Slow Sunday Stitching - Retreat Report

slow down!

Welcome to the weekly hand stitching party! We are celebrating Thanksgiving here in Canada today and I am very thankful for the wonderful Slow Sunday Stitching Retreat Day we enjoyed last weekend.
I posted a few photos on instagram of the activities throughout the day and you can follow me at ssskat7 to see those.
It was a perfect fall day, and so fitting that the speed limit on the road to retreat reminded us that we should slow down to "God speed", which is the whole point of Slow Sunday Stitching!

Retreat day is starting!

This is the room we stitched in. It's a lovely space with windows all around making it bright enough for stitching, but also making it difficult to take good photographs.

"free" to a good home

There were loot bags for each stitcher and door prize draws throughout the afternoon. There was even a "free" corner of the room where there was a pile of donated supplies, tools, rulers, and books for stitchers to rummage through and find just the right thing they "needed". There were bags of scraps free for the taking, and there were even boxes of organized pre-cut scraps donated by Chris. I must confess to helping myself to one of the fantastic bags of scraps that Chris brought to share with us and I can't wait to dig into it!

hard at work  hand stitching projects

I love this photo that shows all the stitchers hard at work on their projects. All the heads are bowed and the stitchers are deep in concentration!
We had so many wonderful projects in the room including knitting, hexies, embroidery, EPP, needlepoint, puppet stitching, rug making, wool work, applique, binding, and cross stitch.

Chris and granddaughter Ava

If you want to read more about the day, you can find Gail's blog post from retreat day at The Cozy Quilter, and see all the wonderful photos she took of the stitching projects. And then hop over to Quilting at the Farm to read the highlights that Chris wrote about. Chris brought her granddaughter along and she was our youngest stitcher at retreat. It's so inspiring when young people show an interest in keeping the stitching tradition alive!

Slow Sunday Stitching Sisters!

We also had some Slow Sunday Stitching Sisters! Try saying that fast 3 times! LOL

How wonderful that these sisters were able to clear their very busy schedules to spend the day relaxing, visiting and stitching together!

Here is the group photo of the amazing hand stitchers!

Slow Sunday Stitching Retreaters

I was blown away by the support and encouragement of this incredible group of women! Thank you to all who helped with the arrangements, the prizes, the tutorials, the snacks, the gifts, and for believing that this crazy dream of mine was even possible! It was amazing to me that we pulled this off on such short notice and after I rest up a bit, I will give some thought to organizing the second annual Slow Sunday Stitching retreat day!

Quilter's Blessings

I did bring along the quilt I was working on when I started the weekly link ups to celebrate Slow Stitching. The quilt is called Quilter's Blessings and was a pattern by Capricorn Quilts in 2008. It is also the quilt that is on the Slow Sunday Stitching button that Connie made for my blog. I took the quilt outside for a photo to show you how much in the country we actually were, and how spectacularly beautiful the weather was!

Okay now it's your turn... what are you hand stitching today? Link up your blog post or instagram photo below.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Will you actually like quilt retreat?

Quilting retreats sound like so much fun when you're reading about them on a blog, but how do you know if you would enjoy attending a quilt retreat? I think it's similar to any kind of adventure, because if you are open minded and flexible, you can have fun anywhere (well, not on a coronavirus cruise!)
If you are a person who is particular and needs things (beds, food, people, etc) to be a certain way for you to be happy, quilt retreat is not for you. Also if you have specific dietary or sensory requirements to be comfortable, quilt retreat is not for you. 
It reminds me of an Adam Sandler Saturday Night Live skit. You can watch it on twitter here. 
"You're still going to be you on vacation"!

retreat sewing room late at night... most quilters are asleep!

Being on retreat is like being part of a big family where you accept that life is not going to go your way all the time, and you are not going to enjoy everything about your environment and the people around you 100% of the time. If you can be flexible, kind and generous, and have a good sense of humour, then you are going to LOVE quilt retreat!


Also, if you are a person who doesn't like to hear the opinions of others, quilt retreat is not for you. 

my retreat table 2019

I welcome the opinions of other quilters so that I can learn, and so that they can help me streamline the decision making process... especially on quilt layouts. You may not agree with everything that is said, but if you love to collect ideas, are open to hearing different artistic perspectives, and enjoy learning new ways of doing things, you are going to LOVE quilt retreat!

my retreat table 2018

I am just sooo deliriously happy at quilt retreat. I adore not having to shop, cook, shovel snow,  wash dishes, and clean. It's the only respite from the drudgery of life and for that reason alone, it is spectacular (for me).

my interesting friends even have interesting socks!!

