Armed with a fun assortment of bright, vibrant warm fabrics for my centers and cool, dull, dark fabrics for the borders, I was ready to begin my Luminaria quilt. First I cut my center squares, and then my border strips. I swapped a few border fabrics with a fellow retreat participant who was also working on Luminaria--which really helped round out both of our collection.
The real fun came when assembling the squares and then taking the leap to whack them apart. Below is my first set using 4 similar blocks with lime green centers, cutting them off center, shuffling quadrants to be resewn into 4 new blocks. I went on to make a total of 5 sets with centers in lime green, yellow/yellow-orange, orange, red-orange, red and bright pink/violet-reds. They were fairly easy to make and could most be chain-pieced.
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| Lime green set of Luminaria blocks |
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| More blocks added to the mix |
Tuesday night we were treated to a fashion show featuring Heidi's creations. Her creativity certainly inspired some new techniques and shattered my perception that quilted fashion is frumpy. After seeing some of her fun, fresh and colorful vests, I purchased a vest pattern and may look to create a vest some day...
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| Quilted Fashion |
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| Spiral embellishments |
Our final day was filled with some wrap up demonstrations, working on our respective projects and a visit to another local quilt shop. What started as an innocent visit to what was described as a small shop led to a treasure trove of magical fabrics. We found so many great ombres and opalescent fabrics, that upon our return with our goodies, the remainder of retreat attendees just had to check out the shop for themselves...including the instructor/organizer! Everyone returned with a bag of magical fabrics! It was definately a great ending to the retreat and provided some great inspiration for continued work on magical effects.
Some other retreat highlights:
The catered food by Ruben was absolutely amazing. While we never cracked his secret salsa recipe, we did learn he adds a dash of beer!
Getting a mild sunburn while dashing out of the classroom to use the ironing boards set outside.
seeing the clouds of green pollen from all the pine trees in Lake Tahoe...but not seeing my navy blue completely covered in the powder!
All the amazing projects created by my fellow retreat attendees on opalescence, luster, transparency and luminosity!
Adding a new category for fabric shopping: magical fabrics--which I now have an entire drawer in my studio!!
Leaving with great inspiration for future projects using magical fabrics--including a mystery project that I am super excited about working on.
20 beautiful blocks just waiting for assembly...stay tuned!
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| Luminosity blocks awaiting assembly/quilting!! |
Many thanks to Christine Barnes, her two talented assistants/friends: Kari and Heidi, and all the other participants for an amazing weekend of magic!
Armed with a fun assortment of bright, vibrant warm fabrics for my centers and cool, dull, dark fabrics for the borders, I was ready to begin my Luminaria quilt. First I cut my center squares, and then my border strips. I swapped a few border fabrics with a fellow retreat participant who was also working on Luminaria--which really helped round out both of our collection. 
The real fun came when assembling the squares and then taking the leap to whack them apart. Below is my first set using 4 similar blocks with lime green centers, cutting them off center, shuffling quadrants to be resewn into 4 new blocks. I went on to make a total of 5 sets with centers in lime green, yellow/yellow-orange, orange, red-orange, red and bright pink/violet-reds. They were fairly easy to make and could most be chain-pieced.
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