Guild Retreat 2020

Last summer I started working on an old collection of courthouse step blocks from an exchange.   I made a mistake while assembling the second half of the top so I was going to have a square quilt with very large triangles in two corners instead of a rectangular quilt.    I wrote about it here 

This past weekend was the annual guild retreat.  The courthouse step quilt was one project I took with me.  I spent Friday taking the rows apart, removing the two setting triangles and moving one block to the other end of the row — undoing what I did last July.   It took all day as I had to do the ripping slowly but I’m pleased that the wrist is healed enough to allow me to do the ripping with breaks.   

The previous day I worked on a Caddy Bag by Sisters Common Thread.  I had done all the cutting and marking at home.   I didn’t have the needed buttons but went on an outing Friday morning with  another guild member to Fabricland and found two purple buttons.  All folded up, the caddy holds my travel iron nicely.  Opened up, it gives me and ironing mat.  

In December, before breaking my wrist, I took Jane Sassaman's Abstracting From Nature workshop and made a milkweed wall hanging that is still waiting to be quilted.   I had a couple of other ideas for milkweed quilts using the same technique and this weekend made progress on a spring version of the milkweeds.  I’m still playing with background and stems.   The stems in the picture are paper.  I did get the curves sewn into all the circles and started the satin stitch to join the circles.   The circles are the buds with each cluster of buds have a flower or two open.   It will be easier to arrange once each cluster of flowers is stitched.