Lutherdale 2017 Gala Quilt

Last weekend I had the pleasure of spending time at Lutherdale with the goal of assembling quilt blocks into a top to be auctioned off in August.  The weather was perfect, the food was great and the company was lovely!

I asked the new camp director if we could be given a tour of the gardens, chickens and beehives.  The beehives are scattered around the grounds, but we did get to meet the chickens that provide us with the eggs used in our meals.  They have one handsome rooster, too.

 

In March, I spoke to the folks that attended the Gala Luncheon and explained this year's block.  Then we gave them kits of pre-cut houses and sky.  It's always a challenge to find a pattern that is forgiving for a group to sew and will still be stunning to motivate people to bid high!

On Friday, we were certain we would have this top assembled before going to bed.  Well-- we did assemble most of it pretty quickly, but then things slowed down.  We had all the rows together before bed and held off to put the borders on in the morning.  It was a good thing, too!  Looking at it with fresh eyes, we decided the proportions were a bit off and we needed to add another row to make it longer.  Some of our houses were...ahem... a little short.  We grouped the short houses together into the same rows, so they could get along.  But-- with multiple shorter rows, the length was sacrificed a bit.  No worries!  We zipped out another 14 houses like nobody's business.

Here is our quilt, pre-borders (the borders are simple yellow that matches the background):

And here are some of the people that worked on assembling the top:

L-R: Jim, Janine, Me, Kitty, Yvonne, Heather

I had a inkling that would would be able to finish that top up pretty quickly, so I brought a few other projects with me.  This is the project I started with the other January Quilters.  I want to assemble this into a random, non-traditional layout.  Janine did this arrangement and I started to sash some of the smaller stars together this weekend, but that's all the further it went.  Hopefully I can finish this up in time for the auction?!?

Insted of getting the stars assembled, we focused on getting this string block top together! I started these blocks several years ago. I had a lot of blue and green scraps and thought this would be a good scrap buster.  I don't know about that?!?  Every time I would work on it, the volume of scraps seemed to increase!  For quite some time now, I had the scraps I wanted to use for this in a small bin.  But it was overflowing, so I had to keep it on the closet floor and was starting to be a bother to me.  Now I'm thrilled to report that it is a top!  Of course there are still some scraps left over-- oh well.  Time to find another scrap project to mix them into.  I had about 2/3rds of the blocks done prior to this weekend and several people helped cut, press, and sew. Janet and I sewed the blocks and rows together. I might add a skinny white border and maybe some blue?  Not sure yet...

 xoxo,
Kristin

ps
Happy to have Judy Hansen  at Small Quilts and Doll Quilts take over the Design Wall Monday Reigns from Judy LaQuidara.  Thank you to both Judies!! =)