BIQR: Final Show and Tell

On the last day, we had a show and tell of all our work. It was very hard for me not to include everyone's here....as it is I limited it to 14 (sheesh). Many people accomplished more than one piece, but hopefully this is representative.



Christy, below, is proud of her liberated flower, she spent a lot of time on other projects, but on the last day spent time on this beauty! She had a lovely machine that did embroidery, too. She designs her own patterns. She designed a really neat Beaver Island Retreat pattern, and put them on t-shirts (as seen below) as a surprise for sister-and-mother-in-laws, with whom she attended the retreat.
Not everyone made liberated patterns, a few took store bought patterns and used solids with stunning results. The following is a Maple Island BQ Quilt pattern.

I am not sure of the pattern name but, if I remember correctly, it came from a magazine and the sample used Kaffe Fassett fabrics, so imagine the difference with this one!

Next, Cathy's liberated stars with liberated sawtooth borders:

Cathy's abstract piece:

Allyn used a lot of Cherrywood fabrics:

This was her amazing left over quilt:

Christine and I made postcards:

Mine:

Rita's bars look like stained glass against the window:

Karin's:

Joyce's quilt dedicated to her dog Flash:

Christine's completed red squares:

Next post: It's a wrap!

BIQR 2008: Creating with Solids

After Gwen finished her trunk show on solids, she basically said Go to it! But the hardest part is cutting your first fabric! It was so hard to actually start! You look at all your fabrics and you can't decide what to do! I figure there was 2 ways to start with a block or a colour palette. I chose a block...I liked her red square quilts and thought I will start with something simple to get going, knowing I could always change my path. Instead of red sqares I chose 3 yellows, cut 16 yellow squares and just got going.

I don't know how well the colour in the photos will turn out, but I added dark purples and blues, with a splash of green! This is how I ended my first day of sewing:

That night at bed time, I went through Gwen's book before I slept, Mexican Hat Dance was a favourite of mine, I knew I would have to try that block, even if I only made 4 of them. I chose random colours. I mixed them up,

I tried them together:

Eventually, I thought it needed a frame around it and made a blue inner border, that didn't go right so I added a red border, and from the left over pieces from the Mexican Hat Dance blocks I made a couple of sawtooth borders...that wasn't my idea...I stole it from someone in the middle of the room...can't remember who...

Anyway, I got stuck here I needed more fabric, didn't have the right colour to frame it...So it was time for a trip to the fabric store. Found what I needed at the cute store in Elk Rapids and what a deal, many of the quilt stores gave discounts to Retreat participants. It's a deep plum colour.

I added Gwen's serpentine borders and appliqued some circles...one of those circles, is strategically placed to cover a tiny error... of which will remain nameless.

I haven't decided what to call this piece yet, it reminds me of a test pattern on a TV, and since it is a bit of a sampler...I tried out many of the tutorials Gwen gave...maybe Test Pattern is a good name, or maybe Do not Adjust your Set, This is just a Test.

BIQR 2008 part 3: Meet and Greet

On Wednesday evening, we all got together for pizza in the wicker room for our Meet and Greet. Everyone was asked to bring something for show and tell to introduce ourselves to the group. Since many of the attendees had been to past retreats, many of them brought stuff they had worked on at those retreats. I am not going to show you all the wonderful quilts shown, but focus instead on those from the Liberated Basket retreat, since there were a fair number of them.

I finally got to meet MJ in Michigan in person, I had met her in Lazy Gal's First Ever On-Line Class. She took what she practiced there and applied to Gwen's Liberated Baskets and came up with this beauty:


Joyce insisted she had failed liberated baskets and when she got home she took hers apart and created this lovely folk art piece dedicated to her grandson. Her grandson is blind and says frequently, "Can you hear the birds?"

Joanne's liberated baskets:




If I remember the story correctly, Sylvia had quite a few of these large basket blocks and didn't know what to do with them. Gwen's retreat inspired this arrangement, front:


back:



more Liberated baskets:


OK, the next one wasn't from a Gwen retreat, but you know how I like quilts and things made from t-shirts and it does contain some liberated piecing...This one was made for a husband out of his racing t-shirts, and do you know what his reaction was? " Don't you know, hon, you can't mix Formula One and Nascar!"


Next post: Creating with Solids

BIQR 2008: Gwen's Trunk Show and Lecture

She gave her lecture 9AM Wednesday morning; as you can see we had a great view. She gave a brief summary of why she chose to do a retreat about solids, much of which can be found in her introduction to her new book Ideas and Inspirations: Abstract Quilts in Solids. She created the book with photographer Gregory Case to celebrate the 25th Anniversary of the Beaver Island Quilt Retreats. Most of the pieces in the book were newly created as samples for BIQR.







She showed all of the quilts in her book and then some! I will not bore you (as if you can get bored looking at Gwen's quilts) with a photo of each one that appears in the book, Gregory's photos do it better justice, of course, but will focus on some of the bonuses. I have to tell you, every night before I turned off the light I journeyed through that book and still do since I've been home. Of course each photo has a memory attached and that is something I cannot give to you, you'll have to meet Gwen and her quilts in person for that!





