelled, and then I got moved again, and on and on, so anyway I had lots of time for my UFO list.  I got 51 UFO's on my list just sitting there that I pulled out of my head.  Now I have triangles to add, that's 52 and the list goes on and on and on.....

I'm thinking of taking pictures of 6 quilt UFO's at a time, work on those and get them done.  I'm also thinking about getting that much needed, yes, NEEDED quilting machine.  I had one, but we sold it as we needed the space in the warehouse.  Here are my 6 pictures, if I show you what I started and left, I'll feel like I have to show you the completed top, and once I get a quilting machine, the completed quilts.

This was a birthday block that we did for each other in a bee back in the 90's.  Yes, 1990's. and a very long time ago.  I received 9 blocks, but decided this was not enough for the size quilt that I wanted.  So my blocks sat and waited.  2 years ago a small group from my local quilt guild decided we were going to do a block robin.  There were 6 of us, so we decided that we would make 2 blocks for each person and trade the "boxes" every two weeks.  Well, we all know that you can't really make a quilt of any size with 10 blocks made for you by your friends, so we went around again.  I'm not sure how I got 19 blocks, but I did.  So armed with my 9 and 19 I set off to retreat last week.  I had to make 2 more blocks (yes, this is the quilt you saw hanging the other day) and I was ready to put my top together.  Why did I pick this one to be my number 1?  Well, it's simple, it only needs a border, but it seems that borders are the hardest thing for me to add to a quilt to finish the top.  This one will get a border, you just wait and see.



Here are some 5" finished blocks that did not really measure 5".  This was an exchange (again from the 90's) that I started but never got done.  I was semi new to quilting and I just couldn't figure out how to make a 5" Sawtooth Star.  I could figure a 4" and a 6", but that 5" was elusive.  I tried and I ripped and ripped and sewed and ripped some more.  Now I look at it and think, geez, this is so easy.  So I worked on these for a bit at retreat, but then I ran out of white on white for the background.  I had tons of purples cut out, so I guess I had 2 reasons to stick this one in the corner and leave it there.

This one was another exchange between 3 of us.  I remember is quite well, it was my idea, I loved it and I had to have it.  This one is in Fon's and Porter's For The Love of Quilting July/August 1999 issue.  We actually only exchanged the little Aunt Grace flower squares.  I needed 49 flower blocks, but overachiever that I am, I made 64 blocks.  I worked on some of the green stems and leaves at retreat, and I needed 80 for the 49 flowers.  Now I realize I need way more than 80 and each stem has 4 leaves.  That top leaf has one leaf turned wrong, but I'm not changing it, it's going to stay "wrong". It is my humility block.  

 This one is only 7 months old, and it needs a borders, what can I say, I don't like putting borders on,  but now that you've seen it, I have to finish it.

  
This one is 8 months old.  I had it all put together, didn't like it, ripped it apart and put it back together in rows that will be on point.  I worked  on it a bit at retreat but realized I didn't have background fabric for setting triangles.  So back to the box it went.

Yikes!!! Another 1990's exchange.  And what does it need?  Well a border of course.

Ok, I'm on it, I'll work on it as soon as I get that Round Robin quilt done.....


Veronica Cox, as told to

                                                Investigative Reporter

             

Retreat and UFO's completed

Veronica and her group are starting something new at her quilt guild.  They are going to start a UFO group with hopes that this will help motivate them to get some projects finished.  Here is a top that Veronica worked on at retreat.  She had a pile of 28 blocks, she added two more blocks that she made once she got to retreat.  She still needs borders, but she's got a great start.  She worked on a few more things as well.

How many UFO's do you have?