Indian Orange Peel class - part 2

On Saturday, we got together for our second class on the Indian Orange Peel taught by Heather Stewart. You can read other posts on this class by clicking on the tab on the right to see progress to date. We had a great time and crammed a lot of information into our brains in short order. You can see how focused we are as we listen to Heather (second from left) giving us instructions on how to sew the arcs to the four patch blocks:

Aren't we a serious bunch eh?

The first thing we had to do was pair off with another quilter and lay out our four patch blocks on the table alternating warm and cool colours. Then the arcs had to be arranged in a pleasing colour order, paying attention to lights and darks and creating a movement for the eye to follow and watching warm and cool colours! Deb and I worked together and there were times that we were wondering if we were going crazy, but we did manage to get it all laid out in good order.


After laying out my quilt, we carefully transferred it to the floor with the four of us:

Now there is room on the table for Deb's quilt :-). Joanne, Marylou and Roxene can be seen in the background working on their quilts. Here we are getting ready to arrange Deb's warm and cool 4 patches:

All the arcs were labeled on the back with numbers corresponding to a diagram just in case we get mixed up:

That does really explain my major muscle pain this weekend lol:

Pat and Marylou are busily sewing:

Chris and I were nice and cozy as we forgot to bring an extension cord and borrowed a short one that someone else had as an extra. Thanks Anne for letting us use your cord. I took my new to me Centennial Featherweight along and she sewed like a charm once again. We had a lovely bright room in a local Church.

Here are my blocks and arcs ready to sew together:

Here is Kathy's layout...she also chose bright colours in batiks. It was interesting how many shared prints we all had in our stashes! We did trade strips, but there were a lot of fabrics that several of us had in our quilts.

Yvonne was sitting on the other side of me and did a really scrappy one with some really fun novelty prints.

Chris, Pat and Anne's quilts:

Another angle of the same quilts. The colours really look awesome when you take a picture:
We also had to sew one block together to make sure we were doing it correctly. These were a challenge to get just right and most of us were making liberal use of our Best Friends (aka a stitch ripper :-). Heather assured us that these would get easier and easier, the more we did them.

One block finished, 24 to go:

Gail has more photos on her blog. We need to reconvene our support group to keep sewing these blocks together and paper piece the border. The arcs were a piece of cake compared to the shapes of the border pieces lol.