Retreat Progress

The retreat was a blast! We had fun with the games and a few people went home with some awesome prizes  such as the Kim Diehl blocks, two jelly roll race quilts and someone donated the cutest little quilt. Maybe next year I'd be so lucky. We all had fun regardless of what we came home with.

I made a little progress on my scrappy sewalong blocks. I'm so slow making these but will keep at it until I'm done.

I put together these blocks that will become a tabletopper for the spring and summer.

Sashing has been added to my HST's blocks from Pam Buda's sewalong. Mine will be larger as the blocks are 8" finished. I think the final size will be 48" square. I'm waiting for a border fabric to arrive. I ordered 2 different fabrics in hopes that one will be right.

We had a fun night of curling and pizza with friends last night. Our first time, might give it a go again sometime.

Happy Quilting!

Scrappy 4 Patch and More

Here is the scrappy 4 patch laying out. I didn't have a pattern for the finished quilt. These are double 4 patch blocks with added sashing. I had fun coming up with this layout. The original inspiration was similar to this little quilt I made. I hope this answers some questions.

Getting ready for my retreat in a couple of weeks, these churn dash blocks will go in a draw. Some lucky person will have a good size quilt with about 40 blocks in the draw. This quilt is in one of Kim Diehl's books.

Happy mail this week, this was a left over Christmas gift and partly thanks to a wonderful friend. Thanks Darlene,  something a little different for me. I'm going to have some fun!

Happy Quilting! 

Retreat Progress

 

I'm so happy with my progress last week at the retreat. I'm all caught up on my mystery BOM using pretty fabrics. I didn't touch the civil war BOM but that's okay.

We all had a great time......sewing, eating, chatting, playing games, sewing, eating, walking, sewing and mostly having fun with great friends. This is a small group I meet with twice a month, they are a wonderful group friends...I only wish it didn't go by so fast.  Edenvale retreat center really spoiled us with their home made meals, desserts and snacks.....this is the only time I have dessert twice a day......after lunch AND dinner.....talk about being spoiled.

 

Stella brought along few bags patterns and got us excited about making a bag or two.  The red bag she supplied the fabrics (and I love it) and the bright colourful bag was some fabric I purchased at a quilt shop on the way to the retreat. I didn't have a plan for the fabric and making the bags worked out great. I'm going to make more for gifts.

 

My main goal was to make a big dent in my daughters quilt. She picked all the Kaffe Fasset fabrics over a year ago and I felt bad I hadn't even started her quilt. The picture only shows half of the quilt, it's a queen size. She is going to see it today, I hope she'll still love it as much as when she picked the fabrics.

 

A close up of the fabrics. I think she did wonderful at picking the colours. The only thing left to do is the 2" border of the green and it's done! I'm so excited I was able to piece the whole thing at the retreat.

Happy Quilting!

Fun Weekend!

We had a wonderful weekend retreat, sorry my camera didn't make it out of my bag this time. There was 17 of us and what a fantastic group of ladies, we laughed all weekend and played a silly game each day,....of course......I didn't win anything.....don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining one bit......I had such a fun time.  The accommodations were great, the food was "to die for", so delicious and home cooked. The Edenvale Retreat centre employees really know how to pamper us.

Here is the sewing I accomplished over the weekend. I decided working on little quilts would give me that instant gratification of completing something.

This is an older Kathy Schmitz panel that's been in my sewing room for a long time. It was long over due to be made into something, I added the small blue border with cornerstones and the outer black border with blue corners. A friend gave me the idea to finish this little quilt using pearl cotton and the "big stitch" quilting, I think it will really suit this quilt.

This is a Lori Smith pattern, I bought the pattern and fat quarters as a kit on my LA trip. I'm still deciding if I should add the top border, the pattern doesn't have this border in the instructions. The binding is blue so that might finish it off.

My second little quilt using the Lil Twister ruler, these are very addictive. This was a charm pack called Max and Whiskers, really fun group of fabrics.

I started stitching Pacific Patchwork new free BOM called Home Sweet Home. This is block one done in brown and a little pink. So that's it for my weekend away. 

 Today was a beautiful sunny day so I took these pictures from my front porch.

Keep on Stitching. 

I Love Retreats!

