Hello!

In less than a month I will be on quilt retreat! I’m starting to look forward to it since I’ve been working on getting my sewing mojo back. I need to finish up some projects and decide which ones to take with me.

A friend gifted me some Funky Friends Factory stuffed animal patterns for the baby so that’s on my short list of things to do at retreat. The doctor has put me on a lifting restriction the rest of the pregnancy, no more than 10 pounds, so I have to be conscientious of the things I bring because my mom will be schlepping my stuff for me. I took too many projects last year and had a pile of project boxes behind my sewing station. I may need to limit myself to 3-4 project boxes this year. I would like to cut out everything I can ahead of time so all I have to do is pull out the box and sew.

I have been wanting to make a quilt for the baby and I think retreat would be the perfect time to tackle that. I actually have two quilts in mind. One is a traditional blue and white sailboat quilt and the other is Jaybird Quilts’ Snack Time quilt. Jaybird Quilts welcomed a son in August and she has posted about the projects she made for him on Facebook and Instagram. I ended up loving the Snack Time quilt so I bought the pattern. I already have both of her rulers, the Hex n’ More and Super Sidekick, and I love them. Everything fits together and they’re easy to use. I have a 1/2 yard bundle of a Moda line called Bon Voyage that I want to use for the Snack Time quilt. The fabric colors are blues, yellows, reds, and white/cream. For the sailboat quilt I plan to pull blue fabrics from my stash for the sailboats and I bought some white on white fabric for the background.

My mind hasn’t been focused on retreat most of the year so I had to remind myself what I had planned and get back to organizing activities. One of my quilty friends volunteered to sew the welcome bags for everyone on her serger this year to relieve some of the pressure on me and the owner of the LQS. So that has been a great help. We’ll fill them with little goodies and attach a name tag for each person. For activities I’ve planned three things. The first night we’ll do a White Elephant gift exchange of a new or gently used notion and this will serve as our ice breaker. Every year we have a couple people drop off and some new people join so that keeps things interesting. I also try not to do the same activities every year so the regulars don’t get bored.

Second, I saw an idea for a quilt relay. You divide into teams of four and each team gets the same supplies. Your team tries to make a charity quilt the fastest for a prize at the end. I thought we could vote on the tops at the end and do a viewer’s choice award. Quilt tops will be quilted by volunteers and donated to charity.

Last but not least is Fat Uglies. I may have talked about this before, I don’t remember. It’s a strange name and something that originated in my mom’s small quilt group. Each person picks the ugliest fat quarter they have from their stash and also picks a coordinating fat quarter, usually a neutral, to make their ugly bearable. Participants bring their fabrics in a brown paper sack and we blind vote on the ugliest ugly, prettiest ugly, and what were they thinking?! Fabrics are then placed back in brown paper bags and you pick a bag at random. From your selection you make 1-2 quilt blocks from the ugly fabric you chose. The blocks will be made into a quilt top for charity. The quilt pictured above is what we will be making with our fat ugly blocks.

Hopefully everything comes off without a hitch and we all fun!

Happy Quilting!

Camille