April and May Quilty Doings

 Wow! 

Time just zips by once we gain our daylight hours.

I ended April with a quilt retreat with my wonderful group, "Material Girls."

The big event at our April retreat was a mystery.

Here we all our with our finished blocks.

 Yes!!! We look at this gorgeous background while sewing at the B and B we rent for a long weekend. 

 

The main goal was for everyone to finish one block. Below is one block from everyone. 

It was a resounding sucess. We all love our blocks. This is a Debbie Caffrey mystery, "Lasagna."

Our homework is to finish setting the blocks by our next retreat in October. 

Now onto the projects I took to work on at retreat. 

First, I had these scrappy triangle sets left from a completed top...

I had a lot of them! They were made into strip sets.

The colors are so hard to get accurate in photos. 

Below are q    the setting fabrics I think I will use.

This French Braid freebie pattern is my inspiration. Notice how many more rows I have made than required. My big decision is whether to make two lap quilts or one biggie quilt. 

If you've been reading my blog for a while...you are betting on the biggie.

Our group is always trying to come up with challenges. Sandy proposed pineapple block quilts earlier in the year. There were only three of us really interested in doing it .

Below is Sandy's scrappy pineapple. She used a Creative Grids Pineapple Block ruler and liked it very much.

She did a second version...she has a lot of scraps!!!

Joyce used foundation papers from the Fat Quarter Shop. She also like this method.

I immediately thought of a pattern from a magazine I had saved for several years.

I love the border as much as the center pineapple blocks.

Of course....it is a big quilt...finishing at 94-inches square.

The designer, Cathy Wierzbicki, has a really neat method. These triangle blocks will get cut into four, 1 1/2 -strips, mixed up and pieced backwards to make a mock pineapple block.

It took me weeks to pick colors and it was a chore to cut everything. I made a dent in piecing the triangle blocks at the retreat. I probably won't work on this during the summer months but I am excited about this quilt.

My biggest accomplishment at retreat was finishing all the blocks for the, "Sew by Row," quilt designed by Lori Holt. It took me a little searching on Pinterest to come up with a different border idea than Lori's version.  

After retreat, finishing the, "Sew by Row," quilt was my main project. 

Then I turned to finishing up a freebie quilt from my scraps on a previous project.

It seemed like I had thousands of little HSTs. These are the clipped corners that finish at 1 3/4-inch.

Pinterest inspired me to make this block.

It is from this Missouri Star Quilt Company design.

There were no shortcuts in this pattern for putting together all these HSTs.

I got to a point where I just needed to finish it! I came up with a border finish I love. It is a 42-inch square. I still have many HSTs left and I do have another little quilt idea in my head.

My husband gets me to join him on a little outing in one of his planes every now and then. My favorite quick trip is lunch in Talkeetna. There is an adorable quilt shop there, the Patchwork Moose, and a great restaurant, Mountain High Pizza Pie, that I love to visit. Here's our parking spot for our Cessna 185 at the Talkeetna airport. This photo is from April 3rd so I'm sure all that snow is gone now.

I do have more non-quilting projects to share…maybe another post later in the week…but it is gardening season…hopefully it won’t be September before I post another blog.