Retreat : recap two

Saturday  - Quilting Lessons



This was a sample that Amanda Jean brought along, and I super loved it. The herringbone is awesome, and I am especially drawn to straight line against curvy free motion.



Right after breakfast we dove into our first lesson.

It must be noted how wonderful the food was all weekend. There was a woman who worked for the retreat location who fed us amazing, fresh comfort food. Tacos with all the fixings, pancakes fresh fruit and 4 different syrups, pulled pork sandwiches with home made coleslaw and the best chocolate chip cookies ever. (she shared her recipe, too!) You get the picture...it was so fun to be working along and then you hear the call that the next meal is ready. You didn't have to make any of it, clean up, nor realize hours later that you had forgotten to eat :)

So, our first lesson covered basics and then ideas for walking foot quilting beyond plain straight lines. Even though I have quite a bit of quilting and walking foot experience, there were still new things to learn. Then, the fun of trying it out on our squares.



Had to do the herring bone on one of my blocks. As always though, I became bored with the straight line process, so I added a couple strategic gaps. I really like the look of straight lines, but have very little patience for the monotony. It was nice to be able to try them out on our 17" blocks instead of a whole quilt.



If we got stuck, Amanda Jean would help us out.



It didn't take long before we had stuff all over the place. I had commandeered the couch behind me as well was my table.


A close-up of a favorite section on Amanda Jean's quilt.

In the afternoon we switched over to free motion. I was excited to get ideas and learn some patterns beyond my standard stipple.

Some of my favorites:




I made this one up to look like dandelion seed heads flowing up and down the print.


And I was super proud of how my flowers turned out.



Karen, sitting at the table next to me, had an amazing ability to keep things in a straight line. Where I had to spend time measuring and marking guidelines, she was able to keep things straight and evenly spaced BY EYE!


Melinda turned her Echo into fabulous lily pads!

We spent a lot of time laughing - we certainly weren't a quiet bunch. Then there was quilter fun, like laughing about a spray bottle filled with Vodka Water.



A total groupie, this was some of the most fun...Amanda Jean would happily sit and demonstrate whatever free motion you were stuck on. It was the short video on her blog demonstrating stippling that got me started quilting 3 years ago.



I thought I would be done with my 20 squares on Saturday, but it was hard to decided between all the FMQ designs. So focused on my squares, I didn't even realize that Terry was talking photos at all that weekend until she posted them on our flickr page!



We would walk around and question Amanda Jean or survey each other when trying to decided which pattern to use on each block.



Way too soon the day was done, and I had been up since about 4:30, so I turned in before midnight. Final day would be learning to join up our blocks!