The Ill-fated Retreat - Some Beautiful Work By My Retreat Mates

FIRST:  I want some newsprint fabric or fabric with words in columns like newsprint.  I have a niece graduation from International Journalism in the spring.  Any ideas?  

Ok.................

I love going on retreats, but this one was difficult because I was on the phone with either the nursing home or hospice.  And the only way to get phone service in the sticks was to stand in the field with the horses!

But I did get three tops done and the rest of the people did some fabulous work as well.

None of these are mine, but they are the talented work of my retreat mates!




Come back tomorrow and I will show you mine!

And you don't even have to show me yours!

Keep scrolling down!

Running and Packing

All I did today is run around doing errands, eat lunch with Ann and pack.  Oh, and grocery.  Make groceries, as they say in New Orleans. 

You really need to take all your favorite junk foods when you go on retreat.  I have lost 9 lbs and expect to gain some back over the weekend.  I have all good intentions of eating the yogurt I picked up today rather than the peanut M&Ms Paula is bringing to put on the table between us............
 

Obviously my E key is sticking this week.  Last week it was the C.  

I have 4 projects to work on.  Two are from Sujata Shah's Cultural Fusion, one is the Cats and the other is the Saints Quilt.  I should be able to get them all to top stage with no problems.  And at the moment, I am excited to work on them all.

At the last minute I tossed in the Hexie Box for busy work.  I still need to finish the Swissy raffle Quilt so I can bind it this weekend and get it off to Pat. 

Didja Miss Me?

You probably didn't really miss me since I had the posts scheduled to run each day, but I have been at a Quilt Retreat in the piney hills of mid-Louisiana just a tad below the Mississippi borderline.  We were just north of Jackson LA.  There was lots of sewing, lots of eating, even walking a mile every day on the trails in the woods.  It really is a great place to get a lot of work done!

 I made a pink asterisk for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge.  Renee
said it looked like Gumby, so this might just have to be my rainbow Gumby Quilt.  Maybe next month the color will be GREEN!  LOL  Remember Gumby and Pokey?  Yes, I am that old!

I finished this panel with some fabric from my mom's stash and a complimentary print I found on sale at one of the shop closings.

This is the son of the couple who runs the retreat center.  At 8, this is his 4th quilt.  He  became fascinated with quilts by seeing the guild retreats as he helped his parents with chores. 

These coasters were our group project on Saturday afternoon.  the foot of your wine glass fits  right in there

One of our walks took us over this wonderful covered bridge.

 And over this little creek.

   Here is the quilt kid with his dad riding horses.  They are a working farm family.

Joni and her Bonnie Hunter  Mystery Grand Illusions.

 Another walk on another trail took us through the pasture with this guy.

Charlene and her scraps just go together!

These  two just got back from a Quilt Cruise where they made these very Caribbean Quilts!

Barbara finished this table runner.

This was a group quilt we made for the manager of the last retreat house.  We changed venues last year and no longer go to that one.

 
Here is the Devil's Lense I have been working on.  I had a problem with all the seams coming together in the center.  My machine would not sew through the thickness.  So I changed it up a bit by putting a small strip of black as a sashing.  I need to see if I can find more black Dimples to put the blocks together.

Caroline was working on pink.

Here is another pink quilt someone was working on.

I got some pink foxes done for the rainbow scrap challenge.  A couple more later will be added.  I would never have thought pink and blue foxes would be a good thing.  But I LOVE them.

 This was the most spectacular quilt of the whole weekend.  She started this in the Karen Stone class  we had earlier in 2014.

Margie finished a BQ quilt.  I have this pattern.  It is fabulous for a large print you don't want to cut up.

Renee put this modern beauty together.  I love the greys with that splash of green circle fabric.

Another walk about the place.  Lots of trails, this was to the horse camp and fire circle.

Joni's greys!  Love love love this one

Debbie's Judy Neimeyer Cattails quilt.  Heavy hitting paperpiecing!  Yeah, baby.

Cynthia finished this cross stitch MacDonald's farm quilt.  So fabulous!

Lenni's  incredible jewel brights!

Retreat!

Drive to the retreat center

I was so excited.  It has been a few months since I have been to a retreat and I am so ready.  New year, new machine, new outlook and new projects to work on.  I am stoked.

deer out the back door by the lake

I spent all afternoon worrying about the weather and plotting the route I would take.  I was heading to the frozen north.  To the far reaches of the Louisiana pine forests.  I planned which quilts I had that were the warmest ones, although weather gurus said it would be towards 70 degrees by Saturday.  I was still thinking cold.  I washed all my fleece doggy pjs and stuffed them into my duffels.

Fall 2011

I combed through the fabrics all week and planned projects.  I get so much done at a retreat.  Non-stop sewing, cutting and piecing.  The weather alerts and freezing rain kept me inside until this afternoon when I hit the grocery store and bakery and breathed in luscious goodies and beautiful baked goods.  I stopped at the bakery and ordered a birthday cake for Paula, her day is Sunday.  Chocolate on chocolate with chocolate roses.  All ready for the ride north.

Alice needed more light so
she appropriated a lamp

The SUV is packed to the gills with warm things, sweet things and fabric things.  I was just settling down to take my bath, shave my legs and condition my hair for the weekend, when the phone rang.

Spring 2010

I figured it was Cynthia telling me when she was heading out, or Paula telling me when she was hitting the road, or maybe even Caroline telling me when she would motor off.

It was Cynthia, but with a more ominous declaration.

Seems the pipes burst last night at the retreat center and they didn't know that until they went  in today to set up for us. Cynthia had spoken with them yesterday and relayed to everyone that the electricity was on, the place was warm and waiting for us.  But the water gushed all night and all morning ruining the hall, room, main room making the place uninhabitable for us.

I was stunned.  I am sure everyone else was as well.  Cynthia said she had made chili for 20 of us and had a LOT of chili.  Hope she has a place in her freezer for it!

Cynthia

I am bummed.  No retreat and I have to do all this unpacking.  And it is a good thing too, because I realized at that time I had packed no socks!

At least we can eat all the food I made to leave for Frank for the weekend!  I don't have to cook for a week!  And since I cancelled all my duties, I can sew in my lonely room, all by myself and eat all the fudge and cookies I bought to make everyone else fat.

Pet Peeve

My totally trashed quilting room notwithstanding, my pet peeve for quilting .....  Yes, I have them in categories.  For instance, in Toastmasters my Pet Peeve is calling the lectern a podium.  Or vice versa. There is a difference, people.  But I digress.

My quilting pet peeve is is actually a redundancy. Someone will say :  cut a 4.5 by 4.5 square.  It is a mathematical given that a square is equal on all sides.  So it should be just : cut a 4.5'inch square.

The formula for a square is S=4l. Where S is the perimeter and l is the length of any side.

However, the carpenter's square certainly looks like a triangle.  Again, I digress.

So.

Use your accurate voice, please.

My other pet peeve is not being able to get blogsy working when I know millions of people with fewer number of degrees than I have already have done it.  That REALLY peeves me.

Here are a few RECTANGLE quilts from the retreat:


this is Cynthia and a quilt she is doing for a customer.  Cynthia loves to take people's ideas and let them buy the fabric.  She sews and creates beauty, gets some quilting in and enhances her bankroll.  I think she has the right idea.  Quilt on someone elses' money!

Here is Elana's Baby Girl Quilt.  She made several of them during the retreat.

Here is Connie, laying down on the job.  She did some ice dyeing and created this incredible piece overnight, with the deer watching on.






Now, here is Ellen's SQUARE

It went from this:

To this:

to this magnificent piece!




Now all she needs if 11 more!