Fall Migration -- GVQC Retreat

What more fitting tribute to autumn than visiting the outlet of the Irondequoit Bay into Lake Ontario where the wild domestic geese are congregating and hopefully migrating to warmer climates. There were no Canada Geese there but were lots of these domestic geese with their bright orange feet. They look like they would make a very nice Thanksgiving dinner!
Coming home late in the afternoon, the setting sun lit up this last maple and the cool air encouraged lots of contrails in the bright blue sky. Of course I think of Marcia and her Jet Trails series!

Roz and Janet do a great job organizing our now annual Fall Migration at a local banquet facility where we socialize, quilt and eat! This year's focus was using those jelly rolls that are so popular . These rolls usually consist of 40 fairly well matched strips 2 1/2 inches wide by the width of the fabric. The two quilts that we had today were called "hugs" and "kisses". The first one is the "hugs" quilt designed by Roz. Both of these quilts are made with a three piece strip set of light/dark/light. This one is made by making squares, cutting on the diagonal and piecing back together.

This is Janet's "kisses" quilt which comes from the same strip set as above. Her squares though are cut twice diagonally and repieced. It is really very simple but does take some careful sewing. As usual, her colors are wonderful using mostly repro fabrics.

Many of us were working on our own projects. Here, Pat is working on a Christmas top, by making squares an then cutting then diagonally and re-piecing.

Judy is working away on the kisses quilt with beautiful blue and purple batiks as the "dark".

Another quilter is also working on a different color combination. You can see the blocks in various phases in this picture.

Hope brought in these beautiful blocks that she had done and we may see these as a future fall migration project. She saw the blocks and then drafted them in EQ. They were really nice and easy to put together as well!! Very gentle curves.

Claire was working on a top she started in a Mary Mashuta workshop on working with stripes. This is a good example of a scrap quilt that you need to see altogether to really appreciate. So many people get discouraged with scrap quilts in the early stages as nothing seems to go together but if you work big enough, it will work -- you just have to trust the process.

You may remember this block from an earlier blog. Jeanne Simpson was using it for one of her retreats where she introduces simple blocks so that people an construct whole quilts during the brief stay. I have been cutting up leftovers from various projects into piles of squares and strips for some time now. These fabrics are all leftovers from my 289 block Dear Jane sampler that I did several years ago and because of that all the prints are fairly small (the blocks are only 4 1/2 inches square). I have decided that I am just going to make a ton of these blocks and then mix them up to make some halfway decent looking comfort quilts. I will have to add in some large prints to make them more interesting though. This is just plain boring!! I tend to work in very high contrast and I think a few more lower contrast blocks and some big prints would help it a lot! The block is so easy though. I have dubbed it "disappearing four patch" as you start by making a four patch. You then take your ruler and make four cuts in your four patch -- each cut an equal amount from the center lines. This leaves you with four squares, a little four patch in the middle and four segments with two rectangles. You just turn the rectangles around and reassemble as a nine patch! A lot of people have been making the "disappearing nine patch" which is very similar.