More Quilt Tops at Retreat

Abbie finished this top for a grandchild. Cute!

This is an original design by Jana C as a tribute to her family. She calls this African Queens. Very cool.

Amy finished this darling pumpkin quilt top. Below is her finished quilt featuring strawberries.

Sue R made this quilt from Charity Blocks we made at a Ladies of the Lake retreat a few years ago. She has just learned of a friend going into treatment for breast cancer so, this quilt has found it's home. 

This is the label, made by Sue's husband, for the back of this comfort quilt.

Colleen S. put together this quilt top today!

Cyndi K was making these little blocks today for the quilt pattern pictured below.

Denise finished up this quilt top today. This is fabric from the All Iowa Shop Hop a couple years ago.

Donna L. has been making Elk all day!

JoAnne S. spent a good chunk of this day making school bags for a charity program through the Methodist church.

Laurie C. was working on this Bonnie Hunter quilt. Cute.

Sarah put the binding on this quilt today and now it is done!

Show and Tell from Retreat 2

Becky E featured buffaloes in this fun quilt.

Carol H. showed us this Split Patch, a quilt project from our retreat a few years back.

Cindy D showed us this quilt featuring a quilt block for every state in the union.

Mary Ann O made this Spider Man quilt for a great grandson. Cute.

Sarah D showed us her Christmas Trees, still warm from her sewing machine.

 Amy B shared this quilt she started as a 12 year old and pulled out to finish recently.

Cindy D has been very prolific in her quilting this year. Above is a Quilt Block A Day project she is working on.

and this is the quilt Cindy was working on retreat last fall. Love it!

Colleen S showed us this quilt she finished, giving it an extra touch with piping in the binding.

Janet D just finished this quilt top.

Kym R shared this quilt made from wool and homespuns.

Lois W. has worked on this quilt at our last 5 retreats. Guess what? It's done! and beautiful!

Sarah L. shared this Row by Row quilt she made. Nice.

Group 2 of Ladies of the Lake are here!

You may recognize some of these gals from our first retreat. We had 9 guests that came to both retreat this year. Love all these happy smiles.

Flash from the past

Colleen S has been working on the kit for this quilt at retreat this week. It's a kit from a couple years ago and we were both fuzzy on fabric placement so I searched through archive pictures to find this. Pictures are so helpful!

More retreat fun

Mary A shared how to make Crumb Quilt Blocks by basically making fabric from small scraps.

This is the 12" block Mary made for our Charity quilt. 

Last year, we gave each guest a piece of ombre fabric and asked them to make a 12" charity block and bring it back to us at this retreat. Here are the blocks that were turned in.

It was interesting to see how about half of the blocks had white background (above) and half had black background (below). We divided these blocks accordingly to make two comfort quilts.

This year, we gave each guest a fat quarter and some white strips to make a block for the Slats quilt. The fat quarters were all donated by Iowa Comfort Quilts.

Retreat guests stitched these blocks up right away and I have been stitching them together. So far we have two quilt tops pieced and enough blocks for one more. Here are the first two tops.

These 18" blocks make quick work of it. Deb S has volunteered to machine quilt these tops. Then they will be donated to Kavanagh House (a residential hospice facility) in memory of Frank.

Retreat 1, Day 1

This is the week of our two, back-to-back quilt retreats at Lake Panorama. The first group comes in on Monday and stitches through Wednesday. The second group comes in on Thursday and stitches through Saturday.  Several of these quilters come for both retreats!

After supper on Day 1, we shared our Show and Tell:

These first two quilts are both by Abbie. The round quilt was from a Judy Niemeyer class and is mostly paper pieced.

And this is Abbie's Harley T-Shirt quilt

And we never tire of seeing Bonnie's Best of Show quilt from the Iowa State Fair.

And Bonnie's Chubby Chicks above and place mats below.

JoAnne's sister is a Breast Cancer Survivor so she made these two quilts, using Quilt for the Cure fabrics. One is a gift and the other is for her own lap.

This is the pattern we featured for our retreat comfort quilt last Spring.

We learned how to do Cathedral Window blocks at this retreat so Fran brought this masterpiece to share.

Janet shared these 4 quilts. Above was a block of the month.

and here she is with her Dashboard quilt.

Plus her blue/gray and yellow/gray quilts.

Lonnie showed us this blue stunner.

Marti decided to make a quilt with tongue in cheek for all the judges who comment, "be sure the borders are straight".

Mary brought this beauty to show us. The center appears to puff out but it is just an optical illusion. Very cool.

Couple of the gals were working on their quilt from our 2016 fall retreat. Mary brought this one to show. She left out the sashing and got yet another cool design.

Nancy made this quilt featuring school colors and school motifs in the machine quilting. Cute

Patty showed this quilt, a retreat project from a couple years ago. She enlarged her quilt to fit her very tall son in law.

Here is Sue's big black and silver quilt. Nice

Three of the gals brought their 2015 retreat quilts to show us. 

Nancy J was also working on her blocks, making it her own but turning all the blocks the same direction. Very pretty.

These are donation quilts for children in cancer treatment. So nice.

Gloria made this quilt from a package of 2 1/2"strips. Notice how the center strip has just been cut from the outer piece and flipped upside down. So pretty.