The ladies I retreated with are quilters. One made the journey to Wisconsin a few years ago for work. The other made the journey to Wisconsin for the weekend to visit her friend from their home state of South Dakota. Pam wins the award for the most miles traveled to get to a retreat!

I noticed this quilt square and asked about the story because my Mom loves to be on the lookout for barn quilts. She and my sister have even made their own barn quilt. So I know Mom would want the story behind this barn quilt square. Notice the barn quilt has tiny, tiny triangles.

This quilt square commemorates a shop hop trip Dawn and Pam made with a few others to Minnesota. Each shop hopper made their own square and then shared the square with the others. The idea is that they would each get the same square to sew together to make a quilt of their own. Pam recalled her square has planes on it, partly because she would rather take a plane, than drive if I am recalling the reason correctly. Dawn said she incorporated the words “joy ride” because she was the driver and joy is her favorite word. This barn quilt square made the journey back to South Dakota with Pam.

Pam sent a box of supplies ahead of her trip so she could work on this pattern. She had a few squares done prior to the weekend but most she assembled during our retreat. Her goal is to enjoy the process and not measure how much she has finished. I watched while she assembled one square because piecing together all those triangles seemed a little crazy to me. Although there were a few triangles, it was mostly strips that she pieced together. So she got a few points off the crazy scale for using strips!

Dawn was the other quilter at retreat and worked on many projects over the weekend. This was one of those projects. The tree and words were already printed on the panel. She added the piano key border first. I heard them talking about piano keys so I think that is what the rectangles are called along the left. Then the similar border along the other sides. Last is the detail in the bottom right. No triangles on this quilt.

Dawn’s quilting journey started with thinking quilters are crazy (just like me) for cutting up perfectly good fabric into triangles and then piecing it back together. It sounds like it took a few years for Dawn to realize that quilting is not all about triangles. There are other methods to quilting including fabric books which she sewed over the weekend as well.

I did not tell them that I have always thought I would reserve quilting for when I retire. For now, rug hooking fills the time when I am not paper crafting. It was neat to watch Pam assemble a square and listen to their lingo throughout the weekend. They also were pretty focused on their math skills because just as in paper crafts, we know the instant we cut wrong the second the cutting is complete. In paper crafts, I have to redesign if I cut wrong. My guess is that incorrectly cut fabric may result in triangles being pieced together! 🙂

The triangles appear in our story again before the weekend is done. Catch that in Scene 3 along with my silver glimmer paper pile!

Super Awesome Math Skills Person Shirley