More cool things about Retreats

Deb Neff's strips which started out as a HUGE pile of blocks

Diane Littlejohn with the Bag from...the netherworld. 

 My quilt group, the Batty Binders, is a really fun group of people....I think the name sort of gives it away.  They are the most "retreatingest" group I have ever belonged to.  In Connecticut, we would have sewing days, but going someplace and staying over night is something I don't remember, but then I had a small child when I lived there too.

Batty Binders goes on three weekend retreats a year.  In February, a group of intrepid souls who don't mind bringing potluck, our own bedding, and everything else (I even bring rugs so we don't slip on wet floors as we come in) go to a local Girl Scout camp to sew for three days.  This used to be the only place we went, but about three or four years ago, we managed to get a weekend at the Golden Eagle Christian Retreat Center in Palestine, Ohio.  Palestine was one of those little thriving farming communities in the Midwest   In 1922 (give or take a couple of years) they built a high school  Now, however, it was closed as school consolidated and fewer people lived or did business in Palestine as the highways pretty much by-pass it.  So, they turned it into a retreat center, which feeds you, changes the beds and provides everything a quilter could ask for.  Batty Binders go to Palestine in the spring (mid April usually) and again in the fall.

Debbie Black and Glenda Tron

Both times it is filled with fun and virtually all night quilting....even if Glenda is looking at something on her iPhone.

Retreats are good for doing group projects too.  One of our members had made a bag...and it was really neat, only she said it was really hard.  When almost everyone (I think that only 2 of us didn't make it....one was me..I'm just not a bag lady) started working on it, it became apparent that one of the reasons that it was hard was that the directions were poorly written and had you do some things which could have been done more easily.  Fortunately, Teri Pyles and Gwen Brown were able to figure it out and share the fixes and the warnings.

Becky Kea and Joyce Newnam with Joyce's quilt

We hang up the tops as we finish them...you can see Beth Ann Miller's 1600 quilt in the bright colors behind Debbie and Glenda, in addition to a doggie quilt she made for her granddoggie.

Joyce Newnam was able to finish this really bright quilt for her grandchild.  Becky Kea, who is a resident of Roanoke, VA but has come to keep her daughter company as she completes training at Hobart Welding Academy is helping.  Several people have mentioned how brave Becky is for signing up to go with a bunch of Batty Batts to spend a weekend with people she only knows from about 6 meetings....but just to show you how nice of a group it is, she didn't run away screaming.....

Hopefully you can find a group who does retreats or lives in an area where there are facilities you can use for a moderate amount so you can go.  I go when I can....and always have a blast.

Bear with me all...I'm having a tough time and I am not able to post as much as  I like, but I will be here at least once a week.  More, God willing. :)

Another Quilt Inspired by the Barn in Palestine, OH

Here is the second of the two barn quilts I submitted to the Studio Art Quilt Associates Ohio regional show. Like the round window, it did not get it.

While this was fun to do and I like it, it didn't surprise me that it didn't make it in...for all the round window's faults, I think it is a better composition.

This one is also sort of problematic because I realized that I made one of the branches grow from two directions....The fact that it started out life as a grape vine, sort of confused me...there was grapevine as well as tree in the original picture...I opted not to use the grape leaves because I couldn't get the look of them down well enough. Instead of being divided, these grape leaves were not lobed much at all and the fact that they were old (this was taken in October) meant that the leaves were limp and fluttery....not looking much like grape leaves at all.

I wonder, if I cropped it a bit more, taking out some of the door casing maybe like this, if it wouldn't be better.  It still doesn't solve the branch issue...which I'm sure you'll be able to find easily in this shot.

In addition, I wanted this to be "painterly" in the painting...not tight and controlled...I tend to paint very tightly and I'm trying to retrain myself.   While the streaks of pain and some blobs of gold didn't bother me, I wonder if it does bother others.

The blobs at the far left are actually grapes..as well as the blobs in the center.

I'm still having significant problems controlling my machine quilting.  The numbness in my hands just makes the fine motor control difficult.  I'm hoping that with more practice, I'll be able to either overcome it or develop a method or style of machine quilting which doesn't look too bad.  I rather like how the thread painting on these stems makes it look sketchy.

