Retreat Report

Imagine you're planning to go on an all-day quilt retreat. It goes from 9 am to 10 pm, meals, snacks, coffee/tea/juice are provided. You'll have your own banquet table workspace, plus access to a big table for basting and raised tables for comfortable cutting. Now. Here's the question: how much sewing/quilting do you think you will accomplish in those 13 hours?

Here's my list of projects that I brought along (vaguely thinking I would get most of them mostly (if not completely) done). I've indicated the project's status so you can get an idea of where I sat with them as I packed them up:

1. Drunk Love in a Log Cabin-style Bee Blocks (2) for Nicole in the Maple Leaf Bee (fabric still in mailing envelope);
2. Christmas Tree Skirt ties to be finished off (raw edges needed to be folded in and ties finished with a topstitch);
3. DQS10 quilt (fabric pulled, blocks chosen, one (of 9) blocks pieced);
4. That Girl That Quilt Along quilt (all cut out with 1 row (of 8) of blocks already pieced);
5. New Wave Quilt (all cut out);
6. Memory quilt for my BFF's daughter (fabric pulled (but not cut), and pattern chosen).

Here's what I actually accomplished:

1. The Bee Blocks.

Bee Blocks

2. The Tree Skirt ties (took literally 5 minutes - I couldn't find time to do that before Christmas??? Ugh.)

3. Four DQS10 blocks.

4 more (6½") DQS10 blocks

4. 1 full and 1 partial row of Quilt Along blocks (sorry for the terrible photo). 

More QAL blocks - bottom row is missing some frames

As usual, my eyes were bigger than my stomach, quilting-wise. Thirteen hours seems like such a long time!! I felt like I should have walked out with ALL of my stuff done! 

Oh well. The best part of it all wasn't what I got sewn, it was who I got to spend the day with:

Flickr Friends on Retreat

While I wasn't as productive as I (admittedly delusionally) hoped, I had tons of fun and got a little sewing done, too. I'd call that a success.