A Day With Scrappy Mountain Majesties!

Fun was had by all in our first round of Scrappy Mountain Majesties workshop!

Everyone came with their squares pre-cut to we could get down to sewing up a storm.

I call these workshops during retreat a Land Cruise – which means we are not going to cram it all into one 6-hour session, we’re going to give a couple of hours of instruction before lunch and the afternoon is free for everyone to do what they want to do, whether it’s take a nap, a walk, work on something else, or head to town to visit a quilt shop for more fabric.

Sample quilt behind the demo table in the front foyer!

If folks ask why a lot of my quilts are square and not rectangular – it’s this! The quilt can only be so long or it is going to lay on the floor.

I tend to shoot for quilts that will fit on this wall for display/teaching purposes. If anyone wants to make more blocks and take square to rectangle they are welcome to.

Chain, chain, chain….

Trim, trim, trim!

Sew, sew, sew some more!

Press, press, press again!

And then the slicing and dicing begins!

(Okay, no dicing, only slicing!)

Unless you are in charge of dinner.

Then you can slice and dice all you want!

How long are they staying?

(And this is the back entry guest fridge – I don’t dare show you the kitchen fridge~! LOL!)

Pretty spring florals – and so many possible layouts!

Trimming, slicing and rearranging!

For most arrangements half of the blocks are uphill, and half are downhill so my biggest hint is to cut them in mirror image pairs at the same time with two of the large half-square triangles placed right sides together with dark on light, light on dark – center seam opposing.

That way you get one of each slant with every pair you cut. It stops the “Okay, I did an uphill block, now how do I cut a downhill one??” confusion.

By lunch time this was happening! The beginnings are going great!

(We had quite a few people who were using purples. Like minds and all!)

More variety will come, but these are looking grand!

Ooohhh! This is going to be stupendous!

Recycled shirts are always a winner!

And yes, you can choose one common background if you prefer – it all works!

I love when groups bring their own motto to retreat and hang it up as a reminder to everyone.

After lunch during free time as some went on a quilt shop hop, I settled myself in the studio next door to get the binding on my Hello, Gretchen quilt.

Of course, it’s purple! Ha!

From the 1900s! LOL!

There was enough to cut the binding, plus a few extra strips for the Scrap User’s System. Nothing went back into the stash cabinet which I consider another win.

And who doesn’t love a classic purple paisley?

I’m looking forward to weekend evenings of binding flipping and hand stitching. But I didn’t start in on it last night because it was Bluegrass Jam Night!

The perfect end to a perfectly busy quilty day.

Yesterday with Flash.

Still wary and hissy – he didn’t seem to notice that he, himself was nudging his breakfast bowl closer and closer to my leg.

Tried to reach out and pet him, and he ran off. Okay. So we aren’t ready for that yet. I get it. And I keep breaking his trust, but I can’t help myself.

Yesterday afternoon in the sunshine off the back porch.

Today is a repeat of yesterday. We’ll be making more blocks. I’ll be on hand giving refreshers on block cutting and strip re-arranging –

The goal is to make enough blocks that we can pool everyone’s blocks tomorrow for all of the possible layout options.

This afternoon? Those that cooked yesterday’s dinner are free to go do THEIR round of quilt shop hopping. And we’ll just see where the day will lead us.

And – it’s time. With nothing under the machine needle right now, I need to turn my attention to what we will be doing for this year’s Leader & Ender challenge that starts in July.

Some desk time. Getting ready for next week’s launch of Open Window.