Thursday, January 17, 2013

Covered in Threads Quilt Camp

I usually spend a weekend in January at Quilt Camp at Camp Tecumseh. I've done this nearly every year since I started quilting in 1999. This year, my guild decided to forgo Camp T and organize our own weekend instead. Some of us have had trouble getting in to Camp T (the camp fills up fast!) and others didn't want to spend the money. Instead, Betty, one of our members, invited us all to her house for the weekend. We had 13 quilters!

I meant to get a photo of everyone working but I forgot to do that. I did snap a picture early on Saturday morning before the work room got too busy. There were sewing machines, irons, and cutting mats set up everywhere.


Betty lives in a house overlooks the city and she has some gorgeous views from the work room. 

Our guild challenge in 2012 was to create a quilt made entirely of solid fabrics. I loved this challenge and in the end, most others did too. We all brought our finished (and almost finished) projects for show and tell. Some people even made a second quilt top for the back.
















All the projects were awesome and I loved seeing everyone's creativity. We've done other challenges before but this was my favorite. Once, we all made blocks with white and black fabrics and then we exchanged them so that we had about 20 different blocks. Everyone put their blocks together differently. (Someday I'll finish that project. The top is done, I just need to quilt and layer it!) Another year, people were assigned a month and could decide what kind of block they wanted the rest of the group to make. That's the year I received a bunch of blue and lime green blocks that I put together for my blimey quilt.

Over the quilt weekend, we also decided on our next project. We made a list of suggestions and then everyone voted for their top two.

Third place was a quilt using hues of two different colors. Second place was a string quilt using foundation backing. And the winner..... a polka dot quilt. We've decided that our 2013 quilt will feature polka dot fabric. I can't wait to see what everyone comes up.