Project 365: Day 102 - April 11

Friday morning we loaded up Mom's van with our machines, fabric, chairs, sleeping bags, duffels and sewing supplies. Then we headed over to Ann's to get all of her stuff. Look at how full that van is! And yes, we did use it all - except for the shampoo!

Here's my bunk - it's the lower one. No one had to use the top bunks this weekend! See the door to the right of the bunk - that leads to the bathroom. That's the bathroom that holds the toilet that kept running all over the floor our first night - until we turned the water off!. It also holds the shower that no one in their right mind would ever step into - not after seeing how the toilet backed up into the shower stall. Needless to say we didn't get to use the toilet or the shower all weekend! Well, not that particular toilet anyway! As a result we had some very early mornings!

The quilt we were making this weekend was a mystery quilt. We were given fabric requirements - we knew how much fabric to buy for the background, focus, and two complementary fabrics, and also the backing. We were given instructions on how to cut each fabric. What we didn't know was what the end result would look like! It was a bit scary for me. I bought some beautiful fabric, and really didn't even want to cut it at all! I certainly was nervous about putting it all together not knowing how it would look at the end of the weekend!

Here's Jane working hard. The woman next to her is Jean. She and mom have been to several quilt retreats together and go to quilt coffees every Tuesday. You can see my progress in the foreground of the picture. We were taking small squares and running two lines of stitching and then cutting the squares in half diagonally - making two triangles which when opened were the beginnings of our pinwheels!

Having already cut my fabric, I had no choice to but to collect my first sheet of instructions - there are 13 all together! This picture shows the results of steps 1 and 2A - 63 pinwheel squares! The fabric used is the background (white with light blue birds) and one of the complementary fabrics (green houndstooth).

At this point I really didn't like what I was making. The green was my least favorite of the fabrics and I didn't love the background! Together they didn't make me happy at all and got me worried about how the whole project would look.

Here's Ann working on her pinwheels. These really were the hardest part of the whole project - at least as far as I've gotten do far!

We headed back to our cabin at 12:30 leaving some other die-hard quilters working - they wouldn't quit until almost 3:30! After our bathroom fiasco we finally got into bed by 1:30 and slept well until 6:30, when our bladders woke us up!