Quilt Retreat

I should have posted on this a while ago, but I've been too busy quilting! My mother and I went to a Mother's Day Quilt Retreat in Dodgeville, Wisconsin. It was hosted by Amanda Jean of Crazy Mom Quilts. We had soooo much fun!

I've never FMQ'd before, so it was a real treat to get tips from all of the wonderful women who attended the retreat. There were 11 of us total, so it was a smaller group and we all had a lot of fun together. We started off with a show and tell portion of the weekend where I got to show off my unfinished Mario quilt. The real treat though was seeing all of the fantastic quilts made by all of the other women. Their creativity astounds me! Even my mom had an awesome quilt that I didn't even know she'd made! I've really been inspired to step out of my comfort zone of squares and 9-patch quilts. Maybe someday I'll branch out. (My next quilt will be a baby quilt with a 4 patch pattern... old habits die hard!)

So, at the retreat we were taught how to use our walking foot and our free motion/darning foot. I think they will both be permanent residents on my sewing machine. I used to use my zig-zag presser foot for everything, but now I think I'm going to use my walking foot. I just love the way the fabric glides through the machine! :)

So, without further ado - here's the quilting that I did on my favorite blocks:

I used to draw this heart doodle all the time in high school. I never knew it would really come in handy!

I really liked the look of the stars and loops, so I copied it from a handout Amanda Jean gave us at the retreat.

I liked my pebbles so much I took a picture of both the black and the white sides of the quilt.


And, then here is a picture of the flowers I made. I wanted them to look really sketchy, so I think they turned out the way I wanted them to. :)









And, here's the entire quilt:

We used a quilt-as-you-go method which I think I'll use again and again. It was much easier than I thought it was going to be, so I'm really glad I went on the retreat to learn something new. My quilt is going to be our picnic/4th of July fireworks quilt. I can't want to show it off this summer! But, I think this method of piecing would make a great picnic blanket and also throw quilt. It was a lot of hand stitching, but now that it's all done, I really love it. So - thanks to all of the women who came to the retreat to make it such a blast! I'm looking forward to seeing all of your finished quilts soon! Happy crafting!