Bandon Retreat 2018

I spent 7 wonderful days at Bandon on the Southern Oregon coast, for a quilting retreat. Barb, in my Fyber Cafe group was having a retreat with her family and friends and had an extra space, and asked me to join them, yea me! The retreat center is above Forget-Me-Knots quilt shop, which provides excellent shopping opportunities. My first priority was making a baby quilt for my niece's new little girl Emelia. At home I had cut 2 1/2" strips from almost all my 1920-30's reproduction prints, pretty pastels with conversation prints, lots of little dogs, cats, chicks, geese, pigs, and children. I put them together in a simple rail fence pattern and added a border of fairy tail print with princesses and castles. Now, a month later I bought the flannel backing fabric, of butterflies, to get it quilted.

My big project for the week was a queen size star kit, that I had gotten for my other niece. All the nieces and nephews have baby quilts, and wall hanging/lap quilts. So now it is time for queen size bed quilts, as they are almost all adults now. She had wanted something modern and I had been looking at gray/black chevron patterns. Finding this kit was perfect, I seldom buy kits, preferring to make my own art patterns. It is a Hoffman kit called "Crystal Clear" and was all batik fabric, gray and white with turquoise accents. I figured it was paper pieced with all the points and angles. But imagine my surprise when I opened the box and it was all pre-cut pieces with number stickers on them. And DOUBLE SURPRISE there were NO DIRECTIONS!!! The box was marked that all the pieces were there, so someone must have opened it, checked off the pieces and forgot to put the papers back in the box. All I had to go on was the photo on the box :( I decided to give it a try, each section was marked A B C etc and they were in number order, it also helped that they had notches snipped in the seam to align the pieces. But I still had to figure how they went together, left to right or reversed, since it was all batik and reversible. I sturdily kept at it, making section by section and sewing for 3 days straight.

It was quiet a challenge and everyone was very impressed that I managed to figure it out, it was NOT easy at all. But preservation paid off. It did not go together well, it had some poofy spots, but the points matched well and it did eventually become one piece!

Wow! If I had not been at retreat I doubt I would have gotten it done. Also being the masochist I am, I decided to make another one for my other niece, in black, gray and magenta. I had traced all the pieces on freezer paper, cut them out and taped them together along the seam lines. I found several glaring mistakes in the pieces, and the way they went together, exactly where the poofy spots were. No wonder it was poofy. Then I used a light box to create a paper pieced pattern for each section. Having no directions I had to guess at the yardage, and bought the entire bolts of black and gray fabrics. I hope I have enough!

I got a good start on it at the retreat. The paper piecing is so much easier and so much more accurate. I should be able to finish it in a reasonable bit of time. We had a great time, going to the quilt shops in Port Orford, Charleston and Coos Bay. Out to lunch a lot and long walks on the beach and shopping in Old Town. The other ladies made some amazing quilt tops and it was fun to watch what they were doing. A week was a bit long, I usually do this retreat in a 3 day session, but it was worth it, and we scheduled for next year too. I am linking this to Nina-Marie's "Off the Wall Friday" click here check out what other talented artists are doing.

Art Retreat

What a wonderful time we all had at the Bandon Art Retreat, eight of us from Fyber Cafe, spent 3 days on the beautiful Southern Oregon coast. For more details of what everyone did, check out the Fyber Cafe blog, click here The retreat center above Forget-Me-Knots Quilt Shop click here is a great space, it sleeps 8, has a BIG sewing area with a whole wall of design space, and a wall of floor to ceiling windows, a large kitchen and quilts on all the beds, within walking distance of "Old Town Bandon."

I spent most of my time working on quilting a top I had made at the first retreat 2 years ago. I had used only hand dyed fabrics I had made at our dye workshops. I free hand cut the petal shapes and arranged them on the large design wall. It had been a very freeing, loose, way to work, I had just wanted to have fun and be creative. So I spent Monday afternoon and evening and all day Tuesday quilting on it, lots of hours and thread. I used rayon threads and at least 10 bobbins of superfine black thread. Each petal is quilted with a different pattern, if we had not stopped at Landreth's and seen her quilting samples that she has for her long arm machine, I probably would have quilted them all with an echo flame pattern. But she got me thinking outside of the box, and freed me up to do lots of fun, different designs. I had thought about using a rainbow thread in the black, but I am glad I did not, the black gave your eye a place to rest, confetti colors would have made it very busy. Instead I made little curlycues coming off the tips of the petals.

I finished all but the top right corner, I needed a few more petals, and my big table at home to trim it up square. I got it finished the next week and am still working on hand stitching the binding. I finally thought of a title, "Exuberance."

Wednesday morning I cleaned up and put my sewing machine away, and then worked on some T-shirts. I used Jacquard Decolourant with stencils to decorate 4 dark t-shirts. The bleach discharge paste, worked well, once it had dried, it is ironed to heat activate the bleaching process. The clock work/gears one, I took home and cut a reverse stencil of some of the gears, and used copper acrylic paint to add more detail.

I also did a teal shirt, with large gingko leaves on it, with a commercial stencil and some small gingko leaves with hand made stencils. We all had a great time, potlucking, going to lunch, going to the beach, shopping at "Old Town" touristy shops, visiting the new Face Rock Creamery(cheese factory) and the "Wool Shoppe" in Langlois, South of town, where we got some Merino/silk blends in luscious colors for needle felting and spinning. See the Fyber Cafe blog for more details.

I am linking this to Nina-Marie's "Off the Wall Friday" click on the badge in the right hand column, to see what other wonderful artists are up to this week.