Retreat

I have no stitching progress to report this week, since there was no stitching completed this week. So, no pictures of nuns yet Ennavic! :)

Instead, I got to go off to a retreat this past weekend. Just to put things in perspective, this is what a regular person packs for a weekend...

This is what a quilter packs for a weekend. (And I was one of the light packers) One person even brought her chair from home!

This is the road into the retreat centre. It's a wonderful place, in the woods and mountains. So, if you feel like a break, you can go out for a walk in nature.
 

This was our work room. There is another row of tables behind me in the picture. Can you see Owloysious and the Jane blocks in progress?

Here are the Jane blocks completed during the weekend. I caught up (again!) from the Jane-a-long and did a few extra to boot. I now stand at 48 done, 121 to go. No rows or columns done yet, but I've got 3 more for row A and 3 more for column 3.

Spring showers

This is why no-one plants anything until after the May long weekend. Though it really helps encourage the quilting bug. :) I tried, but didn't get any good bird pictures so you'll have to look at just the solid sunshine. I was watching little birds swoop down at the bottom of that tree and pick up berries that have fallen off the tree. Robins and snow; not something I really expected to see together.

Despite work attempting to get in the way... I managed a little stitching progress. Much much better than the picture that I didn't post last week. (It was a creepy eye-less face picture). This one is a little funny looking, he looks like he has buck teeth.

I get to go off to the mountains for a quilting retreat in the near future. Yeah!!! They're a blast and I come back with so much done, aching stomach muscles from laughing so much, and a very tired body from not sleeping enough. It's like camping as a girl guide without the tents and hats. :)

I'm doing the take away project and racking my brains on what to do. Any suggestions? I'm looking for something relatively quick and easy to do.

B2

It's Done! 39 done and 130 to go...

I followed Anina's directions and made the two pinwheels and appliqued the circle over pinwheel. Much simpler than my original plan of piecing it all.

Quiltathon

I joined Judy's quiltathon this weekend. It was quite timely. I finally caught up on my Jane blocks for Anina's Jane-a-long. Yeah!!!! (Can you guess my colour scheme yet?? :)

The quiltathon was also perfect timing because Saturday was a sew day with my guild. Here we all are pretending to work hard. If you look closely, you can see Owloysious guarding my threads. :)

Not only did I catch up on the Dear Jane blocks, but I finished off this quilt top. No, I'm not that prolific a quilter. This top has been sitting needing just the border for a few years now. It's funny the things we let sit and sit and when we finally get back to them, find they weren't that bad after all.

Can you see the pumpkins in the corner? Those do belong to a prolific quilter. I'm in awe of all the quilts she finished each year. This one, she's getting ready for next Halloween. Can you see she has happy and grumpy jack-o-lanterns?

Another Week Gone

Wow, time is really zooming by. I can't believe it's April already.

This have been trucking along. I really though all I was doing this week was work, work, work but we also have visitors from Italy and some crafting happening.

It's good to hear all sorts of stories and tried out a new restaurant. A Greek place - Broken dishes. The food and service were excellent and we even got to actually break dishes.
I also went to a 'Charm Pack Party' at one of the local quilt shops. There was quite a large turnout and it was good to see quilts made from the various charm packs and checkout the patterns available out there. There was one book called 'Charmed and dangerous'. Isn't that title great! It was interesting to learn, 20% of Moda's total sales are now due to charm packs and jelly rolls.

Even though I didn't think I was doing much, looking back, I actually accomplished some crafty stuff this week. This is the shawl I've been working on. The knitting is done and all I need to do is fasten off the loose ends and block it. The pattern came from this site. It was very simple and worked up very quickly. There are definite benefits to thick yarn and large needles.

More progress on the stitching front. It's starting to look like the picture on the pattern. Sorry Ennavic - No penguins or nuns in this here picture.

I found a new Dear Jane site. Everyone is working along on their Jane blocks following the direction of the ringleader Anina. Check it out here. This is my Jane bingo card. As you can see, I've got a ways to go. On the site they've doing 2 blocks a week and have been at it for 5 weeks. I've got a bit of catch-up to do. I now have B1, B3, D3, A7, and C9 to finish off.

Though, as you can see, I did finish a few blocks off this week. They both were done with paper-pieced centres and pieced outer edges.

Quilt Show

This weekend began with the first quilt show of the weekend. Here we are on our way to Red Deer for the show.

Someone was quite successful on their Easter egg hunt. Here you see a pile of tractor eggs all stacked up and painted green for Easter.

Every time I see a quilt like this it catches my eye. It seems that there will be one in my future at some point.

This one was interesting and we saw it done in a couple of different colour schemes. It's not a pattern I would expect to change much, but it did.

I just had to take a picture of this one for chookyblue. For some strange reason I think of her every time I see chickens. :)

This one makes me think of stained glass windows. I actually have pictures of some interesting windows that I took from last summer's vacation that I was intending to do something similar with. It's even more amazing to see in real life. Her fabric choices are wonderful.

This is a Raven. I figure I can't have a Canadian quilt blog without a little Canadian content. :) I'd be interested in knowing if this one came from a pattern or if it was the quilter's creation.

I really had no intentions of buying anything. Honest! Well, maybe some white-on-white if I found any that I liked, but that was about it. Well, intentions and reality didn't even come close. I found some interesting red & white fabrics. I pick them up when I see interesting ones. I have plans for a red & white in my future and when I started collecting, it was really tough to find them.

As you can see, my charm pack obsession increased a little.

This book and these patterns. Well, they just jumped into my arms, so I had to. They would have created too big a fuss if I didn't take them home. Besides, I needed some patterns for the charm squares. :)

The Week in Review

A more focused week. It's amazing what happens when you actually take a look at all those newly started & still unfinished projects all in one place. It really helped with focusing. I've now finished off the last of the hexagons and have most of them blocked.

This one, I'm not sure if it counts as a newly started project or not. In the previous picture it was a long scarf-like object. It's the first time I've purchased yarn not knowing what I'd do with it. I really don't think I'll do that again. This is the 4th attempt at doing something with it. I'm making a shawl. I saw a pattern for a prayer shawl in the book 'Back on Blossom Street' and thought it'd be a good idea for my Grandmother, since there is no way those socks are going to be done in-time for her birthday in April.

I'm also making pretty good progress on this picture. Though, not a lot of it is showing up this week. This week was lots of cream on cream. Any guesses on what it is yet?