But the cherry on top of that is being able to spend time with amazing women, soak up their creative energy, and benefit from their lived experience... what could be better?!?

Well, the sprinkles added on top of that... you get to sew all day long! You get to start new projects, finish old projects, see a wide variety of other quilter's projects, and truthfully it can be a little overstimulating at times! That's when you need to take a walk, get a massage, and/or take a little time to read quietly in your room.
Oh yah... and don't forget to sleep! Naps are luxurious if you don't have FOMO.

my retreat table 2020

I had such a wonderful time at my annual quilt retreat! I am catching up on sleep and putting away all my supplies and projects. I look forward to blogging about what I accomplished at retreat!

Retreat Fun

I am back from my 3 day quilting retreat. I sure had a great time at the retreat...did lots of laughing, visited with old friends, enjoyed yummy food (for which I didn't have to plan, shop, cook or do any dishes!!) and revelled in the seemingly endless time for sewing. I always learn a few new tips and get re-energized about quilting when I see all the beautiful projects that everyone else is working on.
I brought a pile of teal scraps and fat quarters that were donated to the charity quilt program at the guild. I don't have any teal fabric in my stash and have never made anything in teal, so I thought this would be a good challenge for myself. The first evening I cut the 2 1/2" strips to make the scrappy bargello quilt on the Quiltville website and started to piece the strip sets. This is a photo of me sewing the second strip set....the first pieced panel is behind me on the design wall. That was a fairly boring job, but made fun by the other quilters comraderie and encouragement. I didn't have enough fabric to make the pattern as shown on the website which has 4 panels, and I had to do some piecing together to get enough squares to make it 3 panels. It turned out okay, but by the second day I was really
hating teal even more!

When that top was finished I got out an old UFO, which is a small quilt for the Memory Quilts program at the guild. I had pieced it years ago, and it was quilted by Ruthanne Finnegan. After I sewed the binding on, I hung it on the design wall with a note asking if someone was willing to hand sew the binding down. Miraculously it was a finished quilt within the hour! Don't you just love binding fairies?!?! The finished quilt is on the right.
Then I had a real change of gears and opened up a new miniature paper piecing pattern, which was a gift from my retreat roommate. She thought it would be a challenge for me and she was right! It is a Carolina Lily pattern on pre-printed tissue paper. I have done tons of paper piecing and usually really enjoy it, but this was quite a challenge. I have never sewn on tissue paper before and it was quite fragile....ripping easily. And the seam matching was difficult. I had to sew a main seam twice, and even then it didn't quite match up. I'll try to fix it with a green marker! The pattern had 24 blocks in it, and since the first one took 3 hours, I'm guessing I won't be making all 24 blocks!!

After supper on the second day, I took out the guild Blocks of the Month from October, which were blue 9 patch blocks with a white centre. I cut the blocks into 4 equal pieces, an idea which I first saw on the Quilted Forest website for a mystery quilt. Then we had a chance to play around with possible block layouts on the design wall. By the time all the blocks were ready (one had to be re-sewn to be the proper size and two new blocks were made to make the number of rows we wanted) it was getting late, so I selected the layout that had the fewest number of seams to match, and the easiest construction requiring the least amount of brain power....which was the bottom right layout. A big thank you to Barb for all her late night help with the unsewing, and seam pressing.
On the morning of the third day, I started a quilt-as-you-go project to try and make a dent in one of my scrap bins. I used 6 1/2" pieces of leftover batting, a variety purple pieces for the backings, and made one half of the block dark scraps and the other half light scraps. I only got 14 blocks finished before it was time to pack up and go home. I'm not sure I like the black and white pieces as they really jump out at you...I might remove those. But it is looking like a happy quilt and will be a good demo piece for the guild "newbie day" demo.
So those are all the projects I worked on at retreat. My next blog entry will be on the downside of quilting retreats....believe it or not, it's not all good!

Retreat Report #1

I am back from this year's quilting retreat and am catching up with all the household activities today. Seems the family managed quite fine without me this year! It gets easier each year to be away as the children get older.

I have lots to tell about my retreat projects so decided I will write a blog report every day until I am done, so you will have to check back to see what I accomplished!

