Another retreat

 I was back at the three-day hotel retreat again this weekend, with DH kindly driving me over there Friday morning then picking me up today.  I took my new-to-me Janome Gem machine which I bought at the last retreat, and it performed really well - I powered my way through piecing all three quilts that I had kitted up after Christmas.

Nine Chequered Dresden Plates from the Missouri Star tutorial on Youtube. This is from one of a pair of bargain Moda jelly rolls.  You are supposed to be able to make nine plates from one roll, but I ended up one wedge short somehow, so I'm going to have to break into the second roll.    Not loving the colours but they are ok and it's good to use the roll up.

I pieced all the blocks for a stashbusting 'envelope' quilt (just a few shown here) that was in an American magazine I bought while I was in Paducah. I bought the blue fabric in Paducah, and then had fun pulling a variety of envelope fabrics from my stash.

I assembled the Tilda pinwheels quilt - tablecloth size.  Love these soft colours.

I finished the quilt kits by Saturday teatime, so Saturday evening I started in on a hexagon box kit that I was given on the box course at the previous retreat in October.  For the lid, I used the goldwork embroidery that I did on the taster course through the Royal School of Needlework last winter.  I had actually given the embroidery kit away to a friend who does goldwork, once it got to the stage of a kazillion french knots, because I wasn't very interested in it.  However, she worked on it over Christmas and enjoyed stitching all the french knots for me, and then presented it back to me because she has no use for it either.  It's like a boomerang.  I didn't know what I was going to do with it, until I was panic-project-packing before the retreat and found the hexagon box kit.  The end result looks okay I think. I used some cherry blossom fabric for the outside and some Japanese fabric on the inside.  Maybe I can give it back to my friend :)

I finished the box Sunday morning so then cut out some pieces for a felt sewing caddy kit before packing up my stuff.  My portable ironing table that I made a few months ago worked well, it's slightly wobbly but provides valuable additional real estate, freeing up room on my table.

And there was some shopping - there was a popup fabric shop on Friday with an eclectic selection. I picked up some global map home dec fabric, a Liberty-lookalike cotton, some useful green and a few fat quarters that were only 50p each.

Before I went off to the retreat, I was working on week five of the Lori Holt My Happy Place quilt - the scissors block and the fat quarters block, both hand appliqued.

And I got the binding onto the Sewing Panel quilt.  This photo is at a weird angle - the bottom is completely level and not dipping the way it looks in the photo. I quilted the wallhanging with a heart panto on the frame.

The Red Houses quilt is almost finished quilting, I think two or maybe three passes and I'll be done. Once it's off the frame, I might have another go at trying to level the frame better

Off to bed early, I'm exhausted by all the retreat creativity!