Round Robin Reveal

Back in the Spring, I asked three quilting friends if they would like to participate in a Round Robin project with me.  They all said yes!  Each of us provided a block and a bag or bin of fabrics that we wanted used in our quilt.  We also provided some brief instructions regarding finished size, etc.  Today, we got together at Carol's house for tea, snacks and the big reveal. 

This is Katharine.  She wanted a table runner for a piece of furniture in her house.  The colours she chose came from some figurines that are to be displayed on the runner. She gave me the middle star block and I added the blue border around it and the 6 economy blocks.  I designed my own paper piecing pattern for the economy blocks so they would turn out to be the right size.   Next, Carol added the two stars with the peach coloured centres, copying the middle block but changing the placement of the colours. Christine added the final border to bring the runner up to the maximum size specified.  Katherine was very pleased and can't wait to get it quilted and out on display in her home.  She has enough of the dark coral fabric for the binding, or she may choose to use the dark blue.  We will see. 

Christine stitched the sashiko bunny block several years ago and wasn't sure what to do with it until this round robin challenge came along.  She had lots of interesting fabrics in her bag to use.  Katharine added the piano key border with four patches in the corners. I thought the quilt needed some curved piecing to mirror the curves stitched in the centre square so I got out my Drunkard's path rulers and added 3/4 of a circle to each corner.  The navy fabric is a Japanese fabric that was in my stash.  If you look closely, you can see that it has bunnies hopping all over it.  Carol pieced the final border with squares to nicely frame Christine's quilt.  Christine was thrilled with our handiwork and has a spot picked out on her wall to display the finished quilt. 

Carol's project was started with the appliquéd birds and tiny pieced bird seeds. The birds and the fabric in their wings provided the colour inspiration for Carol's quilt.  Christine added the green HST border on two sides and the turquoise border on the other two sides.  Katharine added the pink HST's and the purple border, playing off the borders that Christine had added.  The quilt told me it needed black in the final border but solid black was too heavy.  Then, I remembered I had this black and white striped fabric in my stash. I mitred two of the corners, matching the stripes and then added squares in the last two corners to mirror the plain borders added by Christine and Katharine.  By the time Carol's quilt got to me, the eyeballs that she had added to the birds were shredding so I took them off and added new felted wool eyes which I embroidered into place.  Carol has to decide if she is going to hand quilt or machine quilt her wall hanging.  She's very happy with her finished piece. 

During COVID, I took an online class with Maria Shell "Riffing on a Block".  I chose a hashtag block and proceeded during the class to make a complicated hashtag, piecing it so it looked woven together.  We did not use any rulers in this class which is why my block is a bit wonky.  This block has been on display on the design wall in my sewing room for a few years so this round robin was a good opportunity to finally make it into something. Carol added the blue borders and the wonky HRT borders, top and bottom.  Christine went to town and added lots of improv pieced blocks around the center after adding a narrow green border around Carol's work.  Katharine added the final green border with triangle flags and mitred corners.   Wow!  This is beyond what I could have imagined!   Thank you so much, Carol, Christine and Katharine for saying yes to my round robin proposal!  It took a little longer to get to the finish line than we had originally anticipated but the results speak for themselves.  Well done!

 I will link up with Kathy and Frederique this weekend.  (My embroidery on the birds eyes counts as slow stitching, I think!)

I will be posting again on Saturday to report on a quilting retreat Christine and I went to last weekend.