Retreat - Day One

After a wee bit of a later start than I had originally planned, I was on the road to retreat. I was only 15 minutes behind schedule so that wasn’t so bad.

I was going to car pool with Ronda and Laura, but I couldn’t justify the extra time to get to her house and then repack the car. And when they arrived, they would have had no room for me anyway so that was good.

I got one side of the sleeve hand stitched to the magazine quilt when I arrived. Yeah - I’ll get the other side done this morning and then it can go into the mail this afternoon.

I had to work on another project for another magazine. I had made a prototype of the item and wasn’t happy with it, so as I tested the pattern, I remade it. I’m very happy with it and it’s going in the mail today as well.

That took the better part of the day to get that project done. But it’s done!!!  And the pattern has been updated and it’s gone. That was a great feeling.

I didn’t bring a whole lot of different projects to work on, but I decided to pull out one of my oldest UFOs. It’s a double wedding quilt that was supposed to be a wedding gift many, many years ago. Hmm - after it got lost and refound and shuffled many times, it’s time to get this project done. So I spent the rest of the day working on the wedding ring quilt. I have to say that I made good progress. My original goal was to make 64 blocks and make one quilt with all the blocks. But who wants a big quilt? My new goal is to make three smaller quilts (or maybe two lap quilts and a table topper with the same amount of blocks). I’ve got all the “blocks” together for one quilt and going to start assembling this morning.

This is exciting news that I’m working on this and it would be great to say that it’s done. Besides, I can quilt it on the long arm with a cool “block” designs.

The others are madly working on their respective projects and I’ve taken a few pictures so far. Yes - I will post them when we get back. We were all a little miffed for Ronda though. She was making this project that we absolutely love. She’s sewing in a different room. When I saw the finished project, I was taken aback as this was NOT how I remembered it. Turns out the picture on the front of the pattern is totally DIFFERENT from the instructions. GRRRRRR!!!!!!   Why are there so many BAD pattern writers???? She will rip it out, but it requires some of the blocks being taken apart and switched around.

We’ve all been very responsible at this retreat. So far!! But I think Ronda had a drink after that episode. I don’t blame her.

I popped to the quilt store very quickly to get some Velcro but for the most part, we stuck close to the retreat house all day.

Well, I managed to cook my oatmeal in the microwave but amazing how different microwaves are. I did use power 5 today and I had a wee bit of a boil over. Tomorrow we go for power 4. But at least I was able to figure out how the power button works. Never used that in my life before, but now I’m good.

On that note, I’m off to sew more of my double wedding ring.

Have a super day!!!!

Ciao!!!!