Our guild’s sleep-at-home retreat was held this week. It was three days of sewing fun with friends, with lots of laughter and conversation, getting to know fellow quilters and new members a bit better. We helped each other with piecing and fabric choices, talked about books and cooking, admired each other’s work, loaned each other forgotten or needed supplies, and generally had a great time. I set up my space first thing on Tuesday morning.

The portable table that we got for our car club picnics came in really handy as a pressing station with a wool mat and my little travel iron. It rolls up into a neat little carrying case and was perfect for this application. If you need something like this, it is a Coleman Outdoor Table available on Amazon.

I opened up my first box of projects and dove in.

I began by cutting darts into fabric and batting for some bowl cozies.

A little while later, I finished the first two. On these, I decided to put the dark background print and the light background print on the same cozy. They flip so you can have the dark on the inside or the light. The spoon print is perfect for soup, or ice cream in the summer.

Having finished my first project, I went to the freebie exchange table to see what might be there. I resisted all the fabric on the first day, and picked up some patterns and a couple of pantographs. I also found some microtex machine needles.

Later in the day, I found some trims and threads for paper crafting and embroidery. Still no fabric, and nothing to count against my Stashbuster totals.

Next, I went to work on some additional small projects, these will be thread catchers.

A while later, two were finished. My tablemate fell in love with the bright swirly print, and my question of how much to charge was answered when she offered $10 for it.

She also wanted a bowl cozy in the same fabric, so I made one of those for her too. I put the purple flowers on as she requested, and made my lunch money for day two (sushi from Publix).

Day two was planned to make headway on the Scrap Dance Twist throw size quilt. I did a number of half square triangles at home, and made more at retreat.

Then I began the four patches, but I realized I just didn’t have enough variety of white tone on tone prints. I have too much of one white background print, and only a few pieces of a second one. I don’t have enough of the first print to do the whole quilt, so I need to mix in more. If I don’t, it will look like I ran out of the primary one, whereas if I add in more it will appear intentional.

I was given a couple of squares to use, and was able to put together one block. I’m not sure I have the right balance of medium to dark prints. I need to make a few more and see how it goes. I love the soft colors in the center mason jar print. So, I needed to bring something more from home, and another friend offered to bring some additional white tone-on-tone fabric for me to try on the last day.

It was time to walk around a bit and chat. Other quilters’ projects are always fun to see. These small art quilts were two of seven that fellow quilter Carol Preston did for competition over the past few years. She won a ribbon for the one on the right! See the post on the Peeps Art Competition at Racine Art Museum for information on this year’s contest. I think she entered this year’s competition too.

My friend, Gail, started to put these half Dresden blocks into three blocks for a table runner, but she decided to do it this way. So clever!

On a design wall, Carol and her daughter Kris (another Carol) had this wonderful blue and green piecework placed. They were looking at the fabric placement and trying different placements.

Linda was working on her project from our last workshop on color and value. Every one of these blocks is the exact same pattern, but the value placement makes each one look different.

There were 38 women in the room, and I can’t show you what everyone was doing, but it was inspiring and fun to see.

On day 3, I worked on my Japanese fabric quilt. I knew it would be a challenge to work with the gold lamé fabric, but it was more of a problem than I realized.

I cut some strips to size and matched up edges to begin sewing. It was so very thin, and the needle kept pulling on the threads. It was snagging as it went.

I pulled out the snags and pressed the gold with a low iron setting, which helped, but really didn’t give me a smooth sashing. At this point, Gail said I needed to stabilize the gold with either a fusible or a sticky, and I thought she was right. So I packed it up to take home and work on it later.

I had enough supplies with me to make a few more thread catchers, so I did those.

Then I went back to the first project. Three friends brought in some white tone on tone fabrics for me to incorporate into the project. So, with the time left, I made more half square triangles. I may have changed my mind again about what fabrics I am going to use.

So, this time I did not complete a lot of projects, but I didn’t go into the retreat with my usual arsenal of prepped and cut elements ready to go. A few small items were mostly done, but I need to add the buttons and trim on the thread catchers. The two quilt tops were not finished, and I didn’t even get significant progress on them. All the progress was in finding out what would not work. But I had a fun time, sewing with my tribe, and enjoying the camaraderie of the days. Hopefully I’ll make more progress in the coming week, especially before the next Stashbuster report!