Update on Sewing Retreat (Better Late Than Never!)

I thought I'd better post an update on my sewing weekend away which was a couple of weekends ago. Haven't seemed to be able to find the time to sit and blog since then!

We were blessed with spectacular spring sunshine, although it was a little nippy the first night.

 

We stayed in the house above with the two big picture windows-  it was terrible sewing with such an awful view to look at all day!

My bestie, Kerry and I normally arrive after work on a Friday so not normally until around 7.00pm but this time we both had the day off so were able to leisurely drive up and stop for a lovely lunch at a bakery in Port Wakefield for a cornish pasty and a honey stick, yum! Then it was on the road and off to Wallaroo, arriving around 2.00pm just after the other car load of ladies. By 2.30pm we were all moved in set up and sewing - bliss!

After watching from the sidelines for a couple of years my Kerry has finally been drawn over to the dark side and wanted to try quilting (she has already conquered the tricky 'stash building' skill - so much so I nearly staged an intervention!) and so wanted to make a patchwork bag to put all her sewing tools in. So we started with some basic patchwork skills by joining the squares for the side of her bag. She's a natural, perfect joins first try!(Of course she had an awesome teacher, ahem!)

My first project was to quilt my 'freebie' quilt so I got stuck in and got cracking, only stopping for dinner on the verandah looking at this gorgeous sunset and then back to work!

I had it finished by early afternoon the next day.

 I went for one of my favourite designs, a looping leafy vine, alternating between the outer squares and inner squares.

 Here it is viewed from the back:

After an early start (6.30am - some of our girls are early risers and one up, all up!) by lunchtime I was looking forward to our home made pasties (courtesy of Doreen)and a glass of merlot, yep life is tough allright!

A bit more work and Kerry and I rewarded ourselves with a walk along the beach to get some sunshine. Unfortunately the tide was out but we saw some birdlife and lots of happy dogs going for walks.

Kerry finished her very first quilted project, ta da!

Our other sewists were all working on different projects, we had Kerrie (my sister in law) and Pauline with embroidery machines and both were working on blocks for an embroidered quilt. Isn't this a spectacular block?!

 This will be going on a block too:

Sue and Doreen were making quilt blocks; Sue was making disappearing 9 patches:

 and Doreen was making these which I think from memory were for her 'surfboard' quilt:

Gay (my other sister in law!) was performing 'surgery' on some large stuffed toys and putting in a zipper compartment to hold a blanket. She was making them for her grandkids. There was a lion, a dog and a unicorn. Here is the blanket ready to fold in:

Here it is nearly in:

and here they are in the 'recovery ward' wishing they could play outside on the beach!

Once I had my quilt quilted, I moved on to putting the frames around my mariner's compass blocks, here they are all laid out afterwards:

I even had time to whip up a quick block from my green 'crumbs' which was my fallback project if I finished everything I had with me.

Amazing how much you get done when you sew until midnight and then get up again at 6.30am both days!
Kerry was doing well and here is her first go at a 'proper' quilt block:

She's really hooked now, there is no escape!

We had a wonderful time, wonderful company and food and lots and lots of sewing and laughs. Looking forward to the next one in March 2015 now!

Thanks for visiting my blog today,