Round Robin Wrap up!

Committing to a long term project like this will force you to make sacrifices in your personal creating. At some point you will be inspired to make some super cool thing with fabric you bought for yourself and you will have to discipline yourself to work on your Round Robin instead because you have a deadline and you made the committment.  If you are anything like me you'll have your BEST creative ideas when you CAN'T possibly put them to good use because of a looming deadline.  My advice is to WRITE THEM DOWN. You won't remember later. Do a quick sketch and get back to work!  
This same thing has happened to me when I have signed up for a block exchange, have a customers quilt to work on, or have a gift to make for someone.  
It is like Murphy's law of creating or something....?
Honoring your commitment really does pay off. It was like Christmas revealing everyone's completed tops to them. Worth every second I put off my own projects to work on theirs. It was a thrill for each of us each time a quilt was revealed because we had all had input in each quilt and all contributed something to each one.  Our group was especially successful because everyone was very committed. I don't think anyone was disappointed and that was the result of the group's dedication.
Here is my picture when my completed top was revealed:
 
 I hadn't seen it at all since I handed over the 12" square medallion I made in the Fall.

Everyone had worked so hard on it and it was fully of different techniques and styles! 

 I saw something different or something I hadn't noticed before every time I looked at it.

Here it is hanging in the Round Robin League's quilt show that spring. All quilted and embellished. I added antique buttons in several places and in the very center is a jeweled shoe clip that was my grandmothers. I put feathers on a quilt for the first time when I quilted this. I did them in black because I was worried they wouldn't be very good. Of course they were so good I wished I had used color! Wish I could say THAT every time but alas.... It had some bedazzling on it from the person who did the last round on it and I added some more.
Here are some detail shots:

It is still hanging in our livingroom and I still love to look at it.


The Round Robin experience got me to try techniques I had not tried before, forced me to DESIGN my own patterns and "get out of me box".  I had to think about things in many different ways and there was no giving up option on a project, so I had to find a way to make it work! It has helped me grow as a quilter and I approach my own projects in different ways now. Sometimes things get set aside because they haven't "ripened" yet or I haven't found the "thing" that they need but, amazingly I do eventually find it and finish most projects.  Which is not to say I don't have UFO's( Un-Finished Objects)... I just prefer to think of them as PhD's ( projects half done)! 
I want to thank my fellow Round Robin members for my quilt which as I said I still love and enjoy, for allowing me to blog their quilts and sometimes their pictures and especially Jennifer for having the foresight to take all the pictures as we went through the process and sending them to me for this blog series!
What will your read about next in my quilting journey? Joining a quilt guild...

Round Robin part 5

The last round was different than the others. The quilt was intended to be the owners "retreat" quilt for when she went overnight quilting camps with friends.  It needed to be twin size.  It started out as a 12" block on point of an appliqued purple Iris and had grown to this by the time I received it:

It was nearly at size and because of the scale of the previous designs it would have looked odd to have two small narrow borders at the end when it had the large garden border framed by the narrow pink and purple strips.  The person before me did the two sides with pieced blocks in various colors pulled from the inner "garden" scene created by one of the previous borders. That left me to finish it up with the top and bottom. I considered doing more pieced blocks to complete the round but in the end I decided to try something new- Hand Applique!

Here is the quilt completed with my hand applique flowers on the top and bottom of the quilt:

In this quilt the black on black roses in all the backgrounds really pulls everything together as does the pink and purple framing which appears twice - once around the initial block and again after the garden scene block. 

Round Robin Part four

The following two rounds proved to hold lessons as well...
For this quilt I received it here with one round left after me:

The colors were all autumn and warm. I had greatly looked forward to working on it however when it got to my round when I auditioned the warm bright colors against it I found it looked better with the creams where it stood in the design and this quilt had a very specific size it had to finish at as it was destined to adorn a certain spot on the owners wall I had to limit my addition.  I ended up adding light bricks around the checkered border and gold half square triangles to switch the colors back to warm. In retrospect I think that my light bricks were too wide, I made them the same size as the previous border but they should have been the size of the square widths in that border I think. As I said it was a learning process and overall I like the quilt I just wish I had seen that at the time....

Here is the picture of this quilt top completed:

Round Robin Part Three

The next quilt for me in the rounds was this Southwestern inspired design: 

 But it had all ready had a first round put on it so I received it here:

A Delectable Mountains border had been added to it leaving the soft pastel batiks on the edge for me to add onto.  This quilt was also to be a large queen size so plenty of room, all batiks, and the owner liked scrappy quilts and wanted lots of different fabrics used throughout the quilt if possible.   
I had never done any kind of Native American design in a quilt and wanted to keep to the Southwest theme and native americans-- remember I said this experience taught me more about quilting than any other! Off I went in  search of Native American patterns in quilting, baskets, jewelry etc...combing the internet... then I remembered I had seen an episode of Simply Quilts where a lady sewed strips together, cut them apart in different places and sewed them back together displaced slightly. The end result mimicked some of the Native American designs I had seen.  Okay I think I can do that....???
No pattern to follow this time at all- just trying to duplicate what I had seen on TV a year before.
It was Christmas time and we were going to New York to spend it with my parents so this quilt came along so I could work on it there, with input and support from my mother. 
It was a lot of pieces once I started cutting the strip sets apart and sewing them back together...by this time I knew that something with tons of seams was not as easy to quilt through... I had some doubts about how it would quilt up but, they were gone completely when I laid the first side up to audition it next to the quilt. I loved it! It looked like something was spinning underneath the original circle. Cool!

I wish I could say that I had planned this but truthfully it was a delightful surprise that it looked so interesting when completed. 
I had purchased two of the fabrics ( the creamy and brown batiks) figuring if it didn't work out I hadn't wasted any of her fabrics and I would try something else! As luck would have it, I liked the resulting effect but, needed a corner to help the whole border "turn".
Back to paper piecing! I drew this little budding/spiky design that would accomplish what I needed and then I sort of reverse engineered it so I could paper piece it.  The dark green from the center medallion worked really nicely in the corners, it made my eyes happy to have it there and kind of gelled it all together for me.
Here is the completed quilt after all the other borders were added.

When we did the "big reveal" for this quilt, the owner-Jane had the best response!

She loved the quilt! And it felt so great for all of us because we had all made it!

In retrospect this was the border out of all the ones I did that I was most pleased with. I felt like I had taken a risk (- just winging it after seeing the method on television).  It was a real boost to my confidence when the other ladies in the group also liked it and were inspired by it as well. My addition was followed by a beautiful French Braid border, some pineapple stars and lastly a reverse of the delectable mountains from border one in a larger scale to frame the whole thing.