Category Archives: retreat

Quilt Retreat – Friendship Blocks

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Only two more days until I leave for the FAB retreat!

We had decided some time ago to do a friendship block exchange. Every participant explained to the group what they would like for their friendship block and each person in the group was to make a block following those guidelines.

The first block I made was a Wonky Star for Pat. Pat requested a blue star on a yellow background. I picked a turquoise blue – my favorite blue right now because it reminds me of Arizona. Hopefully, the link to Arizona will help Pat remember which block is mine. This was my first ever attempt at wonky anything so I am not so sure I got it right, but IIWII! Since I was already in a wonky frame of mind, I decided to push on to the second block which was also to be wonky. This wonky house is for Cher. Cher said it didn’t have to look like our house; we were just to have fun with it. There are some things in this block that are taken from my house – the cat in the window, the red door, and the red maple in the yard. This was only my second attempt at anything wonky. I am not so sure I got it right, but once again, IIWII.

The next block was not really a block at all. We were to make block parts using Pam’s favorite fabric: ME. I went through my small stash of ME fabric to find the piece that had the most green in it. Green is my favorite colour so of course, I had to have green in my block. I believe Pam is going to assemble the parts we give her into a piece to frame for her kitchen wall. Cute idea!

The last block is for Linda. Linda had shown us her block which had pink, purple, and green in it so we could get some hints of the colours she was looking for. Of course, I had to make my block green! If you double click on the picture, you might be able to see the words and the drawings of the cats on the fabric. Green and cats–yup that is me!


I still have a few more strips to cut for the Strip Twist project we are going to be working on at retreat so I had better get back at it. Thursday will be here before we know it!

Quilt Retreat – Strip Twist Quilt

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Thursday morning I leave for Oregon to attend the first FAB Quilting Retreat. The quilt that we are going to work on is Strip Twist from G.E. Designs. This is the pattern jacket.
I started out with two fat quarter packs of soft pastel blues, greens, and pinks. I have since changed my mind on what fabric I want to make my version of Strip Twist from. While organizing my fabric cupboard, I became re-acquainted with a fabulous chicken/rooster print that was in my stash. This is a picture of that print with my rotary cutter in the picture to show the scale of the birds.

I have now decided to use this print as the border on my Strip Twist quilt. The blocks are all going to be made from the many colours taken from the birds in the print. All of the strips that I have cut for my blocks so far have come from my stash.

These are the strips that I have cut so far. As you can see from the picture, there are more green strips than any other colour. I guess that is no surprise since my favorite colour is green and I have more green fabrics in my stash than any other colour. LOL The wild rust and green print on the bottom of the picture was part of a basket of fabric and notions that I won at our guild’s quilt show last year. it is a little out there, but the colours work so in it goes. I am trying to follow some of the guidelines that Alex Anderson uses when making her quilts.
I needed to test the pattern to figure out how many blocks I could get out of a strip of fabric. The pattern says you should get 4 blocks from a strip of fabric. I tried a couple of different strips of fabric and find that I can get only 3 blocks from some strips (just a tad short) and I can get 4 blocks from others. I may run out of the chicken wire fabric (that I am using for my light) before anything else. I want to make my quilt bed size – preferably queen. Although this project is a little “planned”, it will also be somewhat driven by the number of blocks I can get out of that chicken wire print. I may pull a backup light from my stash if I need to squeeze in a few more blocks.
This is a very cute pattern and the construction is simple. The pattern is solely made from 2.5 inch strips. That narrow light strip is cleverly constructed after sewing 2.5 inch strips together into stratas of 3 strips and then making a secondary cut. The blocks also make use of the partial seam method which avoids set in seams. It will be fun to see this same pattern in the fabric choices of the other FABs.