I just couldn't resist giving this little heart a try, to quote Cheryl, "blogland is so full of temptation and I have no willpower!" My heart is 8" finished and Chery's, is 6" finished.....so tiny. You can see her layout here, to make your own little sweet heart using the teeny tiny twister ruler. Cheryl has also posted a Lucky Charm using this ruler,  another cute one to temp me.....AGAIN!


My bags are packed and I have all my projects ready to work on. I'm taking off tomorrow for a quilting retreat here. No cooking, no cleaning and no washing.......sew, sew all day and just show up for delicously served meals.


Happy Quilting!

Weekend Update

Quilting retreats are so much fun, not only do you get to spend the weekend with other quilters who are just as passionate about fabric and quilting as you are, but they spoil you with goodies too. Here are some of the goodies given to each person at the retreat. One of the ladies made two potholders for each person, I love the green potholders I received. I can see there are a few things missing....the obvious item being chocolate, there's only one little chocolate nibble left and I gave the cookies to my DH. Also missing is a piece of reproduction fabric that I've already made into 9 patches.

Why does that pink fabric look orange....Grrrr....I need to learn how to take better pictures. This fabric is from the new Fig Tree line, I'm using two charm packs to make these stars. Not sure yet how many I can make, I'll keep making them until I run of of squares.

This project has been sitting in my closet for a very long time. I was hoping to get the top assembled but forgot there are six ladybugs to applique on the background squares and I wasn't sure if I liked the red fabric I had....so it all came to a screeching halt. I'd like to add the ladybugs before putting the top together.

I have to take a new picture of the wool block I was working on, so hopefully I'll have that ready for the next time.

Happy Quilting, until next time.

Show and Tell

A few pictures from the one day retreat last weekend.

These flower blocks are made of wool, just gorgeous.

Happy Quilting.

Sat I had the most awesome day of sewing. This was a one day retreat hosted by Maureen owner of Creative Edge Quilt Shop (no website). Actually I've had a couple of good sewing days last week. I started the blocks for this little topper at my stitching group and now it's ready for quilting. It's a Schnibbles pattern called Hot Cross. And then Sat I started a new quilt by making these basket blocks, another quilt pattern from my newest favourite book called Scrap Basket Surprises. Here is the first quilt I made from this book.

I have to tell you Maureen is a wonderful host, she had all our needs and wants taken care of including a gift for each person and prizes throughout the day. She also cooked the most delicious Greek dinner. She must have been cooking for days to feed all us hungry quilters. It was a wonderful day! The next post I'll show a few pictures of the show and tell.

Happy Quilting. Until next time.

Watermelon Friends

I'm still pooped after my retreat weekend, trying to get caught up with a few things around the house. The treat was incredible, being at a fancy hotel is so worth the extra cost. The Harrison Hot Springs Resort has natural hot springs and the hotel sit on a gorgeous lake with snow capped mountains all around, such beautiful surroundings. It's the only hotel I've seen people walking through the lobby in robes all hours of the day. The hotel supplies robes and the guests walk outside for a warm dip, we went every night before bed and sometimes we even went back and did more sewing after our dip in the hot water. The day before we arrived there was a big snowfall, I was a little worried we wouldn't get to go with all the snow but the next day the roads were clear and dry. It was a fun and relaxing.

Here is my finish for the weekend, I had some of the blocks done ahead of time but still needed to make about 35 more at the retreat. I'm so happy with how it turned out. I also managed to sqeeze in a couple of small projects, a toiletry bag and cupcake pincushions which I'll have to show another day since I didn't take pictures of these yet. I brought along another quilt to work on but that didn't even come out of the bag. Oh well...it will remain a UFO for a little longer.

Forgotten Projects

I just love how blogging has given me incredible inspiration to do some things that I have long forgotten. I purchased hand dyed wool to make the strawberry basket from Need'l Love's book called Strawberry Threads at least a couple years ago now. I looked at that wool and fondled it for a long time and then I guess things got moved around and put away, which made me loose interest in the project I planned. This week KnotGarden showed us her strawberries from the very same book, well she inspired me to get the stuff out of it's hiding place and get going on it again. I made 3 strawberries yesterday and cut out most of the pieces for the basket. Isn't this exciting.....

