Quilt Retreating

I just spent a few days with some very good friends, sewing up a storm on a Quilt Retreat!  It was a great couple of days playing with fabric.

I sewed the whole time on my new little toy ~ my first Featherweight.  I bought this from Starlyn to add to my little sewing machine collection that I have going, and it sews beautifully :)

And I finished my Buffalo Ridge quilt!  The blocks and flying geese were swapped with Mary and Starlyn a while back, and at the retreat I put it all together for a completed top.   (The pattern can be found in the book called Nickel Quilts).

Cappy, the hostess of our reterat (she offered up her little beach house in Edgewater MD for us), had the first finish with this beauty. 

Made with bandanas!  This is a UFO from I think she said the 1980's made from a collection of bandanas that she had amassed back when they were popular to wear.  The colors were amazing.

And since I like to use retreats to pull out UFOs, I also "finished" my Snowbound quilt.  It's from Bunny Hill Designs BOM last year.  I kept up with the BOM pretty well at the beginning of the year, but after finishing five of the snowmen applique blocks, I decided that five was enough, so this is how I set mine. 

For the Jo fans, here is Starlyn's first finish of the weekend ~ a little Courthouse Steps mini quilt from the Jo Morton Club at the shop.  There were many more finishes by others, some I snapped pictures of but they were blurry, and some I missed altogether.  And I had to leave the retreat early for some weekend fun with my little grand daughters, so I'm sure I missed seeing even more of the finishes. 

 But even when we weren't sewing, the views were wonderful.  

These sights were literally steps away from the house that we stayed in.  It was a lovely way to spend a few days ~ Thanks again Cappy!

Enjoy the day!
~ Dawn

Some More Retreat Goodies

All of the ladies on the Quilt Retreat last weekend worked on a lot of different projects and got many more finished than I was able to snap pictures of, but here is a sampling of some of the other progress that was made on our little weekend away.  My friend Mary of Keep Me In Quilts made this little Tree of Life block from left over half square triangles from another project.  Mary is the queen of making something great out of nothing!  She even had to size down the pattern to accommodate her smaller hst snipets. 

Along with many other projects, Mary has been playing with wool a lot lately, and finished this cute little wool sheep top on the retreat. 

Starlyn whipped up this wonderfully colorful quilt top from some blocks that she had already pieced,

Then she cut some fabric and made this entire quilt top from scratc ~ and it's Queen size!  She also pieced two Christmas tree skirts.  I was in awe :)

Teresa, among other things made about ten of these beautiful Christmas stockings that she makes out of upholstery fabrics.  I love how she trims them out.  She also worked on a bunch of hand pieced and embellished wool ornaments. 

Tara whipped up these happy and bright placemats and table runner.  

And last but not least, Cappy made more progress on this beauty (my picture does not do it justice).  She has pieced the top and is doing hand and machine applique and thread painting on it.  Although she still has a crab or two to add, she made a lot of progress on it this weekend.  This is going to be the raffle quilt for the Southern Comforters Guild quilt show coming up on March 27,  2011 ~ so keep an eye out for it :)

Enjoy the day!
~ Dawn

Retreat Progress

Well I've been doing some unpacking ~ and a lot of laundry today, so here it is...my production from the weekend's Quilting Retreat.  Along with blanket stitching some things off of my huge "Blanket Stitching Pile" (I'll show you those later once they are quilted),  I string pieced some Christmas Stockings.  These two are for Elsie and Abby, and I have more of the same style available in my etsy shop.   

And I made this little tree stocking just for fun.  I love prairie points, so I wanted to see if I could use them along the top.  On this one, I just string pieced the tree and appliqued it on with a blanket stitch. 

I had this Thimbleberries table runner pieced already (I actually made the top several years ago), but I got it quilted and bound this weekend.  It's going to be another Christmas gift :)  Let me tell you, it feels so good to see some old time UFOs coming to completion!

And I finally got the binding on my Jo Morton Somerset quilt.  I had pieced it a Jo Morton Club or two ago, and Sheri Thompson had quilted beautiful feathers all over it for me, and I finally used this weekend to make and apply the binding.  Now it's all finished and I've been curling up and enjoying it as a perfect little lap quilt.  This one is for me!

I even made myself make a quickie label and put that on while I was on the Retreat, because I knew I wouldn't do it once I got home. 

We had a blast, staying at the Blue Mountain Retreat Center in Knoxville MD right outside of Harper's Ferry WV.  The weather was beautiful, and made for the perfect scenery to quilt by :)  It was awesome the amount of stuff we were all able to get finished.  Tomorrow I'll show and tell a few of the beautiful things that the other ladies made while we were there. 

Enjoy the day!
~ Dawn