Quilt Retreat - Day One

The quilt retreat is in Orillia.  Fireside Retreat - a great place to visit if you've never been here before. 

There is nothing more exciting than having an entire day ahead of you, fabric cut out and good friends to share the moments with. I can hear the laughter coming from the sewing room and well - they sound like they are enjoying themselves!

I managed to get TWO projects done yesterday. Well, as done as they could be. The first one was our guild mystery.  You had to make large rail fence blocks from jelly roll strips. I decided to make life harder for myself and make mine scrappy, using a teeny tiny portion of that massive box of batik strips.  I cut a piece from each strip so all the fabrics are different.  All 48 of those blocks are sewn together.  They are now in the DONE box. 

Then I pulled out a pattern that I wrote for Northcott's resource web page.  I cut the strips yesterday morning before I left. There are two borders on the quilt, I did NOT cut those. There isn't a lot of room here to do borders, but I got the center of the quilt done and it looks beautiful. 

Twist and turn  by Elaine Theriault

That was it for me for the day. But today is a new day and I was up early and already have the next quilt ready to go.  Normally I come with everything precut, but that just didn't happen this time.  I'm working on the sawtooth border for Vintage Moments. Ronda and Claudette are also working on this quilt and I vow to get a lot more of it done this weekend!  I had to recut the sawtooth border as it just wasn't working - I had somehow trimmed the pieces too small!!!  

Here are a couple pictures of MORE license plates.  These are the ones that I picked up in the US.  Eight new ones for 2016. 

US license plates picked up in Houston

And these are two more plates that were given to me, one from Ontario and one from California. Thanks, Katheleen!!!!

More plates!

And one of the shops in the US was including their plate from 2015 with the purchase of the 2016 plate, so I got one more which I didn't have!

2015 plate from Texas

The 2015 pile is getting huge while 2016 is starting to accumulate as well.  Yes - I'm thinking, but this isn't the time to work on them.

On that note, I do have a bit of paperwork that has to be done today and then I'm back at the sewing machine for the entire day.  The plan for today is to focus on Vintage Moments.  Let's hope that I can get a fair amount done. Tomorrow, I start working on custom quilts for customers.

Have a super day!!!   (It's gorgeous here by the way - cool, but sunny!)

Ciao!!!