A Garden Party of Scrappy Fun!

And the youngest most productive student award goes to………

GABBY!

When it comes to sewing – we’ve gotta “hook ‘em young!”

And just the smile on this sweet face should tell you that not only does she want to be a quilter when she “grows up….” but she already is one, having made a quilt for her baby cousin when he was born.

Gabby is headed into the big world of third grade in just a few weeks, and we were so happy to have her in class supervising her mama!

She also took on such chores as pressing, and overseeing the “purple cutting thing!

Slice that thread, baby girl!

I so loved having this group in class!

The day previous, we had four sets of sisters – and with all of my running around between class room and luncheon lecture and back, I neglected to grab those pairs of sisters for a group photo.  I’m glad we caught this one.

Blocks were being finished by lunch time!

And after lunch – we started right in on the chain blocks!

(Loving Katie’s 30s palette!)

The BIGGEST time saver came with this hint.

When making nine-patches – make your short strip sets with loads of variety, and layer the center unit set with one of the top row sets.  Cut them right sides together, already matched and ready to sew. 

Making speedy work out of this batch!

After row 1 and row 2 are sewn together, more randomness happens when we add row 3 on, as those are cut singly, not matched to anything – cut a bunch, scramble them up, sew them on to the units in progress – whammo – super scrappy nine-patches without a lot of needing to match this to that.

Love the batik variation happening here!

A bit of quilter’s yoga getting these blocks laid out!

Fabulous job, everyone!  

Garden Party is found in my book Addicted to Scraps.

Getting everything laid out together gave us a chance to gather around and talk about how to tackle those pieced setting triangles – stay stitching, then trimming, adding of borders and finishing ideas.

You’ll find the rest of our Garden Party Day in the video below.  Click to play and enjoy:

During our lunch break I headed up to the vendors mall for a bit of retail therapy!

Things were super busy!

Random Allietare Quilt Sightings!

I popped into the Innova booth to talk to my friend Jill, and came face to face with a quilter matching thread to her Allietare top so she could get the quilting done!  How fun to meet her in person and see her beautiful quilt face to face!  What a random wonderful moment this was for both of us.  I’m so happy that the stars aligned at just the right moment – if I had been 5 minutes later, I would have missed her all together.

This fun group of ladies was found waiting outside my class room door.

Why were they waiting for me?

This double barreled rocker is headed to Quiltville Inn!

I love love love it!

Thank you so much!

And some sewing finally happened.

We may still be July, but pumpkin season is right around the corner – in fact I picked up some pumpkin flavored creamer at the store the other day!

I needed something brainless to do in the evening and this was just perfect last night – simple string piecing of gold to orange strips on paper foundations.

It felt great to be one with the thread, fabric and machine for just a bit.

Today is my last workshop day – a full up class of 40 for Wanderlust!  Room needs to open at 8am for set up – time to run a brush through my hair and get this day into high gear.

Quiltville Quote of the Day

Vintage quilt found in Verona, Virginia.

For the last two days I have heard many times “This is not as hard as I feared it would be.”

If you come from a place of fear, you have already defeated yourself.

If you think it's too hard, it will be!

Give it a chance – it might be easier than you thought!

But you’ll never know unless you jump in.

Have a wonderful Saturday, everyone!