Quilt Retreat

I come home from a quilt retreat all fired up and rarin' to quilt and sew! I want the sewing to continue the same way it did at the retreat.

The retreat this year was held at Little America in Cheyenne, Wyoming. This is only about a 30-45 minute drive from my house and is a lot less stressful drive than going to Denver-town. I love going north! The amenities at Little America are fantastic and are even nicer since the recent remodel.

Our sewing room was a bit smaller than last year but not by much because we still got 32 quilters with accompanying gear into the room (including design walls).

A note on the portable design walls that a lot of the quilters had: because of the remodel we were not allowed to put anything on the walls as in past years so a lot of the quilters made design walls out of the thicker rigid foam insulation boards. Most of the walls had duct tape hinges and were covered in batting.

Thank goodness there was a Home Depot close! Since I was paper piecing blocks and knew I would not finish in the 2.5 days I did not take a portable design wall with me.

My roommate, Jan, and I arrived on Friday shortly before noon. After checking in, we headed directly to the sewing room since our sleeping room was not ready for us. We set up and started to sew, sew, sew. About 3:00pm we decided to see if our room was ready so we could unpack our clothes and then back to the sewing! There was a mixer and door prizes were handed out about 8:00pm and then back to the sewing.

A trip to the quilt store, The Quilted Corner, in town is always a wonderful break from sewing and gabbing. Several of us went on Saturday afternoon, and, yes, I did my duty for the local economy. Here's my loot, erm haul, purchases. I kept to neutrals and was able to help out Donna who needed a gray for part of a rooster.

Here's my project -- it's a project I designed in 1999 and cut out then aged. The kaleidescopic squares are the made from a frog fabric and are the centers of a Mexican star block. You can see my design at the bottom of the photo. The gal across the table from me makes the most stunning scrap quilts and I got a chance to see her at work! She had a large shoe box of triangles and squares and just dumped them out on the table. She would just take what appealed to her and make flying geese. At another set of tables, Karen was working on a lovely queen sized top that was really outdoorsy and masculine. Don't you love the corners made with the scrappy 2.5" squares? Linda was working on a shaded 9-patch using 3" squares. She laid it out on the carpet and I had to stand at one corner to get the picture. The angle of the photo gives me a headache to look at it.

Karen's Quilt

 

Linda's Quilt

Nancy's future geese.

So I am home now after 2.5 days of sewing and talking and staying up late. And I want to do more sewing and talking and staying up late. But I have to go to work.