First of all, I will tell you about the retreat book I made. The inspiration came from Annie over at "Annie's Quilting Adventures" blog and you can read about it here. She inspired me to create a book using the Blurb software, based on the blog I wrote about last year's quilt retreat.It was labour intensive and a real learning curve with the software program, but I was happy with the outcome. It's a small, soft cover book (only 20+ pages) and I ordered 2 copies which cost me about $27 each with shipping and handling charges. Kind of expensive, but I like the paper it is printed on, and the quality of the photos is much better than I had thought it would be. I was very happy with how it turned out. It's a great idea if you are interested in producing a hard copy of your blog.

So what did I do with the 2 copies? Well, one is for me and one I gave away at the retreat by drawing a name from all the quilters that attended last year and this year. And the winner was Susan! Here she is looking at the book with Jackie and Barb. Everyone took turns reading about last year's retreat and remembering some of the adventures that I had written about and captured on film.

So now I have to get busy and write a new blog for this year's retreat. I will ...as soon as I catch up on some much needed sleep!

Retreat Preparations

It's time to pack up for spring quilting retreat. 
It's always challenging for me to decide which projects to take. 

new project cut and organized for sewing

My friends take great delight in making fun of me over my project selection agony, but truly... it's a very hard decision!
I started a new project and precut ALL the pieces so that I can sit at sew at retreat... no thinking required!
There are so many options since I have piles of UFOs, and I want to take everything, but that is not realistic. Even at quilt retreat, there are still only 24 hours in the day.
I like to have a variety of projects because a quilter can never predict what she might feel like working on, right?!?! 

baby quilt ready to sew

I am taking 3 quilt tops to piece (LOL probably only 2 of them will see the light of day!), some candlemats and a tablerunner to machine quilt, my hand embroidery project, my Blockheads II to make more blocks (I have finished 26 of the 52 blocks), and of course a small quilt to finish the binding.
How do you decide what projects to take to a quilting retreat?!? 

Slow Sunday Stitching Announcement

Welcome to the weekly party where we celebrate the art of hand stitching! 
And today I have great news - I am planning the very first (hopefully annual) Slow Sunday Stitching Retreat Day! It's short notice because a day lease just became available at my favourite facility so I took the opportunity to scoop that up for us! 
If you enjoy hand stitching you are cordially invited!

It will be held at St. Brigid's Villa in Guelph, Ontario which is a beautiful facility on the outskirts of town. 

Here is a photo I took on the way to a  retreat there last year in late October. (Hopefully we won't have snow in early October, but you never know!) As you can see it is in the country at the end of a long lane. There is a beautiful work room with lots of windows all around and I just know that amazing things can be created here!
Mostly we will be working on our own projects and there will also be some tutorials to learn new skills. Of course there will also be a show and share time to be inspired by our creative stitching friends. 
Let me know if you are interested in coming or if you have any questions about the retreat. It's all about taking time away from your busy life to rest, to renew your energy, to take some slow stitches and enjoy being around rejuvenating creative energy! I can hardly wait!
Today I will be finishing this fun little Gail Pan embroidery. Sorry about the washed out photo... it's sunny here this weekend! The variegated thread gives an "interesting look"... I'm not sure if I like it yet or not!

What are you hand stitching today? Link up your blog post or instagram below (you can find me on instagram at ssskat7 and use #slowsundaystitching).

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Daily Goals vs. Time to Play

When I go to a quilt retreat I make a list of projects to work on. I like to set daily goals and give myself a bit of structure. 
I do this because I know that I can fall down into a rabbit hole quickly and start new projects accidentally (see the accidental quilt post). Starting new projects does NOT result in any projects being finished!
Also I am not one of those quilters who can bring 1 project and work on it for days. I usually work on 3 different projects each day - one piecing, one quilting, and one hand work for the evening. 

While at retreat I was gifted bits of fabrics and leftover scraps. This package arrived from a retreater's sister. I was so touched by the lovely note and the gift of scraps from a deceased quilter, and look forward to making some wonderful projects from this collection. It was very hard to focus on my retreat goals after receiving this gift, full of so much potential sewing fun.

But showing great self restraint, I did stay focused!

For the first 2 days of retreat I only worked on my 150 Canadian Women project and would not allow myself to play with anything else until I had some rows sewn together. 
But after that was accomplished I allowed myself play time with scraps and HST collections.

Here is a good example... My friend Jackie gave me a bag of red and white triangles, which were corners cut off of pieced blocks. Instead of throwing them in the garbage, Jackie gifted them to me. 

morning play time at quilt retreat

This was the second year that this bag of bits attended quilt retreat. I spent many happy hours sewing the triangles together, squaring the HST's to similar sizes, and playing with various block patterns. Some blocks have 4 HST's, and one block has 72 HST's. So fun! This is going to be my miniature quilt project for March.

