Our guild recently held a retreat for 11 members at Febuary Hill in Jonesborough, Tennessee, run by the owner of Tennessee Quilts. We booked several days to sew, and chat, and eat, and shop. Some of us met for lunch before the retreat began, and we drove up at the same time. Arriving in the afternoon, I set up my sewing space.

Before I went there, I had to do something fun for the group. I got out some white paper bags and my stamping stuff. I used the roller to put a swirly design on the bags on the left side.

Then, stamps were used to put a fun sentiment and graphics on the bags in two colors.

I had a number of items to use as prizes, and each bag got something fun, like a charm pack, trimming templates or a lighted seam ripper. Each bag got one fun item plus some chocolate and a few bobbin cleaners. Not everything is shown here, I made 10 bags total. I didn’t need one for myself.

We played a bingo game over several days to determine who got to choose a grab bag when. The bingo cards were printed from a website called My Free Bingo Cards, and you make up your own squares. The website then gives you a pdf of the cards which are all the same squares, but scrambled in different ways so every card is unique. As someone did one of the items, they checked it off, and when they got 5 in a row, they called out “Bingo!” and got to choose a prize bag. The squares had things like “finish a block without using a seam ripper”, “fussy cut an element”, “help prepare a meal”, “make binding for a project”, “make a purchase at a local quilt shop”, “eat some chocolate” and “work on a handwork project”. You can name the cards whatever you want, so I called mine Quilt Retreat Bingo. It took three days for everyone to get a Bingo.

One retreater brought an interesting puzzle with pieces made of wood. We all took turns working on it, a nice break from sewing. Find these on Amazon – Wood Puzzles. This particular fish shape is from a company called Zen Chalet.

Many of the pieces were fish shaped, like this one.

When we completed that one, we had a second one of an old timey quilt shop stuffed with things quilt related – similar to these Quilt Puzzles. We also had lots of time to wander around and look at what everyone else was working on. This gorgeous English paper piecing project is Sheila’s, and I was so enchanted with it. It almost made me want to learn how to do that. Her fussy cutting is perfect.

It was at this point that I had these vegetable and seed fabrics up on my design wall.

Sheila said this one would work well for EPP, but I’m not ready to take that on just yet! I couldn’t figure out anything for these fabrics as I needed more blenders, so I put it away and started on another project.

I wanted to make a quick fabric bowl, and so I took the Mexican food fabric and did one. This was ridiculously easy. Just four darts in each of the two fabric pieces (top and bottom), sewn together with a batting scrap, turned and topstitched. I used this tutorial to make mine. I skipped the stitching through the middle and left off the loop as we never use them to hang a holder anywhere. We are already using it to hold hot bowls out of the microwave. I need to make a set of several sizes.

I worked on a bee quilt and the bird quilt, and I’ll show you those in separate posts. After that, I just pulled out some scraps and began improv piecing. I already had some HSTs done, so I put them on the design wall with some jelly roll strips. This was kind of meh.

Turning some around, this wasn’t much better.

At this point, I decided to just make some elements, sewing things together haphazardly into a bigger piece of fabric. My plan is to make this into a larger carrier for quilts with dowel handles.

Checking the mail, a box came in this week full of wonderful cards for Safelight! Thank you so much to Vicki in Minnesota for her outstanding contribution for our spa bag project. These cards are just fabulous, beautifully made and creative.

Inside, she put a lovely sentiment and signature. Vicki, you are amazing, thank you!! These will be used in our final delivery for this year’s project, probably sometime in October.

Back home, I harvested some tomatoes and the little butternut squash from the garden. They all need to ripen a bit more. It has been so rainy that I had to throw out a couple of tomatoes that were starting to get some rot from all the dampness. So I brought these in while they were still good. They should continue to ripen on the counter.

George stopped by for a sandwich. He is a little wary, but will wait to see if something is forthcoming when I go out to the veranda.

Gracie will run towards me and sit up, asking to be fed. Then she will grab her treat and run to her favorite spot to eat it. She is getting a bit portly for winter.

One evening, the rain had passed by, and fog was settling into the valley. These times really show the layers of hills and coves across the valley. The view changes daily, even changing between dawn and dusk, and I never tire of it.

Thursday, I had the priviledge of presenting my Decisions, Decisions program to the Gate City Quilt Guild in Greensboro, North Carolina. What a wonderful group of quilters! They had a Zoom set up so not only could the attendees see the program, those who were at home could also join in. We’ve done this with my home guild as well. It is wonderful for those who could not get to the meeting due to illness or other reasons.

Behind me is their raffle quilt for this year, and alongside it was a fabulous painted barn quilt. The lucky winner gets both!! If you want more info on that, click HERE.

This coming week is pretty clear, just a couple of appointments to do, so I should have some sewing time to make progress on the bird quilt. I have decided to custom quilt it, and I’ll have more on it for you later in the week. After that, I have a Quilt of Valor to longarm quilt for the local chapter. In the meantime, I only have a month now to figure out what to enter in the fair, get my recipes in order for the cooking contests, finish the crafting and quilting items for those categories, and determine which photographs to print and mount for that competition.

What is on your agenda for this coming week?

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