Marg’s bag, left, and Becky’s bag, right

The girls and I just got back from another great trip to Retreat at the Farm. This place feels like home now that we’ve been there multiple times. It’s such a comfy, clean place to get together and share quilting, meals and camaraderie, and Becky was even able to join us after traveling from New Brunswick. The only other life we see while there out in this rural location are the horses and dogs in the field next door and the wild turkeys (and coyotes!) that run through the property.

As usual, we accomplished a lot in our almost four days there. Marg has been saving selvedges from her fabric yardage for quite a while, so she and Becky worked on the most wonderful tote bags using these selvedges. Not only was the body of the bag made up of selvedges, but they made the bottom out of cork (unlike the Rescued pattern) and they even added a loop to the top of the front in order to later add a large decorative button for closure.

Becky also worked on a small project for a challenge with her new guild in New Brunswick. Each person got a fat quarter of a sweet blue and white floral and had to use that fat quarter with denim to make something for the challenge. Becky saw a great trash bucket somewhere made out of fabric so she decided to do that for her challenge piece. She took a leg from one pair of jeans, the pocket from another pair of jeans in a different wash, added an appliqued “B”, and used the floral for the lining. It was so stinkin’ cute! She also made a quilt top, Glitter & Glow, for one of her daughters-in-law in the prettiest, softest colour palette.

Marg saw a great scrap quilt on Pinterest and decided to make one herself using 2 1/2” squares. Not only did she complete this particular quilt top while at retreat, but started a second one. I guess that’s what happens when you have so many scraps!

Patti just loves panels and has made many quilts using them. She cut this particular Christmas panel apart into many different sections and added additional red, green, black and white prints, along with a black and red check, to make it more interesting. Isn’t it great?! She also carried on with making a couple of more bags just like she did at the last retreat. This time, a couple of lucky people will get the Blue Jays and Highland Cow bags.

At our last retreat together Gail started on the pattern Harbor by a A Quilting Life and made a real dent in it this time. The colours are so pretty and are a little softer than what Gail usually works with. I particularly like the little basket blocks. And of course, she had to work on something using her beloved Tula Pink fabrics. She has been wanting to make an A Place for Everything 2.0 bag using the new Graywork line and started it on retreat. Here is the start of the front pocket using Tula solids for the flying geese design insert. So beautiful!

I was able to accomplish quite a bit myself. I managed to complete 12 of the scrappy Bear’s Paw quilt blocks that I started last fall and prepared another 8 for a total of 20 for this particular quilt. My friend, Trudie, cleaned out her stash so I took one of her fabric groupings and made a set of placemats for her from her own fabric. I hope she doesn’t mind getting it back this way! I had a bajillion hexies left over from the huge quilt I made last year so I made 2 EPP lap quilts for our guild’s charity program and was able to quilt and bind them at this retreat.

Of course we worked on other projects as well…we always take much more than we can finish there! It just means that I’ll have more to show you after our next retreat in May when we’re with our larger group.

Farmhouse Fun