Tag: Retreat

The last weekend was spent at the CQFA Retreat. We go to a small town on the coast about half an hour away. It is perfect, because I don’t have to drive very far and it is beautiful.

Rhonda and Angela came to the CQFA Retreat for the first time. It was great, because they were able to get to know the other members better. As I mentioned CQFA and the BAMQG were on the same day so it was hard to stay and socialize. It was also great, because we got to spend much more time with Angela and Rhonda.

Rhonda brought her A-B-C Challenge and was able to work on it a little bit. It really looks great and the CQFAers loved her travel concept.
I really admire people who bring multiple projects to the Retreat and then work on them. I brought two projects for the first and was able to work on both. One of my issues is I can’t organize myself well enough to make sure that I have all of the parts necessary for multiple projects.

Julie, unlike me, has a wonderful spontaneity about her work. As a result, she worked on several different projects. The three parts of this piece are really a good aspect of this piece. Of course, she used her hand dyes.

Dolores likes to plan her pieces and does gorgeous, thoughtful work. At this Retreat, however, Dolores was sitting next to Julie and, without Dolores realizing it,  some of Julie’s spontaneity wore off (infected???)  on Dolores. Dolores took a sample book of linen she got from FabMo and cut the pieces apart. She laid them out on a piece of muslin as a backing and glued them down temporarily.

Her intention was to sew them just enough to hold down the strips until she could embellish them.

The interesting thing about this piece is the texture of the fabric and the fraying of the edges. The colors are earthy with a bit of zing (see the purple?)

Angela came with the SCVQA challenge project. They will be having a show in April and the theme is Oh My Stars!

Along with the show quilts, the organization will have a challenge exhibit and Angela brought her pieces along to work on. She brought fabric and thread and ended up with the piece on the left.

This is a miracle, because there were many, many rules to this challenge. I admire Angela for coming up with this gorgeous piece and still working within the rules of the challenge.

She decided to use the Gwen Marston wonky stars technique. I love this piece. I love the colors (of course!!! Look at that turquoise). I love the embroidery of constellations she did as embellishments. I would love to see Angela make a similar piece but larger.

Sue worked, again, with batiks. Her piece from last year was just as gorgeous and when you look at them together, they look like a series.

I also like the juxtaposition of the classic Flying Geese with the contemporary look of the batiks. I know it is weird to say such a thing, but it looks so interesting to me and really stands out to me.

Maureen started out with this Plus type quilt.

I love the fabrics that she chose. Maureen had a Jelly Roll or strip set with these colors. Instead of using rectangles as some of the pieces Maureen used all squares. She told me that starting with this piece made for a very calming beginning to the quilt retreat.

Maureen started to have some trouble with her sewing machine so she switched to a hand project.

This piece looked like a map. Maureen did a lot of handwork on the piece and was thinking about others. She added French knots and a lot of couching around the edges of the white and blue areas..

This is what Calm looks like during basting. Big Deal, right?

Rhonda took a class on different types of handwork. In the picture above we are helping Rhonda chose the colors for the next set of borders.

Robin had some indigo fabrics from her mother. They were from South Africa. She found some great, and perfect, contemporary companion prints to use with the indigos.

The large squares are the contemporary prints. I also like the way these blocks are a bit off. It gives the piece movement.

Sonja was working on several pieces as well. She was inspired by some of the activities she does with her family. In addition to the bicycle, she had a scooter as part of the series. It was such great work; I can’t wait to see it finished.

The CQFA Retreat was over the weekend. It was a relatively quiet retreat. Several people had to cancel at the last moment, which was a shame. Still, we had a good time and people made good progress on their various progress.

We were in the same location as last year, which has a separate building in which we are able to sew.

This was my view as I sewed. Reva does wonderful work and it was wonderful to watch her, Sue and Robin’s work evolve.

The black and white piece is made from the fat quarter bundle Reva won from the prizes we got from Fabricworm.

