Retreat

Hi Everyone,

I was gone a couple weeks ago to a quilt retreat.  I drove down to Tennessee to go with a group of quilters that my friend, Janice (from Virginia, now living in Tennessee) knows.  She; her identical twin sister, Jackie; Jackie's friend Susan (they both live in Florida) and I were going.  The plan was to meet up at Janice's cabin on a Sunday and then head to the retreat on Monday.  I procrasatinated the week prior to leaving.  Have you ever packed for a retreat?  It is complicated--you need your normal suitcase, etc. and then all of your sewing stuff, too.

I got my machine and basic supplies packed up and then decided what else to take.  I knew I wanted to take the bits and pieces from my complicated "BC" project that I'm working on this year.  You can read more about it here.  So, I packed all of that.  I also took a quilt that I've yet to start on, except for those 770 half square triangles I made last month when I only needed 600...  Because I didn't want to run out of things to do (like that ever happens at retreat) I also packed up what I needed for making the border that I wanted to add to my Austin Bluebird quilt.  And for good measure, a few small kits.

I knew that four of us would be going to the retreat in one vehicle, so I tried to keep it light.  This is the sewing stuff.  I also had a suitcase and snacks, etc.

I drove down to Tennessee on Sunday, leaving fairly early.  The trip was fine, except for an early detour, numerous road construction areas, and then in Kentucky and Tennessee, it was the campers/RVs on the road to deal with.  I arrived around 4 or so.  It was fun seeing the changes that Janice and her husband have made to the cabin as well as looking at their garden, flowers, etc.  I had met Jackie before, but Susan and I were meeting for the first time and I liked her right away!  I knew it was going to be fun.

Monday morning we got up and ready and began the ordeal of packing everything in the back of Jackie's truck.

Would it all fit?

With Jackie's great packing skills, we got it all in.  We had to unwrap a case of water and tuck the bottles in where we could, but we did take everything we wanted/planned.

Check in time at the retreat center wasn't until 3:30, but the plan was to meet up with everyone at a quilt shop and then visit 2-3 more and have lunch along the way.  The first shop was Pappy's in Maryville, TN.

It is inside an old gas station and doesn't look like much from the outside, but it was wonderful inside!  After that, we went to Sevierville and shopped at the Cherry Pit quilt shop, had lunch, and then went to the Red Barn and Iva's quilt shops.  Finally we headed for the retreat center, Carson Springs Baptist Conference Center.  The facility has a hotel, where we stayed.  We sewed in one of the meeting rooms near the lobby.  It also has a summer camp, and we were there along with 300 teenage campers.  They were elsewhere on the grounds in cabins, but we did share the dining hall with them.  We were allowed to eat first, though.  The food was great.  The best part was that we could sew all we wanted, and then go upstairs and eat--drop off the dishes, and go right back down to sew again.

There were 13 of us attending and it was a great group of diverse quilters.  Most of the fun of a retreat is seeing what everyone else is making.

Susan worked on this fun arrow quilt.

This is Janice's Kaffe Fasset strip quilt, all laid out.  She didn't get it sewn together, though.

Here she is with her hedgehog block.

One of the ladie's was making this wonderful giraffe quilt.  It is made up of perfectly cut-out flowers from Kaffe Fasset fabric and others.  That newsprint fabric behind it is perfect.  I guess she got the pattern at Paducah and everyone was in love with all the patterns, so the group put in an online order right there from retreat!

Here is Janice and one of her Tennessee friend, Donna.  

Donna's roomate and best friend, Delight, made this great curved log cabin quilt.

Jackie worked on this batik quilt after she finished her bag, below.

This is Susan working away.

And me?  I worked for two days making these:

Sashings for my BC quilt.  I think I needed 40.  They took forever!  After I finished them, I began working on border units, but I didn't get them done.  When I realized I wouldn't finish the border pieces, I decided to use the sashings to put the blocks together.  (I brought the blocks with--I'd finished them already.)

This is the center of the quilt.  It's going to be king-sized when the border is completed.  You can see the bits I did get finished up at the top.  

We sewed all week until Friday morning.  We had to check out at 10.  We went back to the Cherry Pit quilt shop and hit a JoAnn fabrics, had lunch, and went to yet another quilt shop on the way back to Janice's cabin.  

Saturday morning, it was time to leave.  Just as we were loading the cars, it began to rain.  The rain accompanied me most of the way home.  It poured through all of Kentucky, but I made it home safe.

Have a great day!

