Halton Hills Quilter's Guild Spiderweb quilt workshop

Today was very productive with my renos, installing the marble tile backsplash in the kitchen, in a herringbone pattern.  It was so labour intensive, because every single sheet had to be cut, either on the sides or top and bottom and often both.  In the kitchen there are lots of outlets, counters and cupboards to work around.  I got only about 2/3 done today.  I had to stop by 6:30 pm for the guild zoom meeting. Tomorrow I want to finish it.  There will still be some major cutting to do, with only one row of tile sheets from ceiling to floor that will not have to be cut, aside from the first and the last sheet, but it is looking good so far.

Not to bore you anymore with my renos, let's get right to the back in time to Nov 2nd/2019:

Back in Nov 2nd 2019, I co-hosted a paper piece spiderweb workshop for the Halton Hills Quilters Guild with the Outreach coordinator Vivian.  During one of our executive meetings, we were talking about combining a workshop with people volunteering to help make a quilt for the Outreach program.

I suggested the Spiderweb paper piece pattern because it lends itself very well to being scrappy and when many hands are involved in making blocks, paper piece usually gives you better success with the sizes of the blocks coming out the same.  

In August, I was given a bin from the guild, of men's fabrics to go through, to see what I could come up with.  Being a scrap enthusiast, I had no problems taking out many different fabrics, because really, the more the merrier, when it comes to a spiderweb quilt.

Here are some precut pieces with a mixture of fabrics ranging from blue, green, burgundy, browns and beiges.  You name it it was in there, and there were definitely some unlikely matches.  The only consistent was the light beige wedge.

I roughly cut out enough pieces and parts, to make a complete quilt top.  I packaged them with the paper piece pattern, as seen below.

All ready to take to the workshop scheduled for Nov 2nd/2019.

I had to laugh when the women opened up their package and gasped.  The look on their faces was priceless...and the comments...lol...I can't sew this together with this...or can I get another package, this one doesn't do it for me...lol.  The faces were hilarious and I laughed out loud, told them that they know I am a scrappy quilter and they saw the spiderweb quilts that I brought in to show for this workshop and that they just had to trust me on this.  

They did proceed to sew the blocks together as we went through the tips and tricks of doing paper piecing.  It is a good technique to know.  It started to become somewhat of a joke on who has the ugliest combination, and I reassured them that they were all pretty much completely a mish mash of fabrics.

But do you know what happened when they started to place the completed blocks down on the design floor...I heard many gasps from many of them, but this time they were different gasps.  They were surprised and shocked how it was coming together, they couldn't get over how the blocks, as a whole, were turning out to be something, not half bad...lol.  The remarks later were more along the lines of, I am definitely going to do this pattern again...lol.  

I took the blocks home and put them together, added the two borders, also fabric from the guild bin, and quilted it the following weekend.  I think it turned out pretty good for a bunch of misfit donation fabrics, that were just sitting around.  What do you think?  Was it a success?

Here are all the wonderful ladies that came out to the workshop, or most of them.  I believe a couple of them had to leave earlier.  We had 20 in attendance, which is good considering we are not a large guild.  I really enjoyed this workshop, and I am sure many of them did too.  They are all a bunch of great women.  The comradery that day still sticks in my head today.  Thank you so much ladies for all the laughs!!!  I am hoping that some day soon we can do another workshop together.

Enjoy what is left of your day, I am turning in to rest for yet another busy day tomorrow.