Winter Retreat, 2016

Official camp photo

The Universe took a pause and allowed me to attend Quilt Retreat over my birthday weekend in January.  All my favorite quilt-y friends were there, which was good because there was a lot of emotional family stuff happening at the same time.

The Projects

Challenge blocks: this year's challenge was to make a 12" finished block using floral fabrics with a cream background.  The challenge as I saw it was to find such florals in my fabric stash so that I could stitch up a block using them.

As I have done in the past, I took the opportunity of making a single block using a new pattern or technique.  I used a tutorial from Barbara's blog Cat Patches to make a circle applique--with no hand sewing and no fusible+topstitching required.  The block turned out wonderful! And a pretty simple technique, too.  You can bet I'll be using this again in the future.


1930's Scrappy: my main goal for retreat was to finish this top.

Before retreat began, I had all the 16-patch blocks made, and a few of the X blocks started.

Took my usual amount of time to make 24 X blocks, and somehow got all the rows and columns put together.  Yay! 

However, ran into a bit of difficulty when it came to size: this only measures 56 inches square.  Needs borders.  And, since this is a scrappy/stashbusting project, I am limited in my fabric choices.  Too much fussy thinking necessary to make this next step work out... for now.  I put it aside.


Black & white BOM blocks: I was determined to get a bit ahead of the game for the final 6 months of the BOM I am leading at the shop.  I made 5 blocks, and that felt very good.

And that wraps up another quilting retreat.

Thank goodness for friends.  And my hobby--which distracts and calms me when life gets to be a little bit too much.  What does your ideal retreat look like?