A Pop-up May gathering

 Heather (NZ) and Jon came to stay for two nights at the weekend. So I called a pop-up gathering and we had lots of fun together. 

On Friday afternoon, soon after they arrived, Stephanie came and we started creating our scrappy crumb blocks for our next challenge. And yes, it is a challenge. Stephanie stayed for dinner as well so we had a great time getting to know one another.

On Saturday Stephanie returned and Elaine came as well so more scrappy crumb blocks were made and we all learned a lot about not 'over-thinking' the process. Just join bits in twos then twos in fours and so on until you get a 6 1/2" trimmed block. Lots of mistakes were made but we all learned in the process.

Then we started discussing the tiny pieces that we trimmed off our block and Stephanie showed us what can be done with such pieces. I am now saving these for her and then the absolutely unusable pieces I am composting.

Lunch was a fun affair and was created by again just putting all available and donated food on the table and tucking in.

At the end of the day we have a beginning of our Scrappy Crumby Quilt and it is looking quite stunning.

Elaine brought back our Ballerina quilt all bound and it is now ready to donate once I put a label on it. If you would like it then please let me know.

Heather was so taken with the Tessellated Stars Quilt that we asked her to take it home to quilt and bind and keep it.

So now we only have Heather's Spots to put together at our next gathering and lots more scrappy crumby blocks to make.

A fun and full weekend.

Our May Gathering

Last weekend an intrepid small group of dedicated quilters arrived in the rain to work like slaves and move some of our group projects forward.

The first achievement was to bind the ballerina quilt and it is now at home with Elaine to be hand hemmed.

The next task was to help me with my huge Woven Jacobs' Ladder quilt top and pin it to its backing. It won't have any batting but is too big to handle on my own.

Task 3 was to sandwich the Tessellated Stars quilt which I can now quilt on my sewing machine. I think I'll just do it in cream diamonds.

Task 4 was to do a bit of rearranging of our quilt blocks from Heather's donated fabric.

  Then during our zoom in the afternoon we made even more changes to this one so it is now ready to sew together.

After discussing options for our next project we will be doing a scrappy crumb quilt using the same process that Stephanie and I are using for our Baradine Bits Quilt. There will be no mailout for this one and no draw from the lucky dip basket. I will email out instructions.

Hypothesis: Making scrappy quilts uses up stash?

 Actually Stephanie and I are receiving more scraps. Today I received a lovely lot from Jenny in the mail.

That will be a great variety to add to our crumbly thoughts. Thanks Jenny.

Crumbly thoughts

 In light of recent crumbling of my mind, here is a quilt Elaine made years ago.

I like the black sashing. I think it is quilt as you go.