Sewing Retreat Wrap Up

Now that I've had a few days to recover after my sewing retreat I'm ready to do a recap!

Don't you love a few days away with lovely people in a lovely place doing what you love? What could be better?

So on Friday night, right on sunset, my bestie Kerry and I arrived here. (Hopefully the photos aren't too odd, I found later in the day I inadvertently had my macro button on and I don't know when I did that!)

After a quick tea of tasty minestrone prepared by my sister in law Kerrie (note we had two Kerry/Kerries!) we got set up and got cracking!

My goal was to reduce my scrap box somewhat by making string blocks. Here it is on arrival:

We stitched late into the night on Friday night and then finally crashed only to start again the next morning. We were a bit slack this time and didn't get up until 7.30am and sat around having a chat and brekkie until our last person arrived at 8.00am.  Pauline had been to the Rocky Horror Stage Show the night before in Adelaide and surprised us by arriving so early. She was keen to get cracking!

Here is the lovely Doreen, Pauline and my sister in law Kerrie. I think she may have been threatening me with those snips but I took the photo anyway! 

It was such a beautiful day the other Kerry and I took a gentle stroll along the beach:

We walked all the way down to the end and back and then got stuck into it again. Here was the view from our front verandah in the other direction:

Kerry was mostly doing some beading and crocheting but she also had a sewing project to do so I took a break mid afternoon on Saturday to press some blocks and do some hand sewing and let Kerry have a go on my machine.

Its only a project she's been meaning to do for 18 months so it was great she got it done. That's the other Sue in the background (yep two Sues and two Kerry's in a group of 6!) coming to grips with cutting fabric.  Sue was never going to be a quilter but the bug has bitten and she made one quilt top using some lovely Vincent Van Gogh fabric and by the end of the weekend she was hooked on making divided 9 patch blocks after Doreen gave her a lesson!

So on to my projects.  I made a total of 32 string blocks in a variety of colours:

I only stopped as I ran out of the background squares and strips I had prepared!  Then I moved on to making crumb blocks out of all my teeny tiny leftover bits.

These I find are quite time consuming so only got four of these done (which is the same number I made last time). This time around I made yellow and pink - here are all my blocks so far (they're 8.5" square).

So of course by now you'd think I would have made quite an impression on my scrap box wouldn't you?

You'd be wrong though! I'm not sure I can even tell I took anything out of it!  Looks like I'll have to do it all again in September!

Thanks for reading my blog today,