Design Wall Monday - October 27, 2014

For my stash report yesterday, I showed you the purchases from my retreat. I thought it would be fitting to show my finished projects from retreat for Design Wall Monday on Patchwork Times. 

I took several (too many) projects with me to retreat, but I had two that I really wanted to get done and I am pleased to say that I finished both of them. First up was the Urban Pods quilt using the Quick Curve Ruler.  This is the first time I've used the ruler and I really enjoyed it. The cutting all went very easily (even for a lefty like me), and I had all my curved shapes ready to go when I arrived at retreat.  The quilt took me a long time to put together because every piece was curved...three pieces for each of the 96 blocks!  It was slow but pretty easy sewing, and I took breaks as I went along (usually for snacks).  I trimmed the first set of blocks when they were done and then had the motivation to keep going for the second set of blocks.  In the end, I spent more than two full days (about 15 hours of sewing) making this top, and I love it!  The seams aren't all perfect, but I really like how the fabrics came together in the end. 

The second project was a notebook cover for my neighbor. Her birthday was last week, so she's lucked out two years in a row with me making her a present while I was at retreat :)  This was a pretty easy pattern too, and it worked better for me than the other time I had to do some basting/gathering of fabric and then press it to fusible. I wound up having extra fabric pieces cut - I did all the cutting in one pass, but must have misread a few of the details. In the end, the cover wound up being about 1/4" too small all around for a standard composition notebook (which is what it was supposed to cover).  I think it was probably due to the interfacing I used, so I will have to try it again with a lighter weight interfacing, or I will have to get on amazon to find a slightly smaller notebook! 

 The final project that I worked on was one that I brought along just to play. It is a pattern from Missouri Star Quilt Co. called Periwinkle.  They showed it in the book and main video with charm packs, but I bought the mini template and paper pieces and did it with a pack of 2 1/2" squares, and boy, was it fun!  I didn't realize when I started how all the lines would come together and make it look almost three dimensional. I really love how this one worked out and now must decide whether I want to use it as a wall hanging/mini-quilt or as a pillow. I am also not sure how I am going to quilt it, so if you have any great suggestions, please let me know! 

All in all, I am really pleased with all I got done at the retreat. It is nice to bring home finished tops/projects. And the best part is that I still have a few cut and ready to sew on at any time.