Here is the table topper I made with Roman Holiday charm pack while on my retreat. I carefully didn't show the girls at the retreat because I'm undecided on whether it looks good or not. Using all the fabrics in the charm pack without adding a focal fabric makes it look really busy. Besides the fabric line has showed up in stores yet, not in my area anyway. Any comments good or bad is much appreciated. I think maybe it'll be a good table topper.

Back Home Again

The drive to Naramata was spectacular, we saw several deer and a black bear along the drive, sorry didn't get pictures. We arrived Sun afternoon and were greeted by the ladies from Edmonton. Three of the ladies drive 10 hours the Saturday before and then another 2 hours Sunday just to come to the Naramata retreat. They also stopped to pick up Louise, she founded Quiltaholics 30 years ago, and is now 83. She moved away from our area and can't attend the regular Tuesday meetings anymore, so it was really nice for her to come. After our hugs and hello's we got straight into quilting. A typical day was up early for breakfast, take a walk before it gets too hot, sew, laugh, eat lunch, sew, sew, a drink for happy hour, eat dinner and sew, laugh, and sew some more. We did get some sleep in there as well. And little break for shopping at Poppins Quilt Shop on Wed.

Here is a view of the building we sewed in, it's directly across from the beach.
We had somewhat of a view of the lake from our sewing room, the lake is behind those trees.
I was very happy to have completed more than half of my Double Wedding Ring blocks. They still need to be trimmed but I'm very happy to have so many done. I also worked on my redwork and a little bit of knitting. I'll show the redwork later when I get it made into something, maybe another bag is on the horizon :-)
The Quiltaholics have a challenge each year for the retreat. This years challenge was to make a quilt using only 2" x 3 1/2" rectangles which is from the book Successful Scrap Quilts. All the quilt pictures below are using this one rectangle, it's unbelievable how different each one turned out. I didn't have the book so I just couldn't get the inspiration to make one.









I'm off to take care of a sick cat, Jenny managed to hurt her paw while I was away. Took her to the vet yesterday and they needed to put her under to remove the nail. Just before I left for the retreat she was at the vet for a kidney infection, so she's really not feeling well. Poor little Jenny, she's getting old. This summer she will be turning 15 years old.

Sneak Peek and Retreat

What's this? I'm working on a bag for a Dear Friend and this is something to get her excited. I don't want her to see it yet, so I'm teasing with a sneak peek before is all completed. I will be finishing this at retreat next week and then I can send it to her. Speaking of retreat I think I should be packing. Gotta go and get ready. Have a great week!



I couldn't resist sharing this Iris growing in my garden.

Off to Retreat with my Bags.....

Something you don't know about me is I have an obsession with making bags. I LOVE bags of all shapes and sizes. I find them fun and challenging to make, when I'm done I have something that I can use for various outings. I don't go out and purchase bags, only make them.
I don't know why this bag has been a UFO for about a year now, other than I couldn't decide if I wanted to put on fabric handles or the leather handles I've already purchased. Shouldn't be such a hard decision but I couldn't make up my mind, so there it sat. I'm leaving for my 5 day retreat on Sunday so this is the time to stop procrastinating, which BTW is another thing I do often. I seem to wait until the last minute to get things done. I always have lots of time to complete what I've been procrastinating about and get it done well but I put it off as long as possible.
I use this bag the most for going to retreats. The bag has a square bottom and sides that stand up, it will hold most of my project and sometimes I can even fit the rulers in. I call this my Flower Bag and also use this for taking to classes.

This is a Bareroots pattern and I just love it. I can use this when I'm taking my quilts for show and tell at my stitchery group meetings. I use this bag a lot.
I like this bag for taking along small stitchery projects, such as redwork and embroidery of any kind. The bag is made from Charm Squares and it's called 17 Patch Bag. When not holding my stitchery I can also use this as a toiletry bag, it holds my tooth brush etc.
And here is my knitting bag, well it's become my knitting bag since I started knitting last Feb. I had a really big urge to knit socks so I took a class and since Feb I've made 5 pairs and still love it.

So there you have it my collection of bags. I'm sure there are a couple more I've missed but these are the one's I use the most. I hope you enjoy them.

Have a great week, I'll be in wine country on a 5 day retreat.