Retreat time!

I love going on quilting retreats.

You plan, you pack (usually way too much), you sew to your heart's content, you get fed, no one bothers you, you're spending time with friends  and you just plain old have a good time. 

I tried going this time with less stuff.

It's so tiring to have to drag my heavy Elna to retreats so I purchased some spacers for my Sew Eze table so that I could take my featherweight.

The table still needed adjusting, but it worked out well in the end.

I'll have to admit that I was a bit afraid of taking only  the featherweight, which I have rarely used.  What if something happened to it while I was away from home and then I couldn't sew?  Well, I ended up taking my Elna but vowing NOT to take it out of the car unless there was an extreme need to do so.  I know, crazy, huh?  I will say that the featherweight served me well though. 

I did lots of cutting of fabric before leaving.  I had a whole bag of neutral strings for one of the Bonnie Hunter steps for the Hunter's Star.

This was a regular sized grocery shopping bag full of strings.  I came home with it less than half full after making all these string blocks.

Another section  (we're talking hundreds here) was completed while at retreat, too.

These are the ones that lean to the left.  There's a whole pile leaning to the right that need to be pressed first.

I did get one block put together just to get a look at it, but I was told that you can't really tell until you get at least four put together.

Four will be coming soon.  Right now this just looks like a jumbled mess.  We'll see how it goes.

For now I am spending what seems like an enormous amount of time tearing foundation paper off the backs of all my string blocks.  Then I will be able to start sewing blocks together.  No......there are about 400 hst that need to be pressed and trimmed to size.   Oh well, soon enough.

Also, prior to retreat I  cut a bunch of 2 1/2" squares for a charity quilt that I was going to work on, but then I found I couldn't get it off the design wall without messing it up so I ended up sewing some of it together before retreat.  The rest of it got pieced while I was there.

It's not my favorite color combination, but I was looking through the stash  trying to determine what I had a lot of  as I wanted at least 25 different fabrics for the heart.  It's going to be a charity quilt.  My friend Sharon has made several of these.  She's made them in  red, pink, turquoise , gray  and yellow.  They were all very pretty, but the brighter colors really stand out.  Mine is a bit subtle. Not enough contrast with the background.  I'll do this one again, but in a brighter color.

Since coming home, this is all ready layered with a backing and waiting to be quilted.  Pics of it coming soon.  

Sharon worked feverishly on her Bonnie Hunter quilt and got the top done while at retreat.  I love her reds. 

(I am working on the same quilt only in greens as spoken about above.)

Nancy was busy sewing, too.

If you look close enough, you can see  she brought her "new to her" purple featherweight.  It was so pretty and worked like a charm.  

She was working on a churn dash quilt that she designed.  I always love all her color combinations.

She was, also, working on a pink pixelated heart, but apparently I didn't get a picture of that one.

hmph….apparently I was too busy to take more pictures, but trust me....there was lots of progress being made by all 19 women that were at retreat.

I've been home a couple of weeks and am still going strong on getting things accomplished.  I sure hope to have something to show with the Bonnie Hunter quilt soon. We'll see how that goes.

P.S.  Before posting, my update on the Bonnie Hunter quilt is that I have torn the papers off of 240 string blocks and trimmed away excess triangles off of the 240 right and left chevron blocks.  Only have to work on the 480 hst that need ironing and trimming up.  "sigh".   After that is all done, I can start putting this quilt top together.