Robin’s Blooming 9 Patch was made from Kaffe Fassett fabrics. I liked looking at it. I like the pink.

Robin added some 4 patches on the ends to make the piece a bit longer.

Sue half square triangle scrap quilt is the kind of project I like to do on the Retreat. Sue had the blocks done and thought to do the rest at home. We encouraged her to use Robin’s design wall to finish the piece. She did so and made good progress. She wanted to use up as many scraps as she could and I think that she did well. Sue is making this quilt for her bed.

I think the pink fabric in the middle left looks like the leaves a tree with the trunk being the piece right below. I mentioned it and Maureen said that we all see what we want to see.

Julie made a lot of progress on various pieces. She started some and made progress on others. I was very impressed with her progress.

The Baggo piece is from a challenge where each person receives a bag of supplies from another and makes something out of it. I was particularly taken with the Baggo piece’s eye stamps. I was even more impressed when Julie told me she carved them herself. I really like the images and encouraged her to make more and sell them. I would be first in line for a set although I don’t do much stamping.

She quilted and bound this piece. She was irritated at the binding, which tinkled every time she worked on it, because of the bells she had added. I told her to stop and do something else in between. By the end of the weekend, the binding was done and Julie was not gnashing her teeth.

We went out to dinner on Saturday night together, which was fun. We had the most wonderful waiter who was kind, didn’t complain about any special requests and gave us each individual bills.

I have a lot of talented colleagues who also attended the quilt retreat. I realized, after I got home, that the pictures I thought I took only were taken in my head. Sigh.

Dolores, for whom I made the pencil roll, is really making progress in her work. She takes classes deliberately from well respected quiltmakers and works through the techniques and makes it her own. For the past several years, she has worked in neutrals. This year she decided that she was going to add color back into the equation. This piece is from a photograph (right) and some techniques she learned in a class with Caryl Bryer Fallert. Dolores reworked the photo on her computer and then blew up the pattern, transferred it to freezer paper and used Fallert’s method of piecing to create the top.

Sonja, a new CQFAer was working with FabMo fabrics and just playing. She did a fabulous wave piece that I was really sorry not to have taken a picture of.

Sue and I are kindred spirits in that we both like to make quick projects in between our larger quilt projects. She worked on totes, scarves AND basted two quilts!

FabMo also has wallpaper -high end wallpaper – and Jan has been experimenting with folded boxes and bags using pieces of the free wallpaper. They are fabulous. She is also working on a piece based on the view of Nebraska from a plane. She worked on embellishing the circles she was making. Jan was sitting next to me and we talked about color, because she is finding her piece too dull. We discussed colors that would fit with her nature theme.

Julie bought a pack of Moda turnovers and is making a fun and sweet Valentine’s Day quilt. She is trying to limit her need to cut and this was a great way to do it.

Here is Julie’s quilt before she started on the appliquéd hearts.

Above shows her machine applique’ pieces waiting for their turn under the needle as well as the tools that are required for excellent quilting (glasses, rulers and coffee!). 😉

I thought that the above block looked like one of the illustrations in an illuminated manuscript.

This is a nice color combination. I am not sure the computer intermediation shows the subtlety, but it s great.

We talked a lot about this block, because of the skull. It is the block that shows that relationships can be icky and rocky sometimes. Fun fabric, though.

Maureen tried the pencil roll pattern and came up with a nice piece using some of her hand dyes and some FabMo fabric.

Terri worked on getting some tops put together. One was an exchange top that included some really nice batiks.

Debbie was trying to finish her daughter’s college quilt. She was using some very jewel-y turquoise, purples and other blues. It was very rich looking.

Kathy is a member’s daughter. We haven’t seen any of her work before this weekend. It turns out that she does wonderful handwork. She is working on this Piece O’Cake design, do it mostly by hand. I like the color choices she made. They are a bit muted, but not murky.

She didn’t like the scallop border that came with the pattern, so she designed this leaf border on her own.