The Woodland Ridge Retreat is located in a small town in northern Wisconsin. For a small town they offer quite a few amenities. Meals were not included in our stay until Friday evening. Since we were on our own for breakfast we decided to walk the few blocks to the local coffee shop. The temperature outside was brisk but refreshing and the sky was a bright, beautiful blue.

The food as well as the coffee were very delicious. Taking the short jaunt was well worth the effort. Here’s a few photos of the restaurant.

On one of my many trips to my room I just happened to notice the setting sun. Here’s a photo of the view from my window.

The quilt chosen for today’s project was this one.

Most of the individual components have already been assembled by my Mom so I’m thinking this one may goes as quickly as the nine patch. We all know that reality and perception are often two different things so we’ll see just how quickly it goes.

The pattern is called Stars and Stripes Table Quilt. It was designed by Joan Karagavoorian and found in a magazine. I don’t know what magazine it was because my Mom tore the pages out and none of the pages have the magazine’s name on them.

My Mom’s always been very patriotic so I’m not at all surprised that she chose this one. The quilt has twenty-five blocks, nine of which are stars. All of the star blocks were stitched and ready for a final pressing. Strips for the striped blocks had also been sewn and some of the 10 1/2″ blocks were already cut.

Once I got my bearings I could map out a plan for my approach. First thing I did was check the measurements of the star blocks to verify that they were actually 10 1/2″ square. I was so happy to discover that they were since it’s one of my least favorite blocks to make.

All but one of the nine striped units my Mom had made were 10 1/2″ square. One of them looked like perhaps her ruler had slipped and was badly misshaped. That one will go in my scrap pile. The pattern called for sixteen striped blocks so I had seven left to make. My Mom hadn’t cut and stitched together enough red and tan strips to make all sixteen blocks so I had to do some of that myself. I also had to use my seam ripper to take apart one of the units of ten 40″ strips. My Mom had used the wrong seam allowance. Rather than the required seam allowance of 1/4″ she had used 3/8.

Once all of the components were finished I placed them on the design wall. I moved the star blocks around until I found an arrangement that looked balance, then stitched it all together.

Here’s how it looked at the end of the day. All that was left to do was the red border.

Cindy Anderson