Retreat Day 1 Report

 The Patchwork Times retreat officially started today.  I got things off to an early start, setting up my sewing machine at 7am while waiting for more people to arrive.  That's my machine, all lonely down at the far end of the room.

By mid-afternoon, the room was full, and activity was in full swing.  Lots of sewing went on today.  Also plenty of talking, laughing and eating.  With the ironing board set up at the opposite end of the room, I got plenty of exercise walking back and forth while working on my first project.

Here is my progress from today.  This quilt is for the February colour challenge.  I'm very happy with how this went together - the only disappointment is that I did not bring enough strips to finish the quilt completely.  It will have to go home 8/9ths complete, and I'll finish the last block when I get back home.

This is project #2.  I figured this retreat was a good time to make some progress on this project.  It's been shelved since Christmas.  I started by using the little triangles as leaders & enders for my colour challenge project. That got enough additional purple blocks to get this up on the wall.  I think I've decided on this layout - a minor change from Bonnie's design, but I think it works better with the very dark purples I have in my set.

Once the colour challenge was complete, I focused on more blocks for this quilt.  I put together another 20 star blocks after dinner.  Next up - purple strings.

It appears that my theme for this retreat is going to be "not enough fabric".  After running out of the colour challenge, I realized that I do not have all the parts needed for this quilt either.  I am missing a large number of black 2.5" squares for the star blocks.  And I am positive that I will not have enough purple strings to make all the required string blocks.  I'll take this as far as I can, and hopefully get the blocks I do make put together in to a top.  Then when I get home I can decide whether it wants to be bigger.

Day one is done, and I am on my way to bed.  Still riding the adreneline high from my first retreat, so sleep may not be so easy to find tonight.