It was my intention to make even more thread build up on these...but I found that I was using a heck of a lot of thread and the way in which I was doing this was leading to too much distortion.  Rather than doing this on just the top with a layer of stabilizer behind it, I sandwiched it and thread painted through the top/batting/backing.  I then put another backing on it and quilted some more since the thread painting makes the back look so rough.

Practice makes perfect...and I've been trying to "do the work" a lot lately.  You can't get better unless you put in the time.  I'm looking forward to exploring more of my barn sketches and photos through quilting.

You can see the original barn quilt posting with the photos here:
http://michigoose-life-quilts.blogspot.com/2010_10_01_archive.html

Decay--completion of concept developed 2 years ago

Back in October, 2010, I went on a quilting retreat in Palestine, Ohio.  Next door to the retreat center (in an old school which had been rehabed) was a large 19th century barn.  Attached to the barn was a  house which probably dated to about 1860.  It had been moved to the barn to serve as its office, presumably because another, more stylish and modern house had been built.

The image intrigued me.  The structure was covered with grape vines, domestic ones as they had white grapes on them rather than the regular fox grapes (what we always called them in Michigan....but perhaps they are more properly called scuppernong as they were in Virginia) which, along with various tree seedlings, were suceeding in pulling down the building.

Last year, I painted the muslin to make an interpretation of it...and this is what I came up with.

I intended to really heavily thread paint it, something I had never done before.

I must say, I made some mistakes, but I think it turned out fairly well....

Here's the detail so you can see the quilting in it.  It's fairly small, only 22 1/2" x 21" (I'm too lazy to go back and check my book).

I thought this piece was better than the Texture study I showed you yesterday....but this piece did not make it in.

The turquoise in the picture is corrugated fiberglass which covered the windows and doors of the house.

Which do you think is better? This piece or the one I showed you yesterday (the Textures, not the goofy Unconventional Materials Challenge piece).

Quilting in Palestine

Last weekend was a beautiful fall weekend. On Friday, I drove out to Palestine, Ohio, right near the Indiana border. Palestine is a small rural community which appears to be dwindling away.

One of the cool things was this water pump, still sitting at the town crossroads. Here, you could draw water to water your horse, dog or whatever. Although cracked, the concrete trough was still there.

I think the trough probably dates to the 1920s or just before World War II. It seems that the town had some prosperity then. The retreat was held in this brick school, which was once the high school. Built in 1923, it was abandoned some years ago when they consolidated the school districts out there. Now, there is another school where the children from this tiny community go to with children from other small towns in the surrounding area.


One of the local churches, or perhaps it was a group, obtained the building and converted it to a retreat center for all Christian groups to use as an off site meeting place and retreat center. On weekends other Christian groups can rent it overnight.

Last year, the Batty Binder's quilt group of Troy rented it and they had so much fun, they reserved it for this year as well. One of the nice things is that you don't have to bring your own bedding and they do all the cooking and cleaning. In essence, all you need to do is...quilt.


I didn't go last year because I was in too much pain from a broken pelvis. I did go this year. Lots of people got terrific amounts done. Here, you can see Debbie Black's terrific start on her circle quilt, a present for her daughter who is a high school senior this year. She did it from a pattern in a quilting magazine, but some of our co-horts made the suggestion that she add the green triangles, something not in the original pattern. I think that the green triangles on the white blocks makes the quilt far more interesting.




Here you can see the gymnasium taken over by all 22 of us quilting away. I didn't get much done...I did paint some faces on some small dolls for one of the ladies. I also took a walk exploring and taking lots of pictures, particularly of the decaying barn at the top of the page. The barn was quite large, and had had a small house, built around 1860 moved and attached to the barn. I presume that the house was moved to make room for a larger, more prestigious dwelling. I could see the rise and the evergreens which had been planted around where the new house had been. The small one was now falling into ruins and had been put there quite some time earlier...I'm guessing at about the 1890s or 1900. The second house, however is long gone.