The Good Heart Quilters had their 4th annual quilt retreat at Lisa’s home this summer. She is the smiling blonde marathoner in the lower right (I am in the yellow T-shirt). Some of our group isn’t here, and we also had a couple of newbies join us this year. We meet at Lisa’s home Friday morning, eat lunch together (Lisa gets it all beforehand) and this year, we went out for dinner, then sew into the night. Saturday the group meets up again (we always lose a few on Saturday) and goes again until they can’t anymore.
From this industry. . .
. . . came these results.
We had some handwork going. Laurel shows her Rosette #1 of the New Hexie Millefiore Quilt along, and the start of her third rosette is the inset.
Lisa was more than patient with me as I auditioned centers for this house block for her to comment on. At 16″ it is to be a mini quilt for a swap I’m in. While the easy way would be to use the popular Swoon pattern, I went back to Barbara Brackman’s Encyclopedia of Quilt Patterns and went to the source: a block titled Rolling Star from 1932. This brilliant little house idea came from Blue Mountain Daisy.
(from here)
After setting in umpteen Y-seams and a billion more V-seams, I finished the mini quilt top. I think using the Swoon Block method of half-square triangles would have been easier, but the center of the original Rolling Stone block is also a Lemoyne Star, rather than the a Sawtooth Star block, so inset seams it is (although I suppose I could subdivide them like the lower block on the right). I like to try this original Rolling Star block again, now that I’ve got one under my belt. We’ll see which one ends up going to my partner!
See you all next year!
OccasionalPiece--Quilt! 
Oh how fun! Both you and Cindy on retreats this past week. I’m jealous
It looks like big smiles and lots of work done!
Your mini quilt is gorgeous! I hope your partner loves it!
I really like your house mini. Interesting way to set houses on a quilt.
It looks like a great time!
It looks like a great time with good friends. You gals really accomplished a lot!! I LOVE those house blocks. I was studying why you would call them house blocks and then discovered all of the little houses. Soooo cute!
Looks like so much fun!! Yes I’d vote half square triangles any day. Beautiful rosettes too
I think Y-seams are worth it every time. I hadn’t realized that Swoon was based on Rolling Star. It’s not identical, though, since the Rolling Star houses are all the same size, and its Lemoyne-diamonds are equilateral. Swoon’s diamonds have two shorter sides, two longer ones.
I love your fabrics, and am glad you chose center #6.
The house mini is going to be adorable, and your retreat sounds like a lot of fun!
Oh Dear Elizabeth,
So good to hear (read) your voice again. Am back online after a series of unfortunate events, starting with breaking my hand opening a window in mid May, and having surgery to set the bone and put in a fancy metal plate a week later. And that was followed by a series of computer self-destruct issues. Will supply details later. Just got everything back and working Thursday, and was faced with more than 3000 e-mails in my inbox, including some old ones that never were deleted. So spent two days clearing out most things I didn’t want to read or things that were no longer relevant, and now am starting to catch up with the things I care about. Am going back to the start of where I haven’t read your stuff (end of May, early June?) and will comment and pretend like it’s all current as I read it. So – things may look a little goofy and out of sync.
Brenda
bwiseman@neb.rr.com 402-486-3220