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 I just got back from a fabulous weekend at a quilt retreat.  I love this retreat.  Twice a year my local quilt shop runs a retreat in Gananoque, a lovely little town about 2 hours away.  We stay at the Gananoque Inn, where they take great care of us with wonderful food, a great room for sewing (and talking, and laughing), and overall lovely service.  There were  a lot of wonderful projects being worked on this weekend (of which I have no pictures - I really do have to remember to use my camera).

These are a couple of the project I made (start to finish) at the retreat this weekend. It is really nice to have a focussed time to sew, with other people to chat with and projects to see.  Very different from shutting myself up in my sewing room for a weekend.

The Christmas tree is, of course, a Christmas wall hanging.  I started with the center panel, and wanted to add some borders to make it a bit bigger (and more interesting).  The top and bottom borders were part of the panel.  The rest of pieces are 4.5" star blocks I made.  There is a light kit for this quilt which I have - so I just have to figure out how to attach them and then how to quilt it without sewing over the electrical wires.

The star is a neat project I found in a book - Diamond Chain Quilts.  Although it looks really complicated, and there are some tricky bits with set-in seams, the quilt went together really well.  There were a few moments of angst when I cut the strips and came up one strip short for the turquoise but a bit of judicious cutting allowed me to make up the needed bit and complete the quilt with what I had on hand.


One other benefit of this weekend is for my stash report.  2 finished quilts used 2 1/4 and 7 yards respectively.  That bring my stash usage for this year up to a very respectable 228 1/4 yards out.

Drop by Judy's blog to see more stash reports today.

There was  lot more activity at the quilt retreat, and I'll have more to say about that later this week, once I get some projects unpacked.