the retreat treat

My mom, Sally, and I have just completed a 5 day quilting retreat in Augusta, WI.  It's great that she could come with me.  We have wished we could do more of this, but the past few years she has not been able to leave home very much since Dad needed her there.  So, even though it's sad that he is gone, it's good that she can once again do some of the things she missed out on.

There were 20 of us staying at Bridge Creek Cottage.  Plenty of sewing space, food and fun.  There was even a local quilt show going on!  We all had meal assignments, so we each had to cook only once during the whole time, which was great!

Here we are in our natural habitat--

I spent time completing the blocks for this quilt, Hexie Blossoms by Whimsicals.  I will work on getting this quilted and bound so it can probably be a summer class at Bear Patch.

My mom worked on finishing the borders for this quilt for her grandson, Spencer.

Each of her 6 grandkids will have received their quilt when this is done, and then she can start on the great-grands!  They all have little baby quilts from grandma, but the latest edition is a grown-up quilt.

This was derived from a block that she found in an old magazine, and we tweaked it a little and enlarged everything to make it a good size.  The main element is the blue paisley print, which gave us a basis for all of the other colors.  Since I drove her home and stayed overnight last night, we got this layered with the backing and batting, pin basted, and mounted on her quilting frame for hand quilting.

The next quilt was made by Laura.  This is only a portion of it.  It is a pattern by Bonnie Hunter.  It was a mystery from a previous year, and I don't see it on her blog but it will probably be in a future publication.  I am always amazed at the circle effect achieved with straight lines, no curves.

And here's a beautiful accomplishment, many hours of work and TLC went into this one.  It's called Indian Orange Peel by Karen K. Stone.  It is the work of Amy.  It is all paper pieced by machine, small pieces of fabrics sewn onto a paper pattern, then joined with other sections.

There were 2 or 3 other people at retreat who have the intention of making this design in different color schemes.  I hope they can do it!

And here's a cute new pattern that Jean was working on---

Fancy Foxes by Elizabeth Hartman.

You have to click to her website to see the cute ideas and the hedgehogs!

That's all for now!