A tea party

 It's raining this morning, and I'm NOT going for a walk in the rain. So no walk this morning. Perhaps later today. It's been fun walking, and last evening, we clocked the length of the driveway. It's about 300 steps one-way and takes about 2 minutes 20 seconds. So if we did that every hour, that would be a great little pick me up. 

When I booked this place because our other retreat house was sold, we weren't sure. It's someplace new. You have to learn where everything is. Will the house be big enough? Will it be the same atmosphere? What is the sewing room like? All kinds of questions. Well, we've been chatting a LOT while we've been here, and we've come to the conclusion that we LOVE this place! We think it'll be very squishy above a certain number, and we're just fine with that. Oh, by fine - I mean we'll be fine with fewer people on the retreats in the future. 

I might even go so far as to say that this has been my favorite retreat so far!! Seriously????  Yep!!!

We've been totally entertained by Spotify, and thanks to Susan for bringing that along. Now we're making playlists and learning new songs, and well, I'm excited to get home and create my own playlists. Yep -- since I've had access to Spotify for a long time at home (I even have an account), I could have done it years ago, but no incentive. Now I see how useful (and easy) it can be! 

It's like we have a quilt union here. We shut down for lunch, where we sit around the table and talk for hours. Then it's time for afternoon tea in the garden! Thanks to Susan (a wonderful hostess) for setting this up! We have apple crisp (thanks, Lynn) with ice cream with our tea. 

Our tea party

Another long dinner around the table. Yep --- it's been a great retreat. I forgot to mention that we did zip into town the previous day and visited Cobwebs and Caviar, the local quilt shop. And we stopped at Wool & Silk, the local wool shop where we met the owner of the retreat house and I bought something very cool which I'll share another day. 

Ronda, who lives not that far away, stopped in for a visit the other day. A bit of FOMO, perhaps???

But did I get any sewing done? You bet I did!!!!

I was using these little table toppers as my enders and leaders. They were strips leftover from a magazine quilt I made years ago.  I would make one long runner and then decided that it would be better as two shorter ones. Now I need to find some Northcott Canvas black to make a border and binding. 

Two small table runners

Once that was finished, I needed to work on another ender and leader project. I made these little half-square triangles a while back. They are trimmed and ready to go. So I started to make little pinwheel blocks. 

Small pinwheel blocks

But what about the double wedding ring quilt? Super progress has been made!!  And it's looking pretty amazing. 

The double wedding ring quilt

It's going to be easy to transport home. No, it's not all in one place at the moment. And I'll keep plugging away at the blocks today. I have 11 more to make, and not sure I can get them all sewn together. I'm also removing the paper as I go, which is a challenge as Paula had fun gluing some of those papers in place. It doesn't matter  - it's going to be done soon. Then to quilt and bind it. 

I've still got a lot of components to play with. I'm sure there isn't enough to make another quilt, and I've got lots of one and not much of another, so definitely not equal. 

More components for the double wedding ring quilt

But let's just get this one done as that's the one I promised to make for Paula. 

And can you believe I'm staying up LATE. I think it was well after 10 PM last night when we collectively shut the lights off and went to bed. There's so much space here and so easy to get away on your own if you want, but there's no time for getting away - that quilt needs to be done11!!

But this is my workstation before I went to bed. Super clean and tidy!!!!

My clean workstation

Lynn even stayed up late, which is very unusual and even more unusual, she left her workstation in a disaster!!! 

Lynn's workstation

As I mentioned, it's raining today, and today we go home. It's one day shorter than our other retreats, but you know what? I'm ready to go home. Not that I want to get away from the others, but it's been super relaxing on this retreat that I'm actually ready to go home. We did NOT go out excessively, but we spent some quality time catching up and learning about ourselves. It's been awesome!!!!

Don't forget to check out QUILTsocial today. There are some super tips to make REVERSIBLE embroidered items. 

In case you want to check out the retreat house, it's called Retreat at the Farm. 

And on that note, it's time to hit the sewing machine again!!!

Have a super day!1!1

Ciao!!!!