JoAnne

The Final Days of the Retreat

Hi Everyone,

I'm back to fill you in about the last two days, Saturday and Sunday, of the retreat.  I was still working on my Talkin Turkey quilt.  On Saturday, I began assembling all the units for the blocks.

The block begins with a nine patch.  Those were easy enough, and I made all 30 that I needed.  The next step was to turn it on point by sewing 4 of the string-pieced triangles to each side.

After that step, the block looks like the one above.  Doing this step was actually a bit slow as I removed any tiny triangles that were left in the corners of the string-piecing to help control bulk.  I did get all 30 done.

The next step is to frame the block with all of those flying geese.  For the first 2 sides of the block, you sew 2 geese units with a rectangle in the center.

The third and fourth sides need a strip set like the one above but with two squares on each end.

I began making all of these strip sets with piles of geese, rectangles, and squares next to me.  Lots of things were going on, though, and we were visiting, etc.  The next thing I knew, I had sewn a whole lot of strip sets consisting of two geese with a square in between.  That would not work!  I had to rip.

Along about that time, I thought I would try to get half the quilt together, since I knew I wouldn't be able to get the whole thing done, so I framed only half (15) of the blocks.

This is what the completed block looks like.

Sunday morning, our last day, I borrowed a design wall and set about laying out half the quilt to see how it would look.

I was loving what I saw, but I realized that I had more construction to do.  I needed to sew two red squares to the end of the cream scrappy sashing strips.  That went quickly, mostly because I did only half of them.

Next I was going to sew the sashing strips to the sides of the blocks.  I picked up a sashing strip and a block and lined them up, and they didn't fit!  They were too short!  I did some measuring and checking and found that I had cut all of those scrappy cream sashing strips 9" long, not 9.5" long.  Ugh!!!  That was pretty much the end of my retreat enjoyment of Talkin Turkey!  I packed it up to work on at home and got out a few other things, but nothing really interested me after that.  I felt like I was cursed or something.

All in all, it was a really awesome retreat.  I also was realizing towards the end of it that I probably wouldn't be back to the next one, and that was sad, too.  I have made so many great quilting friends here in Virginia and it is going to be so traumatic to leave them this summer.

I haven't given up on Talkin' Turkey, though.  I started re-cutting sashing strips when I got home, but since then, I had to focus on my Blogger Girls BOM quilt.

Have a great day!
JoAnne

Retreat Day Two

Hi Everyone,

I'm back with more about our retreat.  If you follow me on Instagram, this is old news to you, although I am trying to share more pictures here.

Day two was last Friday.  The morning began on the most wonderful note, despite the fact that we didn't have the furnace on at our cottage and spent a very cold night.  When we arrived over at the activities building (where our sewing was going on) my first task was to trim up all of the string pieces I had finished the day before.  This meant squaring them up and in the case of the 5.5" squares, I needed to cut them in half diagonally and I needed to cut all of the 16 8.5 x 11" sheets into 3 8.5 x 3.5" rectangles.  Several of the ladies had been interested in the process the day before and I explained it, so I jokingly offered to let them attempt to remove the paper foundation to see how easy it is to do if you used a large needle and set the stitch length very small.  The next few minutes were magical.  About six or so of the ladies gathered around the cutting table, and as quickly as I could do the trimming, they all pulled out every bit of the paper!!  That would have taken me at least an hour, if not 2 or 3!  While we were working, we were visiting and discussing our night, etc. Honestly, it was one of the best quilting moments ever for me--quilters are so nice and the act of quilting in a group situation has so many blessings.

It doesn't look like much, but this is the result of all that work--my stacks of string piecing bits.

With that finished, the next thing I did was change my machine needle!  What a huge difference that made! My plan for Talkin' Turkey on day 2 was to tackle the flying geese.  I believe I needed 456 total geese.  Two hundred and a few (I can't remember the exact number right off) necessary for the blocks, required cream-colored "geese" with red "sky" and the other 200+ (needed for the border) were the opposite:  red "geese" with cream "sky."

I got right to work, drawing the lines diagonally across the squares cut for the sky. I had done all of the cutting for this quilt back in January and didn't think to alter any of the cutting to allow for my favorite way to make geese:  with Monique Dillard's "Fit to be Geese" ruler.  The book instructs you to make the geese with what I call the "heart" method.  It is where you use one big square with 4 smaller squares and then you get 4 finished geese units.  At one point, the units look like hearts:  hence my nickname.  If you are confused, you can see a tutorial for the method here.  When we had the class on Talkin' Turkey with Bonnie Hunter, she shared 2-3 methods of making geese and some of the other attendees share a few more.  What is your favorite method?

