Back From Quilt Retreat

I'm back from quilt retreat. It was a very good time. We enjoyed the Spokane area quilt show, shopped for some fun new home decorative items, sewed, watched girlie movies and talked a lot. It's always such a good break from everything else that is routine. This year I sewed a lap quilt for my daughter and her soon to be husband. They both love movies and this fabric was given to me about a year ago by a quilt customer. It was very simple to put together except for that diagonal seam that runs through the center square. But after some work and using tape to get the two pieces lined up and then stuck together the picture in the center came out nearly perfect. I hope to quilt it soon and give it to them at one of their showers. I also made an apron, worked on my dresden plate quilt, and a small fall wall hanging. It was good to get some of my own work done!

Quilt Retreats

The days of the week project and the basic food groups for quilt retreat!

I'm back from 6 glorious days of quilting!! To say it was great is an understatement. I brought my laptop with me but due to the way my sister's internet is set up and being out in the country I did not have access to my blog. My desire was to update and post pictures all through this adventure but you'll have to settle for a summary and a handful of pictures. Two quilt tops were completed on this trip, a table runner got it's binding done and another quilt had almost all the blocks pieced. That was pretty amazing accomplishment. We watched a 8 hour BBC movie, Bleak House, and visited the Spokane Quilt Show. The quilt show was wonderful. I don't think I have ever seen so many beautiful appliqued quilts all in one building. The Buggy Barn (a quilt shop) put on a class on applique which I attended. I also watched a video on a new technique for doing feathers (new to me). This morning I practiced on paper for a little while and then proceeded to do an entire border with the new way of doing feathers -- I liked it. I'll post pictures of that quilt as it gets further along. I could wish that quilt retreats came along more often, but maybe having them only once a year makes it extra special.

Quilt Retreats

I leave on a quilt retreat in two days! I'm so excited! This will be the 12th year of my doing this quilt retreat. This year the retreat is in Spokane at my sister's home. There is a quilt show going on in Spokane this weekend so we will be enjoying that too. Retreats are such a great time to get marathon quilting done. We sew all day, stay up late, get up early and hopefully accomplish a lot. Some years I've put together a couple quilts. I always have hopes of doing a lot and bring way more than is feasible to get done in a few days. But one never knows when one project will get boring and there will be a need to start something new. Isn't that why we end up with dozens of unfinished projects?

When I went looking for projects to do on this retreat last week, I came across a couple projects that I had totally forgotten about. They are projects that are almost complete. Both involved massive amounts of handwork and that part is done. They just need sashing and borders added. I'm very excited to finish these, so that will be my first items on the agenda. Then if there is still time I will start a new jelly roll quilt. I will take along hand work too. We always plan movie time where we sit and do handwork. I have a table runner that needs a binding handstitched down and I have my brown and tan quilt that still has lots of leaves to applique on the border. Hopefully I can post pictures on the laptop while I'm on the retreat.