Life in Rice Lake, WI: Quilt Camp, Fall 2022

Wednesday, October 26, 2022

Quilt Camp, Fall 2022

The last time I was at Quilt Camp, was Fall of 2019. By the time our Spring camp dates rolled around, Covid 19 was in the process of shutting down the world.

Some of the quilters had attended in Spring 2022, but I was not ready.

Now, it felt great, normal and really nice to be back sewing for a few days in a beautiful location with friends.

There were only 11 quilters this time, less than half of the normal, but for those of us who were there, it was grand. We had plenty of space, never had to wait on an iron and were able to really chat with all of the other attendees.

I loved it.

Our 4-some of Mary, Sharon, Sandy & I had a prime location with big design boards & close to the bathroom.

Sandy & I arrived on Sunday afternoon, and were sewing by about 4pm. After our dinner, I sewed until about 10:30pm. My new friend Carol was willing to go longer, but I found a stopping point just as I ran out of steam. Sandy headed home for the night not long after dinner.

Bright and early Monday morning, I headed down to sew and I was the only one there for a couple of hours. Peaceful, and productive.

Job 1 on my list of projects were 2 sets of cloth napkins intended to be wedding gifts. It had been a long time since I had sewn and even longer since I sewed napkins. I made some silly errors, but all turned out fine and useable, although if you take a measuring tape to the finished product, you will wonder what I was doing.

Napkins & holder

The easy way to miter a corner. Sandy had a copy of the instructions for me.
Even then, I did some silly stuff.

I always love how the fancy top stitching finishes off this project.

Next on my list was a tee shirt quilt for Great Nephew Jude.

I had collected some of the tee shirts that Kyle & Heather had made for Rare Disease Day, February 28.

I think they printed tee shirts for 3, or maybe even 4 years.

Mary and I had deconstructed the tee shirts when she was here about a week ago. The squares were all different sizes. After applying the fabric stabilizer, I was ready to make squares.

I had a really nice white fabric with embossed little hearts that I used for borders. It had a really nice finish on the fabric. A nice contrast to the soft tee-shirt material.

So, this is where I started.

Trying to decide on layout.

Mary and Sharon arrived mid day on Monday. It was nice sewing with them again. Mary is such a big help on any project as she has so much experience and has taught so many classes on techniques. Mary was working on mittens, repurposed from old wool sweaters and she donates them to the Humane Society in Ashland for sale. I think she made 15 sets of mittens over the weekend. AND she helped a new sewer with her machine and an elderly sewer with some placemats that required a fancy binding. Not to mention she helped me several times as well.

When it got to be almost 4pm, it was Happy Hour.

I moved right along with the quilt.

Not my most precise work but in the end, I think it will come together fine.

I found some fabric on an internet store that I used to fill in between the tee shirt panels.

It was not very nice fabric, VERY ravel-y, but kind of cool.

I needed an outside border to square everything up and increase the length over the width.
The Little Gift Shop & Quilt Shop in Solon Springs had just what I needed.

Next stop is the long arm quilter.
I had purchased some yardage for the backing, but once I saw how the front looked, I wanted something different.

This backing fabric that I found at The Little Gift Shop is so fun and cheerful and the colors tie in to the quilt front. And we get 20% off our purchases during quilt camp, and extra bonus.

I'm planning on taking the quilt top to the Senior Center on Thursday. After bridge, I'll use the big tables to lay it out, measure and then cut my backing fabric so that I can seam it before Saturday.

Saturday I plan to make a trip to Port Wing to drop the quilt off at the long arm quilter in Port Wing, WI. It is about 100 miles one way, but I get to see Lake Superior as bonus.

Once the quilt was done, I was into little projects.

I had this little 'Fall Leaves' runner kit. It went together fast. It still needs a border & binding.

I had 2 of these little holiday runner kits that I had bought at JoAnn's. Very easy and turned out really cute. The Backing is black & white buffalo check. I wish I had more of these little kits. The quality was very good, I was surprised.

Wednesday we had brunch and then started getting ready to go home.

I think I loaded up my car at about 1pm.

I was really tired coming home and didn't bother to bring in my sewing gear until TODAY,

7 days later.

I knew I wanted to do some purging and organizing in the sewing room before setting up my machine again. It got that done today and now I have an operational sewing room again. I'm excited to finish up the fall runner and to start something new.