Quilt Retreat 2017

 Our annual quilt retreat started on Monday.  This year we are 21 women who all love fabric and quilting and eating.  Here's a photo of a portion of our workroom.

We have seasonally appropriate centerpieces on our eating tables.

Also, appropriate cocktail napkins.

Part of our snack table, before happy hour begins!

I placed this sign on our outside door.

The coffee bar.

Now for a little bit of our work.  (You'll see more in a later post.)

What do you see in this quilt?  Dark cats?  White cats?  No cats?

Here's a close-up to help you see.  I think this quilt is amazing.

This year we are again making squares for a Quilt of Valor.  (See post from last year's retreat.)  Each person used two 10" squares of contrasting fabric to make two half-square triangles.  I love that there are so many ways to arrange HSTs.  

I used light green flannel for my design wall, so please disregard that odd color!

Another arrangement.

I've been working on quilting last year's Quilt of Valor.  (I know--how can it have possibly taken me a whole year to get it put together??!!??  I have no good answer.)  I'll show more later, but I'm doing some straight line quilting, using a decorative stitch, and those curves inside the square parts.

Are They Paintings or Are They Quilts?

While I was in San Francisco over Christmas, we went to the deYoung Art Museum.  They had an exhibit of art by Frank Stella.  Actually, it was MomStitches's idea to go see this exhibit.  I admit I didn't know anything about Frank Stella's art.  And I was a little surprised when I saw his art, because to me, the paintings looked a lot like quilts!

This first one, above, looks similar to a quilt I made many years ago.  Except I started with a rectangle in the center, and added border after border after border to it.

And this one I like because the center is a little off-kilter. (is that even a real word??)

That makes it even more interesting.

This one looks a little less quilt-like, but I can still see doing it as a quilt.

This one was really, really long.  I've taken the photo at an angle to the wall, and still had to crop some off of it.

Now this one I can really see doing as a quilt.  I think it would be a nice challenge.  It might be difficult to find a way to hang it, though.  

This one has beautiful curved piecing; kind of reminds me of a Drunkard's Path.

And then there were a few three dimensional pieces of art, which really threw me for a loop!  I have no idea whatsoever about this piece of art.

The Challenge Show for my quilt guild this year is themed "Inspired By. . ."  We simply have to render in fabric something that we are inspired by.  Now to me that is a really easy challenge.  Everywhere I look I see something that I want to make into a quilt:  a building design, a flower bed, just some pretty colors combined in an interesting way, even highway interchanges!  If I weren't already working on a piece for our challenge, I would seriously try to make one of these designs into a quilt.  Maybe if I get my current quilt finished in time, I can make two. . .