Another retreat

 Yes, I'm going on another retreat this weekend.  This time it's for quilting.  I wasn't intending to go, but someone has had to pull out, and her place was up for grabs.  

As I said last week, it's winter here, and wet and cold, so I'd just be quilting at home all weekend anyway.  This way I get to do it with friends and see all the exciting things that they are making.

I'm not even sure what do at retreat yet.  Often I just take hand sewing because I can't be bothered lugging my sewing machine along. But also because I have so much hand piecing and applique to do.  I could pull out the Don't Leaf me applique quilt that I worked on at retreat a year ago.  It hasn't seen much daylight since then, so perhaps it deserves another outing.  

I'll also take Raindrops are Falling on my Head that I talked about last week.  It's a good opportunity to cut a lot more pieces and perhaps even hand sew some more rosettes together. 

I might take this drawer of gorgeous fabrics along and cut some blocks for my house quilt.  I've just noticed that the colours match the Raindrops quilt above and my Rebel Rebel cardigan below! I guess that says something about me.  

And I'll take my knitting too because it's easy to do if the light is poor or I want to relax in an armchair.  

So I've got plenty of options.  I'll report back next week on the retreat.  Will I sew much? Or will I just talk and enjoy the company of other quilters?

Now it's time for the Peacock Party.  What have you been up to this week?  Feel free to link up a recent blog post below.   

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Capital Quilters' Retreat

This weekend I'm going to our guild's retreat.  We're quite a big guild, so we usually have 3 retreats a year - 2 at Silverstream in Upper Hutt, and one at Home of Compassion in Island Bay, Wellington. Different groups of members are regulars at each venue.  I only go to the Home of Compassion retreat which is usually in the middle of winter.  

We arrive on Friday morning and stay for two nights, so I need to take plenty of things to keep me busy for three days.  

The last couple of years I've left my sewing machine at home and only taken hand sewing.  Some people think I'm crazy! But I have so much hand sewing and hand quilting to do, that I can easily keep busy for three days.

This year I'm going to work on:

1. Modified Marshal Mystery Quilt - hand quilting

2. Don't Leaf Me by Wendy Williams - hand applique

3.  Our retreat block.  This year I had the pleasure of choosing our retreat block.  I chose Panama Pyramids by Linda Collins of Quilts in the Barn in Australia.  It doesn't look much like this, but it's going to look great when they're all on the wall at retreat.  

Linda Collins has kindly given me permission to use her pattern.  Linda’s pattern is based on an antique quilt that she owns. I purchased the pattern from Linda’s Etsy shop for NZ $10 here . Linda also sells acrylic templates for Panama Pyramids, so if you love the design and want to make a whole quilt I recommend that you get in touch with her.

It's a hand piecing pattern, but can also be pieced with English Paper Piecing or by machine. 

I've made my blocks, but I made need to help others who want to try hand piecing. 

Of course I've popped in a few extras in case I get bored, but these will be my main focus (when I'm not chatting to others).  

Now it's time for the Peacock Party.  Feel free to link up a recent blog post and let us know what you've been up to recently.  

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

A Quilting Retreat and the Peacock Party

What a great response to last week's post about Sashiko.  So many of you have been in touch to say you either have a panel in your cupboard, or you've always wanted to try it.  Give it a go!! It's lots of fun and quite quick too.

my iPhone for scale

a 6" block

I'm at a quilting retreat this weekend.  Our guild runs 3 retreats each year.  Two are at the Silverstream Retreat in Upper Hutt, and one is at the Island Bay, Home of Compassion.  This will be the fifth year in a row that I've attended the Island Bay retreat.

We have a lot of fun at retreat, and get so much sewing done without having to stop to cook meals etc.  Each person has their own bedroom and bathroom, and the staff at the venue do all the cooking for us.  We sew in a lovely big meeting which gets lots of natural light.  It's also nice and warm because it's winter here, and we definitely need good heating.

We are all guilty of taking too many quilts to work on, but it's better to have too many than to run out of things to do.  I'm going to take my Dear Jen blocks along.  This is a mystery hand piecing programme being run by Jen Kingwell from Amitie Textiles.

I've only made the first 6 blocks so far, so I could spend the weekend catching up on blocks 7-18, although I don't think I'll get them all made in one weekend.