I like using the Fit to Be Geese ruler but it requires you to cut a bit larger so that you can "square up" the units resulting in perfect flying geese every time.  Since I hadn't cut that way, I did figure out that if I used a really scant 1/4" seam allowance, I could still use the ruler to square up the small amount I needed.  I ended up tossing a couple of the really wonky ones, but all-in-all, I was quite pleased.

One of the other ladies had the BlocLoc flying geese ruler the exact size that I needed, so I borrowed it from her and I showed the group how to use both of them.  I love Monique's rulers because have the original and the mini ruler allow you to do almost every size of geese.  The blocloc rulers are only for one particular size, but it was easier to use--there is a channel underneath the ruler that "locks" it into place on the seam.  I needed much less downward force to hold the ruler in place as I trimmed.   Blocloc rulers are expensive though--I looked them up and the one I would need for this size:  1.5" x 3" finished was $18!

I was still trimming the first half of the 200 or so geese that I needed for the blocks when it was lunchtime.  We went to our friends' cottage.  There are 4 days at the retreat, and so 4 of us go together and each make one lunch for all 4.  It works great as we get much better lunches than if we all brought our own, and it is easy, too.  We decided during lunch to take a bit of a "field trip" into town to visit some antique shops.

At the first one, I was sorely tempted by this red painted firkin.

I thought the price was okay and even texted a picture to my husband to get his opinion.  He didn't reply, though, until after we left the shop.  I am just having a difficult time buying anything when our lives are in such limbo with not knowing where we are going to end up in a few months!

None of us bought anything in that shop, but it was fun to look.  We had parked by a typical small-town drug store and it looked like it had some fun gift items in the window, so we wandered in to look around.  I went around the corner and found this:

An original 1930s era soda fountain!!!  Isn't it fun with those "bump out" counters?  I showed the others and even though we were still fairly full from lunch, nothing would do but to have some sort of treat there, right?  I totally wanted a chocolate ice cream soda, and Linda also had one.  Janice got a root beer float, and Lorna had an ice cream cone.  The employees were so sweet and took pictures of us with all of our cameras--in different locations.

My ice cream soda. 

We went to 2 more antique shops and the last one had a tempting item for me, as well.

I've been wanting one of these large, "walking wheel" spinning wheels for years, and when I inquired about the price, it was really good!  Some of the parts are missing, though, but the "deal breaker" was our future.  If I had my "forever house" and knew I had a spot for it, I would have bought it, but I don't.  I also shared this photo with my husband and he was really funny.  Instead of the usual "Where would you put it" all I got were diversionary texts that read "I thought you were supposed to be quilting?" and so forth.

We finally got back to the quilting room around 3:30 or 4.  I finished trimming the geese and began working on the second batch of those same geese.   I got all 200 plus geese done for the blocks that day, but I didn't even start on the border geese!  It was at that point that I realized I wasn't going to get the quilt done while at retreat.  More important, though, I had a lot of fun with my friends!

After supper on each night, we played "Left, Right, Center" with 2.5" fabric strips.  If you aren't familiar with the game, here is a youtube video.  In the video, they are playing with dollar bills--I've played that way in a large group before at a bunco game, and it is fun, but playing with the fabric strips is fun, too!  In either case, I think the bigger the group playing--the better!

The camp store at the retreat had the dice, so I bought myself a set.  I think it will be fun to play at family get-togethers, etc.  The game comes with chips, so you don't have to play for something.  One of the ladies said that she gets gift cards when she plays with family.  They use the chips and whoever wins the "pot" at the end gets a gift card.  At the next retreat, we decided to all bring a fat quarter and put them into the pot and then play with the chips--the winner will get all the fat quarters.  We had 18 playing, so for our games, the winner got 54 strips (3 per player), but next time, the winner will get 18 (or however many attendees play) fat quarters.

In case you are wondering, I didn't win.  Neither did any of the gals in my bee, but a few got close!  It was tremendously exciting!  After the game, thunderstorms and bad weather moved in, so we all stayed at the lodge longer than usual until the worst of them passed.  We didn't get anything severe, though, just pouring rain with some thunder and lightning.

I'll be back tomorrow to share the Blogger Girls BOM post!  More on the retreat later.  I actually have to run finish my second BOM block--I've been so busy this month playing around and traveling that I haven't finished yet!  Yikes!

