This was retreat weekend and I survived!  A not-so-local quilt shop hosts a few retreats each year, and we’ve started going to the November and February versions.  We were officially adopted by a small group of ladies at the retreat we attended last November, then we sat with them when we went in February as well.  This year’s theme was ‘Let’s Go Glamping’, so of course I had to take my Glamping quilt along to show the rest of the ladies.  They thought it was super cute!

I didn’t get as much accomplished at the retreat as I had hoped (isn’t that the way it always goes?).  I bound 2 quilts – a baby gift and the Noteworthy wallhanging I quilted a couple of months ago.  I also made 6 cinch bags with Noteworthy.  I’m keeping 2 of them for myself and giving the other 4 to a couple of lovely ladies I know.  Here they are:

Both Gret & I picked up some Riley Blake Think Pink yardage.  We’re going to make some cinch sacks we’ll use when traveling for dirty undies.  The fabric is just so darn cute, I couldn’t pass it up!  We’re going to modify the pattern we used for the Noteworthy sacks.  Math isn’t a strong suit for either of us, so we’ll see how this goes!

I also started working on my Bloom Bloom Pow project that I last worked on back in April.  Everything is all cut – I just needed to start putting it together, and I wanted some moral support for it.  Gret has hers finished (she bound it at the retreat), so I knew she would be a great resource if I had questions.  I ran into a big problem – in the instructions where Lee says ‘Offset about 1.5″…’, well, that 1.5″ wasn’t enough of an offset for the triangles when they were cut, so I have to un-sew about 8 or so sets. That bums me out a bit, but at least it wasn’t ALL of my sets.  And I know how far to offset it so that I don’t have any problems when it comes to cutting the triangles for the blocks.  I’m not sure how I ended up with strips shorter than they should have been, but we have a fix that will work, so I’m OK with it.  I had hoped to have everything sewn and all of my triangles cut before the end of the retreat, but that just didn’t happen due to my little setback.  Oh well.  I’m betting our retreat friends will be seeing this project at the retreat in February!

I also took along my Boo Crew that I had pre-cut into half hexies so that I could lay them out and start sewing them together for my first Halloween quilt.  I’m using Lori Holt’s Honeycomb pattern for this.  I had the forethought to pre-cut my layer cakes, but I didn’t even get to open my ArtBin that held that project!  So sad!  I figured I could just lay it out when I got home because I have plenty of floor space.  However, the kids have the trains out and there are train tracks in the spot I was going to use.  I guess my little project can wait for another day!

The 3rd project I took along was a jelly roll project using Noteworthy.  (Notice a Noteworthy pattern here??)  This is another project that never made it out of the bin. Gret assures me that the pattern I’m using is a very quick one (it’s a version of stacked coins), it’s a quick one to put together.  The quilt shop had brought along 4 different fabrics from the Noteworthy line and clearanced them out at 50% off on Saturday night, so I picked up another 5 yards of it.  🙂  I’m such a sucker for that fabric!  I have nothing planned to use it for, but that’s just fine.

WOW!  This got wordy!  I guess that’s because I had a lot to say after 3 days in front of my sewing machine!

Until next time…