When I started writing this column I set up a blog to archive my articles and named it: myoverthemoonretirement.com but, I was not so “over the moon” this weekend. If you read last week’s article you know that after being coached through cutting out myriad small fabric pieces for my pumpkin quilt it was with great trepidation that I was heading off to a quilt retreat at The Abbey. While packing up my gear, to my horror, I discovered my pattern directions had “gone missing.” Yikes, what a way to add insult to injury. After tearing the house/car apart trying to locate them I decided I must have left them at the quilt shop in Sioux Falls while shopping for quilt back fabric. I immediately started calling the shop and after three attempts over as many hours finally reached a live person who, thankfully, found my misplaced directions, texted me pictures of each page to use during the retreat and snail mailed them back to me. So I dodged that bullet but it added to my growing angst with this project.
I arrived at The Abbey, checked in, set up my work table and somehow assembled all 20 pumpkins squares by bed time; did I mention bedtime is almost nonexistent for quilters on retreat? The next day I set out to assemble 20 pumpkin stem panels each composed of 13 small pieces. This took me nine hours and the rest of the quilters were all still hard at work when I hobbled to my room after sitting on an awful plastic chair leaning over a sewing machine all day. Needless to say, I was in significant physical pain requiring stretching on the floor and lots of Ibuprofen to get through the night.
The third day I muscled through assembling five star panels each with 19 small pieces requiring point work; one of many quilting terms this one requiring more precision than my beginner hands were able to muster. I eventually got the often pointless stars affixed to the small pumpkin panels and squared each of the twenty pumpkins readying them for final assembly. There were four rows with five pumpkins in each which came together somewhat painlessly. Of course, it was only after the fact that I figured out this is when and where important point matching comes into play with final quilt top assembly and by then I decided if anyone commented I would call these uneven point intersections “design elements” and dare any experienced quilter to challenge my story. There was lots of seam ripping and ironing involved and thank God for the kind, patient, helpful woman who answered lots of questions and extricated me from many debacles along the way. I ended my third day with assembling my simple quilt backing and started thinking about my fourth and final day at the retreat.
After finally getting a good night’s sleep, I assembled my quilt sandwich layering the back, batting and quilt top requiring lots of spray adhesive, pins and trimming. At this point, I was planning to go home but it was only 11:00 am and the day had only begun for rest of the quilters so who was I to stop now. So, I soldiered on and free motion quilted my project using a simple meander stitch, which I had previously discovered isn’t so simple. After some practice, coaching, lots of stitch fixing, too many unfortunate intersecting paths and three hours of labor, I called it done. Lastly, it was on to final trimming and making and affixing the binding which my faithful coach walked me through as well. Yes, there was lots of seam ripping in this final step as well but I finished up right before supper after which I packed up and drove home. Can you believe the rest of the quilters were going to labor on for a fifth day? I logged around 33 hours on the project and will not be making another quilt anytime soon. I am now sitting under my beautiful new pumpkin lap quilt and did a rough final calculation with the final count right around 600!