Retreat

Saturday morning found me meeting up with Linda, grabbing a yummy at Starbucks, and heading to the tiny town of Bucyrus, Kansas for an all day quilt retreat with the Blue Valley Quilters Guild on the grounds of  this beautiful old church, The Queen of the Holy Rosary Catholic Church.

 The large facility was perfect for spreading out our sewing machines, ironing boards, food, fabric, projects, food, design walls, and food! The lighting was so good I didn't even think about getting out the lamp I'd packed.

 Linda came up with a project for the two of us to work on that involved using our large stashes of fabric strips.

 Since we both cut our scraps into strips for convenience, it was simply a matter of hauling it all into the building and enduring the teasing that followed as everyone else wondered what we could be doing that would require 4 boxes of fabric! This is just one box of it here............(what?!)

 I guess that I was making others nervous as I used my pink forearm and elbow to hold down the ruler while rotary cutting....

...because it wasn't long before Robin coaxed me into letting her do all my cutting! In the end, Linda wondered why I'd made more blocks for our project than she...there are some advantages to having a cast, I've learned!! Thanks, Robin....sorry you didn't get as much of your hand work accomplished, though.

 The room was filled with lovely quilt projects of every description and color.....

 If there'd been a prize for working on the most projects during the day, I'm positive that Nikki would have easily won. Here's one she was making with batik charms she's been collecting....

 I really liked her spider web quilt, complete with hand embroidered spiders!

 By the end of the day, Linda and I had managed to put a small dent in our scrap boxes to create this 3D design from the book, String Quilts by Elsie Campbell. After this picture was taken, we took down all the blocks and divided them up between us for twin quilts, one for each of us. 

A good time was had by all!