Retreat : recap one

I have so much to share with you, I'll break my final retreat post into a couple days.  I don't want to leave out a single, fun photo or moment.

Perhaps it was the fact that this was my first quilt retreat, or that all ten of the other women there just amazing, but I can not imagine a more awesome retreat.

(seriously, I've been gushing about it for the last two days to whomever I can get to listen!)



As everybody arrived Friday afternoon, we uncrammed our packed cars and started loading up the retreat center.



By evening we filled eight banquet rounds and a big rectangle table with an amazing variety of machines and quilty stuff.

Karen had a cool tilted base-thing so that her sewing surface is at perhaps a 10-15deg angle.  And Flaun had a Horizon that I tried not to drool on, along with Amanda's screamin' fast Juki (no fancy stuff, not even a zigzag, but as she said, it has two modes - fast and faster!)



Melinda's cool, vintage Kenmore doesn't have a quilting platform, so she improvised.

With yoga blocks, a few books including e.e.cummings, cardboard, and packing tape....It was super Zen!

After a yummy dinner of tacos and cupcakes (mmm!) we sat together to introduce ourselves more formally with some show & tell and flimsies.



I brought a few, including this dutch pinwheel I made a couple years ago with Snippets turnovers and a bit of stash.  We decided that proudly stippling it and a scrappy binding would be the way to go.

(I love to stipple, and I'm going to own that I'm proud of it - even though it kind of feels like stipple is trending 'out' in blog land lately) 



Melinda's string quilt.  Amazing. Oh, and she brought her voile quilt top as well - too busy gaping at it's wonderfulness to take a photo.  Go visit it....



Flaun had the most awesome aqua suitcase full of stuff.  She's a hoot and has made some cool stuff - you should check out her blog.

Melinda, Amanda, and the rest of us talked over lots of quilting ideas for all the flimsies we brought.



I brought my Figgy Pudding table cloth/quilt to sleep under.  Bummed I didn't take any photos of it in my nice room.

We over-talked.  By a whole big bunch.  It was just too much fun.

So the first class that Amanda was going to do for us go put off until Saturday morning - probably best not to start learning at 10:30 the first night!



That was perfect for me, as I had fallen in love with this quilt by Amanda.  She had been at a book signing the night before, and had all her quilts along - lucky us!

Amanda is truely the queen of scrap quilting.  But I have struggled with it.....How do you get the above out of a bin like this:



So, late Friday night I asked and Amanda happily dove into my bin and taught me how to do it.

Being an engineer to the core, I really just needed SOME basic process, other than - sew scraps together.  Her little improvised lesson was perfect.

Then it was off to bed a little before midnight - we had a big day planned for Saturday.  I was hyped up on caffine....

Diet Dr Pepper and Iced coffee - the drinks of the champion quilters :)

And had my new scrap-piecing skills churning in my head.  I tossed and turned, finally waking up at 4:30am.  I tried really hard to sleep some more, as we weren't starting until 8:30, but I gave up at 5 and hopped into the shower. 



I was up alone, so headed out back for some yogurt.  With the red winged blackbirds, and the sweet grass smell, it was a wonderful start.

Then I dove back into my green bin to try blocks by myself.



And I did it!!  By the time others started joining me around 7:30, I was super excited and waving my green blocks for all to see.



Amanda had started parts of these, and I just ran with it until the call for breakfast came at 8:30.



This one I did all by myself.

After breakfast we start the real lessons - and first up would be using a walking foot.....