This was one of her first quilts using her "Tulip Block". She gave demos in the making of this block. I knew I would be putting some of these in my piece, since Mexican Hat Dance (the one on the cover of her book) was one of my favourite pieces! This is a fun block to play with, above with sashing and she showed how you could put stems and on them to create another block.





She says that quilts stitched in solids, are more like contemporary art. Your solids are your colour palette. Instead of the patterns being in the fabric, you have to create the pattern with the fabric and the stitching. Definitely, hand quilting shows up more effectively on solids than on prints. And solids are not dated....you like those prints and colours now, but will you still, 10 years from now?











I just love the hand quilting in this piece and had to take close ups.





After the trunk show, the quilts were laid out on the counter and stayed there the whole time, so we could visit, hug, fondle, drool, (no skip that, there was absolutely no drooling), yearn, peruse, take photos of her quilts for ideas. "it starts with an idea, plant a seed and let it grow."


Just go ahead and sew blocks, "arranging them is like jigsaw puzzles", she says. Each block does not have to be an exact duplicate of the last one, these differences are "what holds people's interest longer and takes it out of the predictable."





This is one quilt not in the book, where she just added liberated triangles at the ends of sashing to create the stars. Here she added interest in the centre blocks. The next pic is of Gwen's pinwheels, this quilt can be found in her Liberated Quiltmaking book. She says they look like Jacks and we were calling them Jacks blocks. It was a favourite and she gave a demo on that block too.





Here is another surprise quilt she showed, she was very enamoured with those Cherrywood fabrics. A few of the students also had those fabrics, "Luscious" as Karin liked to say!





She then told us about floor scrap quilts. "Don't worry about cleaning up your scraps", she said, because after each week of retreats she collects the floor scraps and makes quilts out of them. She encouraged us to do the same. It was funny, as many of us were searching the aisles for floor scraps. Our end of the room was much messier than the other end for some reason.







Another surprise, she showed us this basket quilt she made with 219, 4 inch blocks! Rumour has it, this will be appearing in an upcoming book by 2 Toronto ladies, Biz Storm and Mary Elizabeth Kinch, called Small Blocks, Stunning Quilts, due out in December.

Next Post: Meet and Greet, Show and Tell. Stay Tuned!

Beaver Island part 1: Arrival

So here we are! The wonderful gadget the GPS works like a charm getting us safely to White Birch Lodge in Elk Rapids, Michigan, on Tuesday, September 30th. It even has a little checkered flag when you "cross the finish line"! ha!

Here is a view from our room overlooking the Elk Rapids Lake. That was about as sunny as it got, because we had pretty rainy weather for the most part, but since we were inside sewing most of the time it didn't matter too much.

We were first shown to our room and then to the big sewing room to stake a claim at a table. We were probably the last ones to arrive. Apparently some had been there since 9 AM! Many were already sewing! We chose what tables were left and Gwen introduced herself to us. She was wonderful and made us feel right at home. She invited us to have dinner with her and 2 other women, Cathy and Krys, also from Beaver Island. They gave us the scoop on how things go at the retreat. We went to dinner at Siren Hall, excellent food....in fact all the restaurants we visited were excellent!



Wednesday, was our first official Retreat day. We were all to meet in the Sewing room at 9AM for Gwen's lecture and trunk show on solids. Then we could get right into the sewing part. We used her lecture as a starting point, a map, on our journey. Then when needed she would do small demos of her techniques, and she would do them as often as needed, and more than once, so you didn't need to worry if you missed one if you had left to go fabric shopping or out for lunch. It was very relaxing and enjoyable.

I just noticed in the above photo Gwen is showing us a mock up of the new Collaborative Quilting with Freddy Moran book that will be coming out next summer. What a treat!

Next post: part 2, Gwen's Lecture and Trunk Show, stay tuned!

I'm Back from Beaver Island!!!

And I got a signed copy of Gwen's book!!! My friend Christine and I went to Gwen Marston's Beaver Island Retreat for the first time and it was amazing! And meeting Gwen in person was such a treat! We actually went out for dinner with her the first night we there, it was so warm and welcoming and we never felt out of place as newbies. Everyone was very supportive. It was such a positive, creative, and inspiring environment. (You have to realize, and this is a secret, all that go to the retreat get first chance to sign up for next year's retreat, which is why it fills up so quickly ;) At least one lady there, got in because of a cancellation, so get on the list! So many of the ladies have met each other before at previous retreats, but they were never exclusive and we went out for dinner with different groups each night. You are allowed a lot of freedom for meals, people just go out to eat whenever the mood strikes them and the sewing room is open all night long(!) if you need/want it!

You'll have to wait a bit for photos, because my computer at home has been giving me grief, and I have not down loaded my 4 memory cards of photos (!) It will be a hard time deciding what photos go up on the blog, I might do a picasa web album...I got permission from everyone there to put the photos up on the net, only one person declined. So hopefully by Sunday I'll have edited my photos and made my posts.