I spent the weekend at a quilt retreat near Annapolis, Maryland with about 20 members of my local guild. We have a retreat center with a very large workroom, a second room with couches and a fire place, and sleeping rooms. Meals are served and we don't have to clean up. It's not real elegant but it's a great time for just stitching all weekend long. The only problem is trying to decide what to take. This time I made a baby quilt from start to finish. It's been hanging over my head for a long time (the baby will be a year old soon). I did something totally out of character - a pastel and white traditional log cabin quilt. I had to dig deep into my stash to find pastels! It was great to get it completed by Saturday afternoon and still have the rest of the evening and Sunday morning to work on an art piece. So here is a picture of the baby quilt. It's about 38" x 38"; the strips in the log cabins are 1" wide. To quilt the feathers I marked the spine and sort of sketched a few of the loops. After a few I decided I only needed to mark the spine - once you get into the rhythm of the loops it's pretty easy.
The great thing about these retreats is the sharing of ideas and techniques. One woman was making little paper quilts, another made a chenille top, another was making boxes with Timtex, another was making a carryall bag, lots of people were knitting. And of course there was lots of chocolate. In two weeks I'm going again with another group, this time all art quilters. Won't be working on anything traditional then.