I'll also take some hand quilting, because it's easy to hand quilt while talking to friends.  I might start hand quilting my Cartwheel quilt by Kaffe Fassett.  It's all basted and ready to go.  Don't ask how I'm going to quilt it yet, because I'll figure that out once I've got the needle in my hand!

Or I could do a bit more hand quilting on my Shuttles quilt.  I do love that yellow Aurifil 12wt I've chosen for the quilting. 

So many options - and only 3 days of retreat.  Perhaps I need a week long retreat!

If you want to see what everyone else is up to at retreat, you can follow Capital Quilters on Instagram and Facebook, or look for the #homeofcompassionretreat hashtag on social media.  That's our logo above.

Now it's time for the Peacock Party. What have you been up to lately? Feel free to link up a recent post below.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Quilting Retreat

It's our annual quilting retreat this weekend.

I smile when I see photos of quilters in USA and Canada going to retreats at luxury lodges in the woods, besides glistening lakes.

The Lodges at Cresthaven, Lake George, NY - taken at random from Booking.com

Sadly, it's not like that here in New Zealand.  We go to the Home of Compassion in Island Bay, Wellington.  It used to be a Catholic convalescence home so it has lots of showers and bathrooms, but they are turning it into a conference centre slowly.  I've heard there have been major renovations completed since we were last there, so I hope to see some big changes.

Most of my friends will be sewing up a storm on their machines this weekend.  I'm going to leave mine at home and focus on hand quilting my quilt for our exhibition.  The hand in date is only two weeks away, and I still have a lot to do.

I'll also prepare some more Glitter blocks for hand piecing, and maybe even do a bit of English Paper Piecing and hand piecing if I have time.

I can always drive home and get my sewing machine if I think I want a change, otherwise I'll be hand quilting.

my Sew Together bag

Last weekend I went to a quilting retreat with our guild.  My good friend Anne offered to teach me how to make a Sew Together bag while we were there.  She's made about 6, so she knows all the ins and outs. Here's what I made:

 

The pattern for the Sew Together bag is by Sew Demented, and is available for purchase on Craftsy.  If you do want to make a bag like this, I highly recommend the tutorial by Quilt Barn on her blog.  There are many extra little steps not mentioned in the pattern, but the tutorial explains them all.

I chose some lovely Tula Pink fabrics for this bag, and mixed them with some other pinks from my stash.

I've got a second bag cut out already, and it will be all Kaffe Fassett fabrics. I'll tackle it another day. My first bag took me about 10 hours, but I did hand sew my bindings down.  I'm hoping that the second one will be slightly quicker.

I didn't think I really needed one of these bags, but now I'm on holiday in Auckland I'm finding it really useful for storing my hand quilting supplies.

Quilt Retreat

I went to my first ever quilt retreat at the weekend. It was a bit like a cross between a school camp and a work conference, but there was no flying fox and no boring lectures.  It was just a weekend of sewing with friends.  Fortunately the retreat was still in town, so it was quite easy to get real coffee each morning.

I arrived at the retreat at 6pm on Friday night and some people were already sewing up a storm.  A number of my friends had taken 3, 4 or even 5 projects to retreat with them.  The supportive environment, and lack of family and pet distractions, resulted in some long overdue projects being finished at retreat. Here's a small selection of our weekend work from Instagram.

I only took 2 projects. I chose to work on my la passacaglia and a new wool felt applique Christmas quilt.

I'm going use this great low volume background with a tiny bit of silver sparkle in it, and add a bit of red with gold sparkle.  It won't be all traditional Christmas fabrics, but I do want to incorporate these three above.  

I cut out all the leaves and birds, and started preparing some of the flowers.

I chose not to take my sewing machine, and instead did hand sewing all weekend.  I really enjoyed getting to know some of the guild members better, and look forward to going again next year.

Here's how my la passacaglia is looking now that I've joined some of the rosettes up:

And another section I've just started on:

 It feels good to be joining up the rosettes, but I'm still a long way from finished.  I'm quite slow at choosing the fabrics because I really don't want to have to unpick any rosettes.  Therefore I'm taking my time and choosing carefully, trying to balance the colours and patterns.

This is how my kitchen floor looks some days: