Quilt retreat
The idea of a quilt retreat sounds great until I hear the cost.
I don’t really need one; I have my sister
Sharon. She made 24 quilts last year.
Last fall she asked,
“When can I visit?”
“When the quilt guild meets and for a weekly sew day at church. I have patriotic fabric to make a
Stack and Whack quilt.”
“I’ll bring my Stack and Whack book,” she promised.
One quilt planned for her visit.
My cousin texted, “Would you like this quilt bundle?” She sent a picture of bright orange, pink, green, turquoise and black fabrics cut into equilateral triangles for an “Optical illusion Quilt.”
“Yes!” I answered.
Two quilts planned.
Sharon ordered a template to use when cutting my patriotic fabric into equilateral triangles. Meanwhile we chose patterns for assembling the colorful triangles. If we followed the directions exactly, the dark, medium and light colored fabrics would create a 3-D illusion.
“Wait! Before we sew triangles, I need to finish the background on my Christmas tree quilt,” I interrupted.
In December I planned to whip up a Christmas quilt in a couple of weeks. Two months later I almost had the top assembled.
Three quilts planned.
So the first day we added white fabric and poinsettia borders to the tree. As I measured, re-measured, cut, pinned and sewed the borders, Sharon opened the treasure chest of triangles and choose triangles in 12 colors for the first two rows of an optical illusion quilt. She set one stack on each side of her machine to chain stitch the triangles. Her rows came out perfectly matched.
I chose a simpler pattern with three shades of pink plus black triangles. I tried her stacking method and got confused. While she slept, I laid each row out and double checked every addition before spending five seconds sewing together each 3-inch triangle to the row.
In the morning Sharon wandered in yawning and studied my finished rows. “You have the light and dark pieces reversed. It will still work, just turn it the other way.”
I finished the sampler. She finished the impressive intertwining towers and began another optic sampler. I elected to assemble two toned hexagons.
At the guild meeting during her visit, I pulled out the Christmas tree quilt for Show and Tell. “This is my two week quilt that took two months and my sister’s visit to make. We also worked on samples of optical illusion quilts.” I proudly displayed our samples.
The next day while we waited for the triangle template for the Stack and Whack, Sharon stacked more colorful triangles to extend her two samplers into usable quilts and began chainstitching. She took triangles to sew to the church sewing time.
Once the template arrived, she cut identical triangles to make kaleidoscopic hexagons of the red, white and blue fabric.
All I had to do was line-up the sides and sew. I whipped up a fourth of them before I went to bed and finished the rest by noon the next day. She added borders to the optical illusion quilt.
I added two triangles to the hexagons to begin building stars.
Hubby wandered back to chat.
“Would you rearrange these into a pattern you like?” I asked.
He did. As he admired it, I switched one. He switched another. We pronounced it balanced.
I laid down the end pieces. They didn’t fit. “I sewed them upside-down.” I concluded. Sharon studied them, “No, the hexagons with points are arranged upside down.” She turned them around and the end pieces fit. “Now it’s ready to sew together.”
She pinned the points of stars in each row for me to sew together.
We finished after suppertime on the last day of our triangle quilt retreat. My husband took us to celebrate at a restaurant miles away from my stash of fabrics and that triangle template. We declared the retreat officially over.