Red Ribbon News! (and other goings on)

It always seems the busier my sewing life gets, the harder it is to keep up with posting.  Lots of fun and fabulous things have been happening.  Let's start with the most exciting part...

I WON A RED RIBBON AT THE SUN PRAIRIE SHOW!!! Woooot!

It was for my Elephant Parade quilt.  I was so surprised and happy!

After the dust settled from the Sun Prairie Show, I had a few days to pack up and head to my "Super Most Awesome Retreat".  Last year at Quilt Expo, I won a drawing for a weekend at Dragonfly Retreat Center in Bangor, WI (not far outside of LaCrosse).  It was every kind of fantastic! I invited all kinds of friends and it was a rather eclectic mix (12 of us total).  I planned out our meals and did the shopping and some cooking in advance.  We had soup/sandwich lunches, chicken tacos on Friday, lasagna on Saturday and yummy eggs and bacon breakfasts.

If you are in the upper midwest and are looking for a weekend getaway spot, I can't say enough wonderful things about Dragonfly.  The owners have thought of everything!  And the craft room...WOW!!! Big, well lit, comfy, basically perfect. Go to their website, look around.  I intended to take pictures of the place, but time flew too quickly. =(

What did I work on?  My main goal was to complete tote bag/travel sets for both of my featherweights.  I bought Jeni Baker's pattern and made progress.  When I got to the point where I needed to sew the straps onto the tote panels, my little featherweight was struggling.  I decided to put this aside and finish it with a friend's machine on another day. I did get the foot pedal bag completed!

My friend made the cutest troll hair headbands for her daughter's birthday party.  Behind me, you can see part of the finished grey plus top for my friends' soon to be baby.  I don't have a great picture of the completed top, but once it is quilted, I'll do a proper photo shoot.

I brought the second/rainbow plus top with me, but I'm short just a few fabrics and I'll hold off on starting the rows until I have that figured out.

 While packing, as an afterthought, I threw in 3 yards of fabric that I bought about 8 years ago.  I pulled this out of my stash to donate to Project Linus, because it wasn't something that inspired me any longer.  After letting it sit on my step for a bit, my mind started wandering to think-- you could do a simple rail fence with it and *then* donate it to Linus!  I'm very happy I ended up bringing this, because I was stalled on my other projects and it was a great, simple thing to make while chatting with friends and I was able to whip up an entire top in less than one day.

I'll share one last picture of our weekend-- a fun selfie!

xoxo,
Kristin

Linking up with Judy's Design Wall Mondays, Lorna's Let's bee Sewcial and Cynthia's  Oh Scrap!!