Retreat Wrap Up!!!

I'm excited to share stories and projects that I worked on at my annual retreat at Lutherdale Bible Camp in Elkhorn, Wisconsin.  This is my 6th year (I think?) going and I had a great time!

Per usual, I brought a million projects to work on:

(that is only the luggage for projects! no machine/cutting mat/notions/etc)

Not per usual, I feel like I got my fill of sewing!  For the first time, I arrived on Wednesday, instead of Thursday and that made all the difference.  In the past, I felt like by Sunday, I was just hitting my stride and it was time to pack up.  This year, I was sewed out by mid-day on Sunday.  Yay!

The biggest project I worked on was a bed quilt for Sylvie (friend's 10 year old daughter).  This quilt has been taking much longer than I expected and I really wanted to be able to wrap it up.  It still needs borders, but I'm thrilled to have accomplished as much as I did.  I spent half of Thursday and ALL of Friday working on it.  By all, I mean 8 am to 11 pm!!! Yikes!  Here it is:

Quilt retreats are like marathons.  You don't want to start running at full speed.  You need a warm up!  My warm up was to do a few more blocks on my Cartwheels quilt.  I'm up to 9 blocks complete and want to do at least 3 more.

(pardon the instagram filter-- this photo is a bit washed out)

As a bit of  late night diversion, I decided to attempt a fabric bowl.  I started this at midnight on Thursday night!! What was I thinking?? My hand eye coordination wasn't quite there... (it turned out ok)

At some point on Saturday early evening, I started to put my Catvent cats together.  CATVENT! Oh, how I love Catvent.  Maybe when I quilt it, I can tell the story of Catvent. For now, let's suffice to say it is a fun quilt.

Saturday night-- I told myself I would go to bed early (most nights I wasn't in bed until 1 am).  It didn't happen! At 11.30, tons of people were super focused on their sewing.  As Anna described it, "It's like a quilting sweatshop!" =)  I decided to prep some things for Sunday.  One thing led to another and I sewed 2 scrappy string blocks. And then did 6 more on Sunday morning!   My plan is to only use cool colors and make a quilt to donate to a charity.

This is a mighty long post.  I think I've covered the projects I worked on.  In another post, I plan to share some photos of the retreat and other people's projects.

xoxo