LITTLE ROUND ROBINS

I have spoken about the group of friends that I sew with. We call ourselves "Twisted Stitchers" because our group was formed to work on miniature quilts. It has grown beyond that, we usually just bring whatever we are currently working on and spend the day talking and laughing. We used to meet in each others homes, and now we meet in one of our member's home which is a retirement home(if that is what it is called) We meet in a sunny room surrounded by windows, and we go to the cafeteria for lunch.
We have done projects together in the past. This year we worked on a round robin. Each one of us made a center block, and each of the rest of us added something to it. There are eight in our group.
These photos were taken with my phone. I had my camera, but since I uploaded some photos just before I left the house, I left my memory card in my reader, so I couldn't use the camera..
This is Nancy's quilt. Her first block was the bird. By the time I got it on the last round, I had a opening on the edge, right of the birdhouse. I added the blank block. And as I like to call my Tom Sawyer method of doing a round robin, I got the idea, and gave the top back to my friend Karin to add more flowers to my blank block. She actually tatted the flowers that were added. Tatting, my grandmother tried to teach me. I have a shuttle, but it just always seemed like too much effort for what it yielded.
This is Lindy's quilt. Her center square was the flowers an the pot. I think I had the second round of this one. I did the half square triangle round and I cut holly leaves out of the print and hand blanket stitched them onto the center square with bead berries.
This is Kaye's quilt. She did the awesome center tree square. This is made out of fall color batiks and hand dyes. I love Karin's round of cherrywoods, and Lindy's round of chevrons. I got it for the last round, and by that time, I thought that the quilt was perfect already. I just added a piped edging, with instructions to add another brown batik plain border to that. (Tom Sawyer) I would have done it, there wasn't enough fabric left..
This is Kathleen's quilt. She started off with the pieced, Siciliano, log cabin variation block. This was another that I had on the last round. I tried different ideas, based on using the greens, but it just didn't work for the last round. So, a piping on the edge seemed like the way to go with this quilt.
This is Karin's quilt. The hardest quilt to photograph because it is made up of glitzy, slippery shiny fabrics. I was intimidated with the fabric because it needed to be backed, and I didn't want to do it. You might not be able to see, but I beaded the fabric prints on the center block and the first round that goes completely around the block.
This is Georgia's quilt. Georgia is our most recent member, and had never done a miniature, so she wasn't sure what she needed to do. So she made a square in a square for her center. This was a scottie from a print and the dark green corner triangles. It was maybe 2" big at the most.
I added another round of triangles to make it bigger so that I would have something to work with. Then I added the picket border. Look at the tiny 1/2 inch bow ties that Kathleen did. This top is maybe about 10" finished
This is Bobbie's quilt. We had so much fun with this one. Bobbie must have waited or been too busy to make a center square. So she cut a square of a bird print that she had. The funny part, one she will never live down, is that she wrote in her journal (everyone had a book that we wrote about our round) that she used this print because she loved Cardinals, and wanted one on her quilt. First of all, this bird isn't a cardinal. Second, she didn't even cut off the selvage edge.
Lindy found this so funny, that she just added more selvage on her round. I think I did the round with the red stripe. I had more fun with her journal. I put a photo of Stan the man Musial, a baseball player (Cardinals), A photo of a Catholic Cardinal, then one of a real cardinal, then NOT A CARDINAL and a photo of Bobbie holding her center square. So now we call this quilt Not a Cardinal. And we will always have something to raz Bobbie about.
Finally, this is my quilt. I knew for months that we were going to do this, but I waited until the last minute. I made a compass, appliqued it down to a nice square, and only after I finished, I noticed that I had sewn it down on the corner of the square and not the center. Now, we are talking the morning we were to exchange blocks. I was really disgusted. I didn't hope for much, but my wonderful friends expounded on my ideas, if you will notice, none of the rounds, until the outer round, are equal in widths. Georgia took an image from a print and fused it to the top. These aren't colors that I would normally think to use. In my bag, I put a sample packet of Moda prints, along with some yardage from that line. I really like it. I can't wait to get it quilted.

Other photos from our get together.
Lindy brought in a couple of quilt tops that she had finished. This one is a sampler she made up. You can do this if you normally work within a certain palette. I have a huge stack of single blocks.. all different colors so it would take effort to make something this pretty.

This was an Ohio Star quilt also made by Lindy. I really need to have this quilt.

That's it for the quilting content! I hope that you have a great weekend!