Do you set quilting goals for retreat or do you just play with whatever strikes your fancy? Do you ever play with another quilter's garbage?!?

Retreat Report Day 4

The last day of retreat is very different from the first day. The excitement of seeing old friends has been replaced by excitement to see your family, the enthusiasm of being on vacation has turned to exhaustion from too many late nights & early mornings, the creative energy is depleted from working on your own quilts and consulting on other quilters' projects, and you just couldn't possibly eat one more great meal! I guess you really can get too much of a good thing!
I need a holiday to recover from quilt retreat! LOL

I did manage to get some arcs sewn for my Indian Orange Peel project.  These are my #33 - #52 arcs.
The photo on the left shows the most recently sewn cool coloured teeth on warm backgrounds, and the photo on the right shows the warm coloured teeth on cool backgrounds.
I spent way more time than I wanted to fussing around about whether certain fabrics should be classified as a warm or cool colour according to the teacher's instructions. I discovered that the red-violet fabrics are the hardest for me to classify and I am certain that I have some red-violet fabrics that have been used as both a warm AND as a cool colour in various arcs.
According to my production chart (to tackle a huge quilting project we all make production charts, right?!? Okay...don't answer that!) I was supposed to finish 92 arcs by this Saturday, so I'm just a little short of that goal at 52 finished arcs...yikes! I only have 3 more weeks before the final class, so I will have to bump up the arc production line!

When I arrived home, look what was waiting for me in the mailbox...
a mug mat from Mary over at Mare's Nest blog. She was celebrating her 300th blogpost and sent me a mug mat, which you can see has already been used. The green and white hexagon background is the mailer it was in (cool, eh?) and the back of the mat has karate monkey fabric that you can see on her blog link...very fun! Thanks so much for the gift that will be well used!

Design Wall Monday #9

This past week gets the Olympic Gold Medal for the fastest passing week on record!
I feel like I blinked and the week was over. First it was quilt retreat and we all know how fast that goes by.
Today is Design Wall Monday over at Judy's blog and I have been working on the UFO bag that I wrote about 2 weeks ago - click here. It is coming together really quickly because almost half of the blocks were already made and all the pieces were cut out. I sorted and pressed all the pieces and determined that there are 2 different blocks. These are the centres of the star blocks, and there will be 17 of these. I'm loving working on this project...other people's UFO's are way more interesting than your own!
After retreat my DH decided to take a quick trip to ski in Vermont. Okay, that's 1 day to drive there, 1 day to ski and 1 day to drive home. Doesn't make much sense to me, but I'm always up for an adventure. Can you guess what I did for 1 day in Vermont?!? I looked for a quilting store of course. I had checked briefly on the internet and only found 1 store near where we stayed, and it was closed on Saturday :(
But in driving around the area I was delighted to find a fabulous new store called the Waterwheel House Quilt Shop. This was my great luck to find this wonderful brand new store! You can tour the store on their blog - click here.  They have tons of new fabrics that I haven't seen before...you know, the new fabrics that are in the current magazines! There is a lovely classroom and so many colourful samples to see. And they have a lovely dog named Gracie that I would've adopted on the spot - you can see a picture of her on this blogpost.

Here I am out front of the store (with my bag of purchases) showing how much snow they have there...it was a winter wonderland! Look for an upcoming project that I started at this store - and by "started", I mean that I've just bought the fabric so far!

Retreat Hazards

I should warn you that there are some negative aspects about going to a quilting retreat. The longest lasting problem is sleep deprivation. I was exhausted from all the laughing, staying up late at night sewing more blocks, giggling with my roommates until the wee hours of the morning, and then the early morning risings - because I don't want to miss out on any of the fun! I am still catching up on my lost sleep. I was lucky that friday was a "snow day", which meant that my children didn't have to go to school, and my quilting classes were cancelled, so we didn't have to get up early...and I could catch up on some much needed sleep.

A second problem is that the scenery is so pretty out in the country, that it is tempting to spend lots of time staring out the window. It was such beautiful winter weather, snowing gently for most of the time. On the right is a photo of the path to the dining lodge....you can see the snow flakes falling on the way to supper.

Many of the quilters enjoyed going for peaceful walks on the trails. Here are two anonymous walkers! It was cold!

