Retreat 2013 Round up

We had a ball.... I sewed from Friday afternoon til Tuesday afternoon...late into the night....The food was wonderful - both at the pub and at the retreat.  The weather was great - though getting warm.
Sad to say - we didn't get flooded in - or trapped in any other way - though most of us probably had enough projects to keep us going for another week.
Here's a bit of what we did.

This is the first video I have made or loaded - so sorry about the superfluous "Olympus" text!

This is the cot quilt that I quilted and bound on retreat.

Retreat 2013 - Day 5

Tuesday - beautiful weather again.

Just 5 industrious sewers left, making the most of our last hours.

I contemplated doing the borders for "Best Friends" and decided not to, so I put this teacup block together.  This is to send to Sara Fielke who is collecting blocks to make a quilt.  I have no idea how I stumbled on a request from her for people to make blocks, so if you know - please let me know - it was from someone's blog......

Miss High Achiever finished off 10 of her 23 projects - pretty good going considering she had an off day on Sunday.

The board looked pretty good at the end:

I have collected all the tickets from the left hand side (and the left-overs from previous years) and hold onto them until next year.  We will do a roll call on Friday afternoon 2014 to see who finished what left-overs.

Our collection of finished projects  looked like this:  (The larger quilts that were up to "pinned" stage and some that were quilted are not here)

All booked in for "same time, same place" next year...hoping for some more "wintery" weather next year...but maybe it's a bit early to start the countdown.  Luckily, I still have 5 days left until I go back to work, so there will be more sewing happening here.
I have this collection of threads...two people I know collect "Orts" so I raided a few bins whilst we were sewing.  Don't worry Debbie - there is a lot of colour under all that white.

 All in all, a fabulous time away - Great accommodation  great food, great company, a few "memorable" moments which will distinguish this year from others.
Thanks to everyone for making it a great weekend - and especially to Erica for photographing everything and sharing her photos.

Retreat 2013 - Day 4

Monday - still bright and sunny!!  and warm...T shirts and thongs next year....

A few people left today after lunch...sad to see some go... - including our resident photographer...hopefully I can produce a slide show or movie of our time here.

Today I worked on "Best Friends".  This was a BOM that bestie and I started...for some reason...forgotten now...in 2009...I had finished all the blocks and some of the joining squares, but now it's a top - maybe borders tomorrow.

It needs a good iron...

The board:

We have achieved a lot and still have a good half day to go...

Retreat 2013 - Day 3

Sunday

I sewed until  12 midnight last night.
Another lovely sunny day,  music on, machines humming, a bit of chatting, lovely food . . . 

I put together my Stitcher's Garden...I might still add borders  but for retreat I only planned to get it to top stage.

I also started work on putting together a top from a BOM I started in 2009 called Best Friends.

Tally to date:Bag for plastic bags  (on the right)

Cot Quilt


Stitchers Garden top - as above.....Still 2 days to go!!!!!

Retreat 2013 - Day 2

Saturday dawned bright & sunny.  Apart from "having to" eat, we have been pretty much heads down tail up sewing sewing sewing.

We took a short break to have a happy snap.

During the day - apart from working on our projects, some of us spent a bit of time putting a fractured picture together.

We (my patchwork group) have been talking about doing a fractured picture for a long time, but we finally knuckled down in April and started work on this:

5 of us were doing 2 sections each.  This is the result.

 
On the "Projects" list - by 8pm - Miss High Achiever has completed 4 projects. (4/23)

Other projects that have been completed include these: (taken early in the day)

(Hard to see, Marti - but Susie's Magic Binding is getting a good workout this weekend - 1
 in the photo but 3 lots so far!)

And the board is looking like this:

The sectioned off area (above the wine bottle) are projects left from previous years - the oldest is 2010)

I have purple tags (surprise surprise!!)   And I have done 3.

We use our own definition of "Complete" - it might mean it's truly complete and ready to hang or wrap or...
OR it could mean - only the hand sewing of the binding to do
OR it could mean - just the top completed 

It's whatever it was that we each planned to do on each project.

Still days to go .....better get back to it!!

Retreat 2013 - Day 1

(Sorry this is a long post)

This is the 7th year my patchwork group have gone away as a group - just us - for a retreat. We usually start sewing Friday after lunch - this year some got a head start! We stop about the same time on the following Tuesday - although not everyone gets to stay that long - and combined with Wednesday being a public holiday for Brisbane - and I don't work Thursdays, it seems only sensible that I take Friday as leave.  So when I get back - I just keep sewing . .  . until Sunday night. So that's almost 10 days of sewing!!!!    Yippee!!!

I am not a big photographer and I haven't in the past kept notes about what I did when ...so sometimes its hard to work out when I started a project.  I am getting better and my blog does make some of that easier.  So - expect details.  - ie lots of words and lots of pictures this time.

Friday  pre lunch - setting up:

Friday lunch - certainly the "quaintest"  pub I have ever been to.  But the food is great.


and a huge plate of crumbed lamb cutlets

Friday 2pm
We have arrived - our first job - is to write each project we hope to work on / finish to whatever stage we plan - on post-its.  Each person has a different picture on their post its and they are placed on the left hand side of the white board.
Some people bring oodles of small projects...[You will read about Miss High Achiever in the following posts - you will see all the pink post its...].  Some concentrate on larger ones so only have a few tickets.  There is no prize - it's just a game.
(If you know anything about Agile Software Development - someone created a brilliant idea of creating a storyboard where each item that has to be completed in a sprint (ie a portion of the time allowed to finish the big project) had a ticket with an avatar on it.   Well DUH Mr  Agile - we have that covered without the text book instructions and fancy names..  And funnily - there is no prize when we follow this Agile process at work either...-...sorry - just having a little dig here.)

So here is the Starting Point:

Here we are working hard:

And by "lights out" - which is whenever the last person gives up - tonight this was taken at 11.45pm -  this is where we are at: