What I Did On My Summer Vacation

The Maine Quilt Show, held the last weekend of July every year in Augusta, Maine, is my personal mini-vacation. I usually sign up for at least two days of workshops (the listing comes out in January or February, so I commit way up front). I do this on my own -- sometimes a friend comes to view the show with me at some point during the weekend, but I don't do this in tandem with a friend or group of friends. However, it is very rare for me not to see someone I know in my classes. And, I always run into other people throughout the weekend. This year I spent some time catching up with another ballet Mom from way back when.

This year's classes were great. I took my third class from Leslie Volpe-Muir on miniature quilting. I've taken her intro class twice, and this time went for a Mini-Medallion class. I love doing things in miniature - remember the sweaters last year? When I was into cross-stitch, I always gravitated toward the smallest count fabric. I've always wanted a real dollhouse with miniature furniture, but that will have to wait for my next life, I guess. Anyway, it was a lot of fun. Here's the outcome of the class, along with a packet of tissues to give you a sense of size:
As you can see, it is still in pieces - hard to believe that sewing all day results in a 6 1/2" square. Since the show, I've finished the other zig-zag paper-pieced border pieces and sewn them on. There's one more border after that which I've partially done and will finish soon. This piece, however, will likely not ever be backed, quilted, and bound because it will be helpful to be able to refer to the back when I try to do another one - there are some neat tricks that you can only see on the back. When I was getting my mother's quilt ready to take to the machine quilter, I actually used one of the tips I learned in a miniature quilt class to handle where the many points of a pinwheel come together. Thank you, Leslie!

The second class was with a quilting rock star, Jo Morton. Jo, while not a miniaturist, works with "small" quilts. She likes to find ways to make her quilts look old, but doesn't go in for bed-sized quilts. We worked on a wall-hanging size quilt that was also a medallion-style quilt (which means there is a center motif surrounded by layers of borders rather than a center of multiple blocks). The center was a LeMoyne Star. Essentially this is the same star that was the center of my miniature quilt the day before, but we used an entirely different technique for putting it together (and it was bigger). We mimicked, on our sewing machine, the way you would hand-piece this star and then did this nifty swirl of the points to eliminate the bulk at the center. We also did flying geese blocks in a completely new way to me (and, again, different from the ones I'd done just the day before).

Jo tends to gravitate toward traditional, reproduction colors and prints, but I tried to just use fabrics from my stash, so ended up with a red, white, & blue combo. Here's the result at the end of the class:
We spent the whole morning on the center star - I was actually the first in the class to finish it! I'm never the first - I enjoy taking my time, but this just fell together for me. The next step is a whole border of flying geese. I'd like to get it done this summer, but it will likely be floating around, unfinished, for a while, I'm afraid.

For reference, here are the two projects side by side:
And here's where they are now, pushed off to the side of my work-table while I work on Nate's quilt:
More about Nate's quilt and other projects taking my attention at the moment in the next post.