But if you spend lots of time enjoying the weather, you have less time to sew! So much fun to be had, and so little time!
The third problem is that I was so inspired by the projects of everyone around me that I have an uncontrollable urge to go fabric shopping, and to start new projects. This is a problem because I am working on reducing my UFO pile, not increasing it! Fortunately for me, I am too busy right now to find time to go shopping, but I have started a list and can't wait to buy some new batiks.
The fourth issue for me is that I feel so happy and relaxed when I'm at the retreat. Here I am sewing my "quilt-as-you-go" blocks on the last day, surrounded by my scrap fabrics, sitting in the sun, listening to the laughter and conversation of quilting friends....really, does it get any better than this?!?!

So why is that a problem, you ask???

Because the re-entry into my regular life is brutal! It's a shock to the system to feel so happy, calm and relaxed and then to have to hit the ground running when I get home....dog to walk, food to cook, house to clean, my paid job to catch up with, the children to pick up, homework to supervise....back to my reality. It's a tough transition.

But I have made progress on my quilting endeavours and have lots of wonderful memories with quilting friends from my retreat days.

So I will happily endure these challenges...when are we going again?!?!?

Design Wall Monday #8

I have never been so happy for Monday to arrive! I am going to my annual quilting retreat today...yippee!
All that is on my design wall today are these 2 little projects. You can read about the larger 4" heart blocks here and I started another smaller version with 2" pastel hearts...soooo cute! I can't decide if I like the mini hearts without a sashing or not, so I'll leave them there and decide when I come home.

Hop over to Judy's blog to see the design wall Monday postings - click here.

Here is my luggage all packed up for the retreat...only 4 bags this year.  In those bags I have managed to pack 10 projects! I'm not taking any machine or hand quilting to do this year since I have so many UFO's to work on and piecing to do. Oh yah...I hope I remember to pack some clothes and PJ's too!

I have also packed up the books I made from last year's retreat. It's very easy to make to make a book from your blog. There are lots of book making companies out there now but this was my 4th year using Blurb to make a book full of photos and memories from our annual quilt retreat and they do a great job.
In 2007, I ordered 2 copies of my book and they cost $27 each. In 2011, I ordered 17 copies of my book and they cost $22 each...it's a better deal every year!
If the retreat centre WiFi is working, I'll post blog updates every day this week.

Retreat Projects Report #4

I think I am almost done posting about my quilting retreat projects! This is the new quilt kit I cut out to start sewing at retreat (it's no fun to just work on UFO's!!).
These fabrics are old (5+ years percolating) batiks from my stash. I just love the look of all these pieces cut out and ready to start sewing for a quilt...no mistakes made yet, no realization that your colours choices are horrendous, or that you don't like the pattern!! Just hours of happy sewing ahead and the potential for a great quilt!
I wanted to use the pattern called "Buzz Saw" that I saw posted on the Happy Valley Quilter blog almost 2 years ago. I printed out the fabric cutting info but not the sewing instructions thinking a)I was saving paper and computer ink and 2) I'm sure I can figure it out. So when I pulled out the project to work on at retreat, I couldn't figure it out!!
I asked one of our retreaters who went home to sleep if she could check on her computer when she went home. The next day she reported that the block looked right, and we figured out that I had cut all the light rectangles in error...no where for them to go in the block. So this is the Buzz Saw block and I had cut enough for 20 blocks. Since coming back from retreat I have sewn the blocks together and am thinking about using the mistakenly cut rectangles for an inner border. I think it needs another border after that...any suggestions?!?!

Retreat Report Day 3

Day 3 was a lot of fun...so much was accomplished AND the massage therapist was here to soothe our aching muscles!
I was able to finish this quilt top that I started last week. It's a disappearing 4 patch, the same as my finished UFO for January - click here to see it. I started cutting up some 5" squares from fabric donated to the guild and before you know it, I was loving the soft colours (that I don't usually work with) and now it's a finished quilt top, ready for quilting!
This is the last day of retreat, so we are going to clean up and get in a few more luxurious moments of sewing, before we head home to see how our families survived without us.

Scrappy Saturday

Purple month is over at the Rainbow Scrap Challenge.
I had time to finish up 8 more Economy Path blocks and sewed them into two groups of 4.
Here is the magenta purple collection.



And here are the darker indigo purple blocks.
You can see the other Economy Path blocks here. I didn't have time to put them all on the design wall, but I will in October for sure. It's time to get working with the brown, grey, and black scraps for October.

Today I am getting organized for the Slow Sunday Stitching Retreat Day being held tomorrow. It will be exciting to spend a full day with like minded hand stitchers and I am very excited!