Raffle Quilt

Wow!  May got away from me without a blog post, and June almost did!  I have been busy with various things, quilting and otherwise.  But I did get one thing accomplished!

I am the chair of our 2015 raffle quilt.  The above is the quilt we will be raffling October 10,2015 at our guild quilt show.  This king sized (100"x116") quilt is called "Swirling Illini".  I designed it based on Jan Krentz's "Lone Star Quilts and Beyond". We are certainly hopeful that the colors will be appealing to Illini fans, as well as Chicago Bears fans!  Raffle tickets will be available in July.

A unique thing that our guild does is that we make a smaller sized replica of the raffle quilt to keep in our archives.  We have a nice collection of small quilts that chronicles quilting trends over the past 30 years.  We try to have a display of them at our quilt show.
The quilting on both quilts was done by longarm quilter Sue Merkle!  It certainly adds to the quilt.

2015 guild raffle quilt!

I blogged in March that my word for this year was "transition".  At the time, I thought my only transition was going to be going from working to retirement.  My transition included becoming a widow, and learning to live alone.  Well, almost 7 months are behind me.  I have redecorated my home.  Cleaned out a lot of closets.  Bought a new car (and didn't pay sticker price, are you listening Mr. Szafranski?!)  There were times when I thought I wouldn't get back into that wonderful feeling of sewing the day away.  I kept a smile on my face, persevered.  Maggie's got her groove back!

Last year I volunteered to be the chair of our quilt guild's raffle quilt committee for 2015.  We are given three years to get the job done.  No, it doesn't take that long, but they budget out expenses over three years.

The first task (after the committee is formed) is to decide on a pattern for the quilt.  Things to take into consideration are 1) is the quilt one that will get people interested in buying a raffle ticket, 2)  is the design amenable to be broken up into blocks that the members can complete and return?

There are so many beautiful quilts to choose from.  My personal favorite in the Lone Star.  This is not amenable to having multiple people work on.  But what if the Lone Star is the central medallion, and you have simpler stars in the borders that could be done by multiple members?  And what if you decided to take inspiration from Jan Krentz and make the colors of your lone star swirl?  And what if you used University of Illinois (or Chicago Bears) colors?

This was the design I worked up in EQ7.  I personally prefer a rectangular quilt.  Finished size, 100"x119".  It should easily fit a king bed.

I pieced the central Lone Star Medallion.  I did strip piecing, which is truly the only way to do a Lone Star.  The complicating factor is that each strip for each arm of the star is slightly different.  This necessitated checking the pattern constantly to make sure a mistake wasn't made.

 My committee and I got to spend a couple hours at our local quilt store Sew Sassy to pick out the fabrics.  That is a lot of fun, especially when you are not the one going to have to pay for it!  After the fabrics were prewashed (didn't want to risk any fabric bleeding, and don't want to trigger any asthma attacks in members that may react to the off gassing of chemicals used in processing) the committee spent an evening cutting up kits for the two different blocks.  24 blocks each.  We used the Easy Angle and Companion Angle rulers.  The meeting when they were passed out, I had a tutorial PowerPoint presentation on how to sew the blocks!

I don't have a picture of the completed top, because it is too gigantic for my 6' square design wall.  This is a major downside of living alone.

One of the traditions that our guild has is that for almost every raffle quilt that we have done, we have made a smaller version that we have kept as an archive.  It is very nice to have a tangible piece of history, and to see how quilting has evolved over the 30 years that our guild has been in existence.

This is the 2015 Raffle "mini" quilt!  It measures 46"x46".  The big quilt will be going to a long arm quilter, but I think I will quilt the "mini".

Jan Krentz workshop

We have been waiting anxiously for 2 years, and now the time has finally come!  Yes, Jan Krentz has come to our guild!

We shared Jan with the Decatur quilt guild.  After Jan was done teaching in Decatur, two of the Decatur ladies, who also belong to our guild, brought Jan to Champaign in time for supper at Panera's!  And guess who got to sit across from her!  Such a warm, and instantly friendly soul.  Instead of being exhausted from a day of teaching and travel, she was a delightful supper companion!

After a fantastic lecture, she opened up her trunks and let us ooh and aah over her glorious quilts!  We got to feast our eyes on this beauty through the entire evening.  This is the reverse side of "Out of Africa"! 

I love this spiral lone star!  All those glorious colours!

I love the extra little star burst in the corners of this hunter's star!  That is tissue lame making the dark arm!  Love it!

I love the free motion couching of the yarn in this lone star!  Jan gave lots of great design tips to make these stars sing!

I am loving the look of these diamonds!  I now own all of Jan's books.  Now, I just need more time to make some of these wonderful projects!

This one reminded me of Laura Wasilowski and Frieda Anderson!

Monet's Water Lilies!  Yes, I am definitely going to have to make this one!  Jan sells a kit to make the water lilies.  Yes, of course, I brought one home with me!

Friday's class was asymmetrical hunter's star!  Out of Africa was the star, and our inspiration!  Jan is a fantastic teacher.  After teaching us how to make templates, she let us loose to work with our fabrics.  She came around to everybody's workstation several times during the day, sitting down and chatting with the student.  What wonderful attention!

Those that read and FOLLLOWED Jan's preclass instruction sheet brought flannel for design walls.  Although I read that, I failed to act on it.  So I did my designing on the stage floor!  I shall know better next time!

Jan spent time with this student and helped her to get her quilt to this stage!  Isn't it glorious!

Here is our class at the end of the day!  We are all smiling because we are so proud of ourselves of all that we have learned and accomplished!

Jan was impressed with my white hair!  She insisted we had to be photographed in front of the dark quilt (there are some glorious oriental prints in there!)  What a great day!  And what great memories were made!  And a new quilting friend!

Oh, I guess you want to see mine!  I went more traditional with my colors, but still used an asymmetrical setting.  I made my blocks 6", so I will have a nice little wall hanging soon!  The green is a Ricky Tims' hand-dyed, and the yellow/orange star points is a Frieda Anderson hand-dyed!  An All-Star Quilt!