Quilt Retreat

Well, the weather was bad but we made it to the retreat anyway. We had freezing rain and a little ice and the schools were closed but it cleared up by mid-morning so we started about 11am which was only a couple of hours late. People came in between 11am and about 2pm depending on where they live and how bad the roads were near them.

Here are the tables all set for our first meal. The theme of the retreat was Quilters Tea Party so each person had a fabric coaster, teacup and fabric napkin at their place. I also got new tablecloths for the tables so the meal area looked very nice.

I found fun foam cowboy hats around Halloween at the dollar store so picked up one for everyone - after all, what is a tea party without hats. Each quilter was asked to bring embellishments - although they didn't know what they were embellishing. Everyone wore their hats to dinner Thursday night and we had a hat fashion show with some prizes for the most creative. My hat is shown above.

Next we had goodie bags for everyone. Mine is pictued under my hat. They were embroidered with "Friends don't let friends quilt alone". They had appliqued quilters with yarn hair on the front. Since we have one male quilter, Dave's bag had quilter men on it.

This picture was the featured project for the retreat. About 1/2 of the people made a version of this quilt and the others worked on their own projects. I decided to make a new quilt for my bed so I did work on this project, along with my friend Mary.

Since it was a fat quarter quilt, Mary and I bought 1/2 yards and split them. The queen-size called for 6 different colors, 5 shades of each color. We couldn't decide on 6 colors so ended up with 8 colors, 5 shades of each.

The quilt with the white background is Mary's

This one is my quilt - I had black background. This is the center of the quilts, we are going to add borders. The first one will be of the background and then a couple of borders using strips of the various fabrics from the quilt. I think the first will be the lighter colors, then the darker and then a final border of the background.

I like both of the quilts but I really love mine the best.