Quilt retreat/Retreat Quilt

I have just returned from another wonderful quilting retreat in Dwellingup with the Perth Modern Quilting ladies.  It was somewhat warmer this time around, which meant there was more sitting around outside in the evenings, having a wine and a natter and soaking up the beautiful atmosphere and scenery.

I was too busy drinking and nattering so thank you Danielle for taking this gorgeous picture of us "hard at work"!

It wasn't always like this though.  There was a lot of sewing going on.  More of the hand variety than by machine on the first full day though as we lost power mid morning!  Fortunately it was restored during the afternoon so the sewing machines were humming once again.

Like many others I took many projects down with me but as with dessert, my eyes are always larger than my capacity and while I made good progress on some of them, others remained completely untouched.  Of course there were unanticipated completions too such as these foundation pieced blocks for one of the other ladies, who is making a "LOVE" quilt to donate to charity.

Not a great photo but you get the idea and hey, it was my very first attempt at foundation paper piecing!  I see more of this in my future for the odd project or bee...

I spent most of my time on two projects however, a small, naive style stitched quilting project (more on that when it is finished) and my piece de resistance - this quilt:

This is my first bee block. (It was a weekend of firsts!) As queen bee I had chosen a woven block design and requested it be done in yellows, greys and purples.  I received 10 blocks and made another 10 myself to make a decent sized lap quilt.  I made 8 of those blocks the first afternoon of the retreat.  When the power was on on Saturday I pieced the top and on Sunday I made the backing (that rich violet material with a slash of gold material which isn't visible), sandwiched the quilt, quilted it and bound it!  Phew.

During the process I liked it, fell in love with it, fell out of love with it, never wanted to see it again and then fell in love once more.  To such an extent it is going to be very hard to part with as I have promised it as a fundraiser for charity...

Anyway for now I am enjoying the fruit of my labour and will show it off to a few more people before I send it on its way.

Quilt Retreat

I had an absolutely fantabulous weekend last weekend at the PMQG quilting retreat down in Dwellingup at the beautiful Wine Tree.  It was filled with creativity, cider, awesome ladies, wine, lots of laughs, fabric, fruit wine, cheezles, sharing of ideas, an Italian costume night, great food which we didn't have to cook and of course chocolate.

                                        Hard at work...not a glass of wine in sight!

Apart from one yoga class, two brief walks (the second being a "walk" involving wine and cider tasting up at the main house!) and a little bit of reading in bed my time was spent sewing...and it was blissful.  I made good progress on my reverse applique project and when that started to require too much focus I switched to hand sewing and quilting my quilt as you go 1930s reproduction print hexagons.  They are mounting up nicely and might deserve a post of their own soon.

My main focus however, was on completing my blocks of the month and quilting bee blocks and I got all four made.  Here they are!

 Missing your Kiss from our Modern Blocks book...

Diamond Ripples from the same book.  This is my BOM choice.  I wanted to challenge my precision and "classic" techniques.  Boy did I do that!

Here are my bee blocks, my current bee does them in pairs - the queen bee for the month I was working on chose Circle of Squares as her block...

I can't wait until next time!  In the meantime I will have to satisfy myself with working on the Circle of Flying Geese block a few did as a challenge during the retreat.  That way I can keep the memory alive. :)  Now I just have to wait for my machine to come back from its service all tuned and ready to go...