Have a great day!
JoAnne

Retreat Day One

Hi Everyone,

(Oops, I started writing this yesterday and then I needed to charge my laptop and never finished and posted!)

I got back from my retreat late Sunday afternoon, and boy was it a great one!  There were 18 wonderful quilters in attendance and one couldn't ask for a group of more wonderful quilters.

This was at the same place as we had our last retreat (back in January when it was really, really cold)--the Beth Page Camp/Resort.  This time there was much more activity around the grounds--back in January it was just us.  The weather was pretty near perfect, aside from the thunderstorm that we had on Friday night.

My friend, Janice, and I  left home at 7 AM and arrived around 8:30.  We did not use GPS this time, thinking we surely would remember the way, but of course, we didn't!  I think we were the first car to arrive other than the ladies who organized the whole thing.  We unloaded all of our sewing stuff and carried it in.  (My husband took all of the seats out of my van, and we had the entire back loaded.  I should have gotten a picture.)

In no time, we got set up.  We are such creatures of habit that we took the same tables we had last time!

That is all my stuff in the front, and Janice at her table next to it.  I have just one question for all of you.  If you have ever gone to a retreat, has anyone attending ever run out of projects to work on? I think we all take way too much stuff!

My goal was to finish my Talkin Turkey quilt that I began with Bonnie Hunter.  I thought it was pretty ambitious, but it didn't stop me from bringing along a few other projects.  Day one was spent doing the string piecing.  I needed to cover over a hundred 5" squares (cut from a phone book) as well as 16 full sheets of printer paper.  

This was our snack table.  It was still pretty full when we finished on Sunday!  We sure didn't starve.

For some reason, I can't get my pictures from my phone to "right themselves," but after lunch we went for a walk along the dock and then around through the camp ground.  It was such pretty weather!

At this retreat, we provide our own breakfast and lunch in our cottages and they cook supper for us.  Thursday night was homemade tomato soup and grilled cheese.  It was yummy.

During the course of the day, I emptied three bobbins and nearly finished the fourth, but just before 10 pm, I finally finished all of the string piecing!  My machine was tired and so was I.  Stitching on paper foundations really dulls the needle.  I left the trimming for morning and we went back to our rooms for the night.

I'll tell you more next time!

JoAnne

My Second Retreat Project and... Squirrel!

Hi Everyone,

(By now I hope that everyone gets that "Squirrel!" reference.  It comes from the movie Up and came about when the dog, Dug, would be talking away about something and suddenly his attention would shift to thinking he saw a squirrel.  It is the classic "I got distracted" line.)

Anyway, I'll get to the squirrel later--first I want to share my second project from retreat.  A couple weeks ago, I got an email from a quilting friend with a link to one of the Missouri Star Quilt Shop Tutorials on Youtube.  Have you ever watched any of these or tried any?  I've watched many, but haven't tried one until I saw this one.

Oh my goodness, but these blocks looked like fun.  AND THEY ARE!  As it was, I had marked a Jo Morton quilt from her Banner Day book that I wanted to make, and it contained churn dash blocks, so I decided to make it, but use these pinwheel churn dash blocks instead.  I made 4 HSTs that I trimmed to 3.25" so that when I sewed them into a pinwheel block, the resulting block measured exactly 6 inches.  I cut them into 2" segments and when I finished, the blocks finished at 4.5"

The blocks are so cute and so much fun to make!

The next step was to set them on point.

And then border the completed top.  (And make sure to photograph my toes, too.  Oh--that reminds me of a great hint for retreats--take your slippers!)

Here is a closeup of the border fabrics.  I have a pretty extensive Patriotic fabric collection (I know--that surprises you!) but some of them are tricky to use because of the color or pattern.  I've had both the flag stripe and the eagle fabrics for quite a while but they never seem to fit in any other project.  I began this project with them to finally get a chance to play with them.  

I have plans to revisit those churn dash pinwheel blocks, though.  They are addictive.

Squirrel!

Yesterday, out of the blue, I clicked on the Temecula Quilt Co's blogpost and promptly fell in love!  I was smitten.  They had a free pattern for the most wonderful Valentine Quilt.  Before I knew it, I was making the cutest little hearts ever.  Does that ever happen to you?  You have absolutely no idea you want to make a quilt and then you see a pattern and you can't get into your sewing room fast enough?   I expect I'll be working more on it today.  Yesterday was a treat!  We woke up to 6" of snow and the news that everything was closed down--including the Army--so my husband got to stay home all day!  Today there is a two hour delay for him and the schools are still closed.  I was supposed to have a meeting today but now I have the whole day free to play with hearts!

