More quilt projects from our Retreat

 This shows a few of the girls' projects at various stages near the end, attaching the binding. These angles were different from a typical 90 degree corner.  The girls from the Rock Springs shop taught this table topper which was a "quilt as you go" project.  I learned a lot from this instructional and the bottom picture shows the finished project, with the binding attached on top rather than the bottom.  She used a decorative buttonhole stitch from her machine, eleminating any hand sewing!

We are experiencing a good deal of smoke from the fires out west and although the wind is blowing it out, it is blowing it in.  We need some

rain badly.  The prairie grasses are so tall and the fire danger even here is high.  We try to keep the
brush down around our structures, but if we got a prairie fire, it might be devastation for us.

This retreat was such a success and we are thankful for so many organizers and volunteers who made this possible.  Quilting arts are experiencing a popularity now that I have not seen in my lifetime.  Modern quilters are contributing much to prolong this manner of expression and are delving into the history of quilting.  Victorian women used it as a place to display and practice their needlework with the beautiful Crazy quilts using silks and velvets and our pioneer ancestors quilted on the rough trails to provide warmth for their loved ones using whatever pieces of fabric could be salvaged.  Black American women in the south used a different way of putting fabrics together and that documentation is available in museums and examples still in some homes.  All tell a story of sorts and we today have such a myriad of fabrics and tools to work into the art of quilting along side of the many, many experts who still quilt by hand.  Admiring this skill and hoping that this type of quilting does not go out of style, I have not yet and may not ever be a hand quilter.