It takes a village.....

It takes a village.....

I started this "blog" while sitting at a friend's dining room table in Seattle back in June. I was in Washington to attend a workshop with Gwen Marston on Lopez Island. I met my hosts, Lee Ann (Seattle) and Tina (Shaw Island) at the Alabama Folk School the previous year. We had gathered with others including Victoria Findlay Wolfe to take a class from Gee's Bend quilters Mary Ann and China Pettway. Friendships were formed, invitations extended and that's how I wound up with LeeAnn of Nifty Quilts fame setting up the beginnings of my "ilvtoquilt" blog. Fast forward almost 5 months and here I am, writing my first post.

A lot has happened since then. The best and happiest moments were spent in the company of quilters at the Gwen Marston 30th Annual Beaver Island Quilt Retreat. This year was the last year of the retreat. As Gwen likes's to say, "Like any good Michigan autoworker, it's 30 years and out...." I first attended in 2012 and when I found out 2013 would be the last chance to attend, I signed up for two weeks and vowed to learn as many of Gwen's "liberated techniques" as possible. One great thing about BIQR and it's participants is a willingness to help others with design ideas and how best to implement them. And help they did. It takes a village.....

 

    She's Got Curves

Carol (London, Ontario, Canada) from Week 4 gave me a demo on making curves and Judy (Missouri) taught me how to do partial seems so I could add some little bursts of color. This 30X30 quilt was made of Cherrywood Indigo color way and Linen/Cotton inserts.

Lipstick Star - Liberated Medallion

This piece was started at Gwen's Medallion Workshop on Lopez Island, WA and completed at BIQR 2013. It was my entry for the Milwaukee Modern Quilt Guild challenge using Kaffe Fassett's shot cotton in the "Small" category. My plan was to hand quilt it..... and say, "CLUELESS" because I had never hand quilted anything! After Pat Holly and friends help me attach the batting and backing and with some HQ lessons from Eunice (OH) I dove in and it was quickly apparent that HQ was not to my thing. Fern (Berkeley, CA) from Week 3 help pull out the 1/4" stitches while we drove to the airport in Traverse City. I was.not.happy and afraid that I wouldn't make the 10/1 deadline for completion until Cynthia from Rolla, MO recommended using a grid pattern for the quilting. And so with the help of many new friends it was completed, entered and I won the challenge and was awarded a copy of Kaffe's autobiography.

So begins my adventure in blogging. You'll hear from me occasionally and my hope to to to share things about quilting, friendships, my poodles and our fun times in Agility.