Serendipity Day

Today was the long-awaited Serendipity Class. We spent a sunny but cold day at Diane's lakeside home in Lake Mills, with Judy H., who had agreed to mentor. She has taught these quilts in groups large and small and has a thorough understanding of the process as well as the pitfalls.

Judy brought one of her own quilts to inspire and Diane's cat Sadie immediately plopped herself down on it. Should this be a surprise to anyone?


Judy got us all oriented with the book, and reassured and held hands as we reached the point of no return--the actual cutting of the fabric.


Everyone brought a focus fabric and a few possibilities for coordinates.



We cut our yardage into repeats, stacked the repeats, matched reference points in each layer, and then cut strips, and finally triangles or diamonds from the strips (depending on the block style we had chosen for our individual quilts). Here's where the serendipity comes in: you don't know exactly what you'll get. It was really fun to mock up the resulting stars or kaleidoscopes.

And often, as in Diane's green star below, there is more than one option for orienting the pieces. Lots of opportunity for indecisiveness, which is usually my specialty.



Below, Sue W. auditions fabrics. She appears to be heading off in a good direction, no?


Some of the more industrious among us actually completed blocks. This one below is Renee's.



My completed pieces, below, are just components of blocks, as I haven't yet figured out my companion fabrics. I wanted these partial blocks to lead me where I need to go colorwise.






And the jury is still out on all that. I have lots of fabric auditioning to do.

We sewed until nearly 6 p.m., and then adjourned to the Blue Moon Cafe in Lake Mills for a glass of wine and dinner.


Very successful day! I got a good start on a new quilt and it may very well be just the first of my Serendipities. Once you play with the concept a bit, the possibilities are endless.