I'll be back next time with the last retreat project.  It was more challenging that the others.

Have a great day!

JoAnne

My First Retreat Project and a Major Event

Hi Everyone,

As soon as I arrived at the retreat, I jumped right in working on my first project.  I've been really excited about this pattern since it came out last fall.

The pattern is called Lincoln's Promise and is by Patchalot.  Patchalot is the company name for Marcie Patch, from whom I took a class a year ago last fall and has now become a good blog/instagram/facebook friend.  You can find it here.

Marcie made her version in black and cream and red.  She used a pack of Pam Buda's American Gothic for the blacks and creams.  I had my own fat quarter collection of the same fabrics and planned to use them.  Then I had an inspirational flash!

In my stash, I had a fat quarter of this fabric.  It is from the Gettysburg line by Kensington Studios for Quilting Treasures.

In the entire fat quarter, there was only one complete portrait of Lincoln, but it would be the right size for my need, so I fussy-cut it.

I used triangles of this wonderful red paisley fabric to make a square-in-a-square block.  I love how the paisley plays with the frame and other trim around the portrait!

I didn't think black was going to work with this as well as brown, so I made the decision to change to brown fabrics and pulled as many as would match from my stash and also a bunch of cream background fabrics.  I did the precutting at home and packed up the pattern, this center block and my other pieces into a baggie for the retreat.

I did get to make four flying-geese units, but the rest of the quilt top was half triangle squares.  I felt like I would be trimming HSTs all day!

Once I got them all trimmed and ready to sew, I did get a little frustrated with the seams.  I really don't like pressing points into the seam allowance, so I fussed and clipped many of the seams so there wouldn't be big lumps of bulk on the back.  

I also "pinwheeled" as many of the seams as possible.

Finally, by the end of the night, I had my first project complete!  (I just had to add the outer red border the first thing the next morning.)

Lincoln's Promise

(I'm not exactly sure what Marcie had in mind about "the Promise" but I think Lincoln is promising that you will spend ages trimming HSTs!)

I love how Marcie has you scatter a few red triangles among the brown ones.  I really love this quilt and can't wait to get it quilted and bound.

As for the Major Event, the retreat was overlaid with a bit of a family crisis.  My younger sister was expecting and the baby was due on March 4.  It had been a difficult pregnancy.  With both this one, and her first (resulting in my 8 year old niece) she suffered from terrible morning sickness for the full duration of the pregnancy.  But the day before the retreat began, she had a routine OB appointment, and her blood pressure was so high that the doctor admitted her to the hospital.  They began IV medication and got the pressure to come down a bit.  We hoped that would be good and she could come home.  However, when they tried the oral medication, she was so sick that she couldn't keep it down.  Meanwhile, they were running other tests (I'm not going into all the personal details here) and it became obvious that she had preeclampsia.   By Friday night, her condition was deteriorating too much and the decision was made that even at 5 1/2 weeks early, the baby had to come out.  They induced, as the doctors thought a regular birth would be better than surgery and on Saturday around noon, my little nephew was born!  

He weighed 5 lbs, 11 oz and was 20" long.  He was such a little miracle!  He needed time under the warmers, but spent the first night in the regular nursery and didn't have to be in the NICU at all.  We were so relieved.

He was discharged from the hospital on Monday, but my sister was still having issues with her blood pressure.  (If you remember and are Downton Abbey fans, Preeclampsia is what caused Sybil to die after having her daughter.)  My sister finally got to go home yesterday afternoon! 

I was sharing all of this with the ladies at the retreat and we all were praying and we all celebrated, and we all cooed over the pictures.  It was nice to have support through it all.  Quilters are the most wonderful people out there!

Next time I'll be talking about my second retreat project.

Have a great day!

JoAnne



The Retreat

Hi Everyone,

I had a really great time at my retreat.  My friend and roommate, Janice, and I left bright and early on Thursday morning.  We could arrive as early as 8am, so we left around 7.  The retreat was held at a resort campground about an hour north of here, and was situated on an inlet of the Rappahannock River--with access out to the Chesapeake Bay.  Because it is the "off season," we got some really good prices!  We rented onsite "cottages" and set up our machines in the large activity center.  This is the first year that the campground is trying winter rentals, and it just happened to be unseasonably cold when we were there, so they really got a test of how things could be!  The cottages are essentially smallish mobile homes, but permanently attached and with decks, etc.  They weren't very well insulated, though!  The first night many people were a bit cold, but we figured out how to tweak things the rest of the time (brief showers, for instance) and so we adapted!

