Retreat 2.0

This past weekend I headed up to hepburn springs again for another retreat. We had such fun on the last retreat back in May that we booked in for another, even longer, one while we were still there. This time we stayed 3 nights, and it was lots of fun and incredibly productive.

I got lots of sewing done, including assembling the blocks for two quilt tops. Above are the base blocks for the quilt I am making with the spotty sateen fabric I bought earlier in the year. The blocks have since been cut into quarters bento box style, and the quarters trimmed to 8" square ready to be assembled into a quilt top.


Below are the rest of the hexagons that I started on the other weekend, and I love how they look, piecing them together has definitely transformed the fabric. I just need to get some solid cream fabric and I will begin assembling the quilt top of this one too.

This means that soon I'll have some quilting projects on the go again, which i'm excited about. I'm planning on hand quilting the spotty one, although don't exactly know what design yet, so suggestions gratefully received.  In contrast I'm considering machine free motion quilting the hexagon one, probably just with a stippling pattern, however as i'm hoping the quilt will be about queen sized I may regret that decision and change my mind with either the quilting method or design.


I did get some other stuff done over the weekend, about which I shall blog in due course.

What to work on?

When looking at my calendar the other day I realised that it is 4 weeks until the quilting retreat that I’m booked in for (a slightly longer rerun of the one I went on in May because we had so much fun). In addition to making me excited, this also made me stop and realise that I don’t know what I’m going to work on.

After having a big project on the go for so long it’s weird not having anything sitting on the back burner waiting to be worked on. I have a few ideas of things that I’d like to do, but I’m faltering with committing to a particular project.

I have the spotty fabric I bought a while back that I want to have a play with at the retreat; I know exactly what I want to make with that, but I’m not sure that that is sufficient for stuff to work on for the entire super-long weekend, either due to keeping my attention for that time or due to how long the project will take.

Would it be “rude” to do some garment sewing on a quilting retreat? Do you have any suggestions of things I could work on? Ideas for presents for people maybe? Help!

Retreat Recap

A certain friend has told me off for not posting about the retreat last weekend yet, so I thought I'd better get on that this weekend!

The retreat was AMAZING. We were a little worried going up there because when it was being organised we had the pick of dates we wanted, so we were worried it would be too good to be true. However, a sneaky peek through the windows while we were waiting to be let in put our minds at ease - the place is beautiful! It turns out that Craft Retreat had only opened in March, which was when we were making our booking. It sounds like it's already filling up for the rest of the year.

We had Friday afternoon and evening, all day Saturday and Sunday morning to sew, and PLENTY got done!

Our Retreat Group. From left to right: Helene, Me, Bronwyn, Kirsty, MJ, Annabel, Marg and Andrea. (plus Louise, who arrived late so isn't pictured)

When we got there on Friday I got to working on my genome quilt, until dinnertime which was a delicious "planned pot-luck" dinner at the house. We then watched Murials Wedding and added green border hexys to a couple of hexagon flowers while watching the film.

Making use of the design wall

Saturday was dedicated to sewing together my wonky stars from the MMQG quilting bee into two tops (well technically a top and back, but the quilt is destined to be reversible). I did the last couple of seams on Sunday morning, but was very happy to have achieved the goal of getting them done. I'll post a more detailed post about how I went about putting the tops together at another date. (I took lots of in process photos on Helene's lovely camera).

My two finished wonky star tops

Saturday night we went out for a delicious and decadent meal at Mercato, after which some of the group watched another movie, and the rest (including me) chose to continue sewing.

All my genome quilt blocks so far

Sunday morning before leaving I chugged out a few more genome quilt blocks, bringing my total for the weekend to 16 blocks. 29 down, 20 to go, I'm getting there slowly.

The sheet I've been using to mark off the blocks as I've done them - the red crosses were from when I was rotating the HSTs, and now colouring them in means I've sewn the block together.

So all in all, an AMAZING weekend! We had such a good time we're planning to go back in November... hopefully I'll be able to go too.

Retreating

Image from here

Next weekend I'm going on a MMQG Retreat. I'm disproportionately excited about the whole thing, and as the date gets closer am getting more excited (if that's possible!) An entire 48 hours of sewing, eating and gossiping with some fabulous company - what is there NOT to be excited about?

I've started writing mental lists of what I need to pack (which will be converted into actual lists very soon I'm sure), and have been worrying about forgetting some vital thing that will mean that I can't do the sewing I want to do, so I will, as they say, be making my list and checking it twice.

I have no idea how much sewing I'll be able to get done while I'm gone, but I'm planning on taking plenty; something truely magical would have to happen for me to get through it all. The major thing I want to make headway on is the piecing of my genome quilt (in itself enough to last more than the weekend). I'll also take the star blocks for my "Oh Beehave" quilt, I'm sure having the other 8 ladies around would do wonders for helping work out layouts. And I think I'll also take along my hexies, just in case I want to do some hand sewing rather than just machine sewing.

SO excited!!!