Retreat! (and Happy Halloween)

 I got back from my four-day sewing retreat yesterday.  It was pretty good. Everyone (c. 35-40 people) was really friendly, the hotel was nice (way better than the Wales retreat), lovely big sewing room, and I enjoyed learning some new things on the overlocker class.  

I was borrowing a fancy air threading Husqvarna overlocker which chomped through everything with no tension problems at all, a far cry from my 25 year old Janome overlocker (serger) but apparently this one lists at £1,000.  In fact I was rather boggled at the equipment people had brought to the retreat, more than half the attendees had massive top of the line sewing and/or embroidery machines. I was talking to one woman whose machine was the size of a desk - she said it cost £13,000!!!!!!!!!!!  That's more than our car cost.  I wouldn't dare take it out of the house.  That's one of the reasons I have a Singer Featherweight because my previous computerised sewing machine didn't like riding in the car once a month to quilt group and kept going wrong.  Attendees were very taken with my FW - even though many of them have made quilts, it wasn't like a quilt group where a lot of people will have an FW as a workshop machine. Many of them had never seen an FW so they all thought it was adorable. Which it is of course.

On the overlocking course, we made a flatlocked patchwork totebag, a Quilt As You Go cot quilt (I haven't stitched the binding down yet), an heirloom stitched lingerie bag (I used some old Tana Lawn from my stash) and a puzzle shopper bag.  All done with the overlocker, no sewing machines. I used Aldi FQs for the two bags.

Before and inbetween, I was working on the Edyta Sitar 'Winter Village' quilt using her 'Little Sweetheart' fabric line.  I am making both the bed size blocks and the bonus mini blocks, so I cut them both out at the same time.  The cutting out is the most fiddly part, lots of small squares and rectangles, but the sewing up is quite straightforward.  It was a bit cramped to fit my patchwork onto the same table as my overlocker once the course started, and consequently a few later blocks are a bit wonky so I may need to do some remedial adjustment. I got as far as house 11 so that's 11 big houses and 11 small ones.  There are 23 house blocks in total.  The mini quilt also includes some trees.

So it was a pretty good retreat and I might go again.  I feel a bit uneasy about the cost when I could just stay home and sew in my sewing room for free.  But I find after a maximum of four hours down there, I am getting bored and claustrophic and feeling like I should be getting on with other jobs.  The beauty of the retreat is that there is nothing else to be getting on with: no cooking, no cleaning, nobody asking when supper is, no doorbells, and best of all no cats starting to beg loudly for dinner 2.5 hours before their actual dinner time. And there are other people.

I didn't start on quilt 11 on the quilt frame before I went because there didn't seem much point starting to build up muscle memory on the new panto when I was going to be away for four days.  I did however make up the second cartonnage box from the free tutorials by Colourway Arts before I went.  It's turned out fairly well - it's quite sturdy and the lid fits snugly.  I used some Japanese themed fabrics for it.

Facebook pimped me this year's Christmas decoration acquisition, and it was delivered from Fortnum & Mason while I was away (in a ridiculously over-sized box).  I think it is painted metal as it is quite heavy.  The painting is fairly good but there are a few overlaps here and there - DH might have a go at tidying it up. I will tell myself that those are gluten free treats on the tray.

I put in some hard graft in the knitting machine room last week.  It took 5-6 hours but I finally managed to scrounge together all the accessories and parts for the electronic knitting  machine as listed in the manuals (it was like a scavenger hunt, all over the room in drawers and boxes looking for obscure bits of metal and fittings because it's all in a huge jumble after all the house moves), cleaned up and oiled both beds, dealt with the sticky buttons on the knitting carriage, and knitted a test sample to make sure it still worked at all.  Then I listed it at a rock bottom price to get it out of the house quickly, and almost had my hand bitten off by a woman who was very pleased to drive down and collect the bargain bundle complete with knitting table.  So one down, and out of the room. I don't regret not trying to get more money for it - these machines are so old now that they could break or blow up at any moment and I haven't used them for years so I'm in no position to warranty them.  I'm thinking I'm probably going to keep the Brother 260 chunky machine because it will knit handknitting yarn weight.  But the Brother 881 will go, although I feel a pang as it was my favourite machine.  Before I sell it though, I need to collect together and test various accessories that fit onto it (colour changers, garter carriage etc.) as they will be sold separately.   The current plan is to clear the room apart from the the 260, buy an industrial Jack H2 walking foot sewing machine and install it up there, and maybe even see if I could squeeze in my current machine quilting frame.  There wasn't room to set up a Handiquilter, but my current set up is a lot shallower so possibly there might be enough headroom under the sloping ceiling.  There's still a huge amount to clear out though first.

I'm away again next weekend to a cross-stitch retreat - it's all happening this autumn. I didn't purposefully book things back to back, it's just how it has worked out. There weren't so many events last winter due to COVID then we were busy over the summer with the caravan, so my retirement experiments all seem to have ended up happening at the same time.

I've decorated our porch for Halloween and we will be open for business in another hour or so.  We got a decent amount of trick or treaters last year, maybe 15 or 18 groups. I will be dressing as a witch once again. Happy Halloween everyone if you celebrate.  Hopefully I will judge portion control correctly so that we have enough sweets for all attendees with none left over because otherwise DH and I just eat them all - in the old days we used to take them to our respective offices to get rid of them but of course that's no longer an option.