Virtual Retreat and Guild Community Service..Oh my.

On February 29th, Leap Year Day, I participated in my first Virtual Quilting Retreat. This was held on the internet with some new friends I met there. Throughout the day we would post photos of the types of projects we were working on and discussed different Quilting topics. Heaven for me! Hubby had to be on hold for the day as I took up residency in the Dining Room as my temporary sewing room.

I started the day off with a cup of coffee and began to post photo's of my propoesed quilt I wanted to work on. I never really worked on the said quilt instead I made some tiny progress on my houses. The Lorax quilt that I started kept making me think way too hard so I put it on hold for awhile. I still want to get back to working on it someday when the mood hits.
We also hosted a Siggie Swap where individuals sent in their signature square and they were traded back out.

I recieved a total of 8 squares and after the retreat was over and this is the Quilt I created.

After the Retreat was over I needed to prepare things for the Community Service Night at My Local Guild. I asked a Representative from the Crisis Pregnancy Resource Center to come to the Guild meeting scince we are going to Donate baby quilts to them. Someone took this photo and it made the the front page of The Baytown Sun .

Afterwards I lead my local Guild in making Community Service Quilts. Over the past 6 months or so I've been collecting scraps from the guild members. After I receive them I would sort them into different catagories. The scraps smaller a fat quarter to be cut down into usable sizes, separate the yardage and the leftovers smaller than 2 1/2" would be saved as strings. It's these Strings that we used to make these quilts. We used the Quilt as you go technique from Mary's Quilts http://www.maryquilts.com/heartstrings-qayg-blocks/ in her tecnique you use a square of batting and a square of background fabric and sew strip across them to create a prequilted block. The idea is very simple and when you recieve the blocks back they are already quilted so there is no need to send them to the quilter.

Here are some of the ladies at the guild discussing the quilts.

Here are is some of the fun we had, We also sewed strips into sets to create a Coin Quilt.
Here Delores helps cut the presewn strips.
I sent several ladies home with fabric and at this Month's meeting I recieved many presewn blocks and fabric strips. I hope this technique inspired the Members to use up these smaller fabric pieces. This month I sent 10 members home with these QAYG squares. I sent 10 home with fabrics to cut into 10", 5" squares and 2 1/2" squares. I recieved more donations this month than would fit in my Jeep, so my sweet friend was able to take it in her car, and let me pick them up from her at Work. I'm so thankful that we have such generous people in our Guild.

Tanya