The second CQFA Retreat was the weekend of January 25, 2009 (read about the first retreat here). What a great weekend for sewing. You have already seen my completed top, FOTY 2008, but I thought I would share some of the highlights of the trip and other people’s projects with you. I highly recommend going on a weekend retreat once in a while, especially if you normally don’t get several hours of uninterrupted time to do your sewing.

On Saturday, I went out for a walk and to get some food and saw this flower, which I thought might make a nice sketch or a “Big Idea” for a quilt.

Terri, a talented writer whose books you should go out and buy right now, is also a talented quiltmaker. Above is her Kaleidoscope project. Since I had recently completed the Eye Spy top, I gave her some unsolicited advice on putting the top together. One of the things that I enjoy about the retreat is that I like seeing what people are making. Terri uses a very different color palette than I do, but it was great to see how she worked on the hexagons.

CQFA has a free fabric connection. Julie went and got some free fabric and made the above couch throw out of it. I love the cabbage rose feel that this top has, mostly because it is not too sickly sweet.

I didn’t crop the photo above, because I wanted you to see the set up. Julie and I were working at the table on the left side of the photo. You can see FOTY 2008 on my portable design wall in the background. Dolores was working on the right. We had nice big tables to work on.

Dolores, the organizer, had a goal of getting to know everyone better. Last year people did introductions and everyone talked about how they got into quiltmaking. This year she asked everyone to talk about what inspires them. Above is a picture of everyone gathering around one person’s work.

Debbie talked about taking a summer course at Cabrillo College with Richard Elliott. The class was called something like Frankenstein Fabric and they learned to manipulate fabric in new and interesting ways. The fabric above has been manipulated so that it has little puffs all over it.

The fabric has a high polyester content. Debbie does really interesting things with fiber and is very involved with SAQA.

All in all, the weekend was a big success. I certianly got a lot done and was pleased to be able to spend some extra time with Julie.