Janice and I were the third and fourth to arrive, out of a group of 15 of us.  The campground had already had quilters, so they had the table set up perfectly--including having tables up on risers for cutting and pressing! 

This was my area, all set up.  Two tables were placed together to be stations for two quilters.  Janice was on the other side of our table.

 

They had lemonade, tea, water, ice, and hot water available all day for us.  We had an enormous table for snacks, too.  Having retreated with this same group once before, I was sure that there would be plenty of food, but I was amazed by the amount of goodies.  To say that we could have eaten as much as we sewed is pretty accurate!

 

 

The campground contracted a caterer to provide us with our supper each evening, but lunch and breakfast were up to us to have in our cottages.  Breakfast was easy enough, but for lunches, Janice and I got with two of our other friends who went and were roommates and each of us provided a lunch meal for all four.  The first day was my turkey soup and a salad, the second day Robin served us curried chicken salad, Janice had sloppy Joes, and on the last day, we ate Trish's chicken chili.  It worked out brilliantly!  We had hot, delicious lunches with a minimum of effort. 

 

Since the group organizers know all about the quantity of snacks and other goodies, they asked for our suppers to be light--we didn't need big, heavy meals.  We had three really tasty, gourmet salads with yummy, homemade bread with two of them, and hot, French onion soup with another.  While they were really delicious, I think we all would have been happier with hot soup for each meal--it was really cold outside!

 

Over on the snack table, the hit was this:

 

This Skinny Pop popcorn was awesome!  It isn't greasy and has just the right amount of salt, and more importantly--tastes really fresh and not preserved at all.  Can you see how there are only 39 calories per cup?  That sounds great until you realize that you're on your third cup of the day! Anyway, it came from Costco.  I don't have a membership, but that may change soon!

The other really popular item was something Janice brought along.

 

 

 

 

This is a photo from Amazon--I never did get a picture of anyone wearing it.  I think if Janice had rented it out by the hour, she could have paid for the retreat and had money left over.  But, of course, she just lent it out to anyone who needed it, and it really did make the rounds.  One of the other ladies also had one.  It is a heating pad made for the neck and shoulders.  If you are interested, you can find out more details here.  One of the other ladies led us in doing some Yoga stretches to help keep our backs and necks strong and "not quite as sore" as four (well, 3 1/2) days of sewing can make them.

 

We could stay as late as we wanted to sew.  The workers locked the doors after supper, and the last people to leave made sure the doors shut firmly and the lights were off.  We usually stayed until sometime between 10 and 11.  We were never the last ones to leave, but at least half of the others were gone before us.

 



 This is my bedroom--it was a queen-sized bed, but the room was really small.  It didn't matter, though.  I was only there to sleep!

This is the front of our cottage!  See the snow?  It had snowed on Tuesday night as was still there on Friday morning when I took this picture.  In fact, there was still quite a bit when we left on Sunday.  It is unusual for snow to stay around so long here.  Yesterday it got up to the sixties--melting it all away but then a cold front came through last night and we are supposed to get another dumping today and tomorrow!

This is the view out the windows of the activity center.  You can see the water and it was all really pretty.  It would have been wonderful to go for walks and explore, but it was just too cold and slippery.  We have booked it again in April, though, and it should be gorgeous out then!

The activity room was unlocked each morning at 8.  Janice and I were always the first to arrive.  Isn't it great when friends/roommates have similar schedules?  Janice drove us down and the cottages were too far away to walk, so I guess I was really lucky that we have the same schedules!

Here are some pictures of the projects the other ladies were working on.  My biggest regret at every retreat is that I don't manage to take pictures of all the gorgeous projects!

This is Janice's Virginia Tech inspired quilt for a wedding gift

 

 

This is Trish's aqua batik quilt.  She got it mostly sashed together by the time we left.  Everyone loved the color!

We could stay until 5pm on Sunday, but one person left Saturday afternoon, and others started packing up first thing in the morning.  We stayed about and hour after lunch and then started packing up.  I got home around 4.  My husband carried all my stuff back upstairs and then I fell asleep on the couch for about a half and hour.

I was lazy yesterday and managed to get the laundry done, but little else.  Today I need to go to my sewing room and put everything away.  I will share the projects that I made the rest of this week.

Have a great day!
JoAnne