Round Robin

Last May I joined a Round Robin with some ladies from Oklahoma plus one from New York/Florida.  It was announced on my favorite Yahoo Quilting Group, which meant that some of the people were paper piecers.  I had to think pretty hard about joining it since they had a requirement for some things I didn't like but I decided to give it a shot. 

It all started with a center and we had lots of leeway about what that could be.  I started with a paper pieced star made from Carol Doak's 50 Fabulous Paper Pieced Stars book.

 



I figured the border fabric on the center gave the participants lots of color choices.  We provided fabric with our center block and mailed it off to the first person.  The rules of the next round to go around the center was that it had to have triangles.  The quilt I got next was from Jan Holzbauer.  She started with a paper-pieced Mariner's Compass star block so I decided to follow suit but to use one that had triangles.  I like how it came out.

 



 

The next round belonged to Cheryl Gebhart.  It started with a really cool center that was made using black fabric stamped with paint.  It was our choice what the round would include. I knew what I wanted to do right away because I knew of a paper pieced star block that was similar to the center star.  But it didn't really go with the round just before it.  I tried to tie it in, but I'm not sure how good I did.  Hopefully the rest of the rounds improved how things go together.  But I was fairly happy with what I did.  This was probably the hardest one I did.

 



The next quilt I got was from Marilyn Reid.  She started out with an embroidered center with a cute message and awesome design and surrounded it by different colored blocks.  It was in my very favorite colorway -- blue and yellow. The rules this time were to use squares.  I used a bunch of  square in the square blocks, paper pieced of course. I decided to alternate the backgrounds but to keep the centers in paisleys (my favorite type of fabric design).  I really liked how it came out. (Not sure why the picture is sideways.)

The next round came from Cloye Brower.  This is the one round I was really worried about.  This was the dreaded applique round.  I have taken lessons in applique techniques a number of times but it has never seemed to work for me.  I don't really like the look of raw edge applique, I prefer the needle turn type, but I couldn't make it happen.  I tried four different techniques and none worked.  I held on to it so long agonizing over how I was going to do what I wanted to do, that the next quilt arrived before I had even sewn the border on.  I knew exactly what I wanted the round to look like.  The quilt had fabric in it that I wanted to duplicate. It required that I paper piece part (that I had to draw myself) and then to applique once on each side.  But the applique I wanted to do wasn't very big, that's what was making it so hard to do needle turn.  Once I saw the next quilt with the raw edge applique, I decided it would look okay, so I went with it.  I loved how it came out.  This quilt started out so cool with a paper pieced hexagon shaped center and every round really fit it perfectly and I liked my round too.  I was late getting it to the next person, but I finished it and was so glad to be done.

The final quilt I worked on belonged to Shellie Hansen.  This one started out with a painted or dyed center with a wonderful bird and the word Renewal. The rounds all looked really good but the quilt looked finished with the applique round.  I was a little worried about adding my round as I was afraid it wouldn't go with the rest.  I spent some time answering the question how I get renewed and ended up needing to actually buy fabric for this quilt as I didn't have any fabric that really "went" with the colorway.  I was pretty happy with the color choices and thought I had found the perfect design.  This round was our own choice too.  I got this quilt done really early and ended up hanging on to it for almost 2 months. 

The group decided to get together to give back everyone's quilts and I agreed to meet them all in Oklahoma. So tomorrow I'll be driving there and then I'll be able to post a picture of my quilt with all the added rounds.  I can't wait to see it.  And really I can't wait to see all the quilts and how they came out and to see if the rounds I added look good with the rest of the quilt.  Almost every quilt had some paper piecing in it but this last quilt had the most.  I added 20 blocks to make it look like I wanted.  I liked the finished quilt.  So far it's the only one I've seen finished. (Not sure why this one came out sideways either.)