I didn't even have the motivation to pull out a current WIP/UFO project and instead took a few pending projects. First I grabbed a kit I bought at the AQS show in Paducah this year. It is a really simple pattern - Malaysian batiks cut into squares and sashed with your own black fabric. The fabulous fabrics do all the work for this quilt. I still need to put on a border - most likely I will just stick with plain black.
The second thing I worked on is the second table-runner I owe my sister. I had the block picked out and bought the fabric a couple of months ago. I managed to get the whole top done. There are 8 blocks here, each with 36 pieces. So while it is only a table-runner it actually took quite a while to complete (lots of getting up to press individual sections and trimming them before piecing them together).
The final project I worked on was an idea that has been marinating for a while. I got a jelly roll of darker shaded solid fabrics awhile ago as a gift and had come up with the idea of making Lemoyne Stars with them. Several months ago I even explored a few ways to make the stars using different methods. I figured I might get as far as cutting out some fabrics, but surprisingly I managed to cut 8 fabric strips into star pieces (I got 10 star pieces per color using the Deb Tucker ruler method). I then played around with color and design. I could make 8 single color stars, or I could make 2-color stars, or as I finally decided I would make 10 stars with the mix of all 8 colors. I also had to decide if the layout of the colors would be all the same or mixed up. I went with all mixed up, so no two stars are the same here.So I actually pieced all the stars together and trimmed them, they are 10 inch unfinished.
I can only hope to keep a little of the momentum of the retreat.
