TOPS

Mary Ann Pettway sewed right along with us. She picked up scraps and put together this little top, AND  hand quilted it, AND got the binding on it... 

We were all impressed with her hand quilting speed! All free form, and makes it up as she went along.  She said she used to just stitch in the ditch but she changed because she decided "If your gonna hand quilt, I want you to see it!"   

 I am now the proud owner of this piece and I am cherishing it...very much.

I did get a few things done...(!)  and I can tell you that NONE of them are king size!  Darn close though! The first day I put together the center start on this quilt,(pics posted yesterday) and finished it up early on day two.  I tried very hard to just let go of my normal process, which is not a easy thing for one to do, but I did try to focus on a different color palette... I was focusing on the navy blues, and well, by the end, I have yet another red yellow blue pink quilt... LOL!  My go to colors!   I do however have a huge range of fabric types in this quilt. Many polyester pieces, Rayon, Gauze, shirtings, African fabrics, vintage, and new. The polyester pieces make this quilt. They are the light green/blue pieces and grey/gold plaid through out the quilt, and gives it great texture.  

I also included one of my Mary images in the upper right. (Soon to be available on my main website.)

I saved every bit of scrap from this first quilt.  As you know, cutting with a scissors just makes more scrap!   I figured day two may be in need of more color...

And I was right! Day two:  I put this quilt together... I didn't have a lot of any one fabric so I was constantly  finding new fabrics to build off the star. In true "make it work" fashion, I ran out of PINK, so BLUE went in. I ran out of PURPLE, so RED went in and so on.  I sewed up just about every scrap I had to put this top together. The "MARY" panel in the center is a piece of fabric I designed on spoonflower. I had brought a panel of them along, and a couple people asked if they too could play with her to, and so...

Dudley made this...

 Ana Maria made this...

Susie made this one...

and Bonnie made this, and then I got all teary seeing all these panels, come to life. 

Have I mentioned that this group of women were phenomenal? Everyone in this group bonded. We became a tight unit of creative energy.  

China Pettway (Mary Ann on the left, China on the right) also went home with a "Mary" panel.  "I'm gonna make something real special out of this", she said, "And BIG too!"  This lovely woman oozed GOD from her pours. An "energy" you felt drawn to, and you wanted to just squeeze her to have a little bit of that for yourself. You can see what I mean, when she sings... Which they often did while we were sewing. They would just start singing gospel music. If you are on facebook, you can here some clips I added on my page.

Barbara came to loosen up! She did too! She  made this beautiful little quilt from jeans and while the ladies broke into song about sailing on an ocean.... They pointed out that Barbara had made the BOAT they were sailing on... ;-)  See the boat?   

 

I was stealing from every one's garbage for the itty bitty scraps, and I loved the tiny bits of jeans that Barbara had cut off and thrown a way. I gathered the bits and put them together in this white/beige quilt. yes, I used white. See! Even I can break out of my own box! I am going to add some more borders to it. This quilt will be my reminder of being open to all the possibilities. There is always more to learn and more to discover.

Other Finished tops included Nifty's quilt using bits from her baby clothes. I found this to be a beautifully touching, personal quilt top, that I could so relate too. 

Tina also used "personal" memories for her quilt, inspired by her mother's favorite color's of navy and white. Just beautiful.

I've added ALL the pictures from my week at my Flickr page. Please pop over and check them out, there were so many beautiful things created that week, it was hard to choose what to post! 

Click here.

Kim and I hamming it up at the fork in the road.  It made no difference which way we chose... It was ALL good, in every direction!