Here I Am!

...and with LOTS of EYE CANDY!

A group of gals from the Quilter's Anonymous Guild (in the Seattle area) has allowed me to join them on some retreats and in the spring of 2011 we decided to do a Row Robin. One of the gals lives in about 30 miles from me now so she ferried a lot of the 'monthly' exchanges with her when she saw the others (she used to live over there).


Anyway,  here we are 16 months later, we got together today and after a great soup and sandwich lunch in Ellensburg, did our reveal! WOW is all I can say! We each set our own theme, sometimes including fabric, most included a journal in which to write to the owner of the quilt. It was a journey of new techniques for me (I had never paper pieced nor done attic windows). Of course we saw what had been done on each quilt by the ones ahead of us in the rotation but with the early ones most of the rows were brand new to us also. We also had the challenge, 'which row did I do?'

We took turns 'hiding' from the laying out of our final rows so when we each saw our quilt it was laid out for full effect..

First up was Linda's. She is the one who has moved recently to Ellensburg and wanted hers to be quilting themed. Her's was the last one I did so I saw all of the rows before the reveal.

This one is mine. I've wanted to do a white with 30's reproduction fabric and am so pleased with the results. I had forgotten I had put 2 autograph blocks in my row (we each did a row for our own quilt first) and so the 8 of them signed it. 

This one is Kathleen's - her's was the first one I did so the other 7 rows were a surprise to me. Love the colors.

Karen's theme was tropical, inspired by her trip to Hawaii just before we started this. We spent time rearranging this one before we let her see it, putting the fish at the bottom and the birds at the top above the trees.

Marissa's is bright and bold! She has the reputation for being a scrappy quilter, always grabbing everyone's scraps at retreats! She may put the New York Beauty at the top instead. The bargello row at the bottom really grounds it.

This one is Nelia's. For some reason we ended up putting the rows together for her so her's just needs to be sandwiched, quilted and bound! The fabric was all large flowers that we snipped and whacked at to create our blocks.

Robin wanted stars so this was my introduction to paper piecing. Gorgeous batiks, huh?

Julie's was patriotic fabric. I did the row with the hearts. I found out today that there were others who wanted to do the hearts but I beat them too it!   (sorry!)

And, this last one belongs to Joann. Her theme was 'view from the window' My row is the one with the quail - I see some of our quail marching across the patio from my sewing room and knew that I had to do that!

This was a fun project! Our goal now is to get them done and entered as a display group for the QA show in March!