retreat

This weekend was my favorite 48 hour period of the year: my guild’s retreat.

Deciding what to work on is the hardest part.  So many fun projects, so little time.  I prioritized a brand new project I’d been dreaming of–joining the Scrappy Trip trend.  I thought it would be the coolest thing in the world out of Chicopee with the strip down the center unifying it.  I went back and forth on what that color would be (black, orange, green, or purple) and then quickly settled on black after arriving at the retreat and getting some fellow quilter opinions.

The blocks were tons of fun to make.  Because I had the center stripe nailed down I didn’t get to/have to play around with the placement, so they went together very quickly.  I spent Friday night and Saturday cranking out 36 blocks.

I laid them out at 11:00 and thought “I’m going to be in bed by midnight with this quilt top all done and dusted!”

bwahahahahahahaha.

Here’s me at 1am trying to off myself with a seam ripper.  (Note the radtastic dj style headphones because I forgot my iphone headphones but had the ones I use when I study German handy.)  Ironing each 6 block strip caused a certain amount of distortion and while some of the 12″ blocks went together easily, others were an absolute beast.  This photo was taken shortly before I discovered that one of the blocks had a bunch of switched around strips that broke the rules of its internal logic.  It’s a good thing the booze flowed as freely as the cursing.

I crawled into bed shortly after 2am so glad that it was pieced together.  Here it is all together the next morning…

With one quilt top finished, Sunday was open to any project.  Decisions, decisions!  After the muted colors of Chicopee I decided to go for something different and pulled out the Children at Play strip quilt my mom and I started while she was visiting.  With the strips already cut and many sewn together I was able to put this together and ran out of fabric before it was time to pack up and go home.  It is 80″ wide and about 2/3 completed.

It’s back to real life now.  But maybe I’ll be able to sneak some time to finish this pink beast off before February turns into March!