and I'm back ...

... from my quilt retreat with members of the Yorkshire Modern Quilt Group.

I had a fabulous weekend with 15 friends, lots of chatter, laughter, eating and, of course, sewing. Not that much sleeping went on though and on Saturday night some of the die-hards were still hard at work (chatting anyway) at about 1am I gather.

Scrappy and I arrived early so we had time for lunch on Friday although we couldn't get into the sewing room until about 4.30. So we ordered a sandwich each and a plate of chips (french fries) to share and the portions were large enough that we really only needed one sandwich between us. Still, we managed to eat it all. Other people started arriving and soon we were able to get into the sewing room.

We had a lovely big room with plenty of natural light, room for a table with coffee and tea making facilities and a large "treat" table. That table, I can tell you, was the ruin of any diets for the weekend. What's more, it was magic. As fast as we all ate, it never got empty.

There was a great goody bag for each person with gifts like magazines, fabrics, threads, vouchers and all sorts of lovely things.

 We were able to sew, eat, chat, repeat, as often as we wanted and I managed to make a quilt top (no photo for some reason) and sort of master machine applique with my new machine. I have never had a machine with a button-hole stitch before, so I had fun playing around using that and trying out different threads. This was the beginning of a quilt, until I realised that I did not have enough of the right fabrics, so they will become a table topper I think, and I will make the quilt from different fabrics.

I then moved on to a different applique project and am making slow progress with it and having fun.

We also had a raffle and a quiz, and, on Sunday a little fresh air was called for, but don't worry, we had a good reason for abandoning our sewing machines, as you can see. A fire alarm went off and we all had to evacuate while the firemen came and extinguished the fire (which I was told was in the kitchen, but we still got our meals served up so I'm not sure). We also had snow, but not enough for us all to have been snowed in. (What a hardship that would have been, snowed in while staying at a hotel for a quilt retreat.)




All in all, a great weekend thanks to L & H (the organisers) and everyone else who was there and now I'm looking forward to the next one.