More City Sampler Blocks and Retreat

59, 60, 61, 62

A bit of a gap here with the block pictures, I'm really just giving you time to work on your own collection!  

This weekend is our fall retreat at Bridge Creek Cottage, and yesterday a great group of gals descended upon the sewing room.  Now it is overflowing with good vibes, the hum of machines, creativity and threads all over everything!  

Debbie and I came a day in advance to get everything just right for the quilters.  One of the things on our to-do list was recovering the ironing boards.  The sewing room is equipped with standard ironing boards and "big boards".  The big boards are rectangular wooden enhancements to the usual ironing board.  Those narrow ended ironing boards are great for pressing a shirt, but not so functional for our purposes.  The big boards are a little wider and longer without the narrowed end.  They get some pretty heavy use here, and sometimes need a little spiffing up.  Easy to do with some durable fabric and a staple gun.  However, the staple gun that I brought stopped working on the second board, so we visited the local hardware store.  The fellow helping us did get it to operate again, but not consistently, so I invested in a new one.  In the meantime, Debbie was wandering the labyrinth of narrow aisles, discovering that this was much more than a hardware store!  For example, they have Gumby and Pokey and Percy!  Perfect for some little guys I know--

I used some of the leftover fabric from the big boards so cover my own personal little board--

 The black binding strips are ready to sew onto more pages for this little soft book made from a panel print by Jenn Ski for Moda--

Half of the pages are made of chalkboard fabric, so it comes with a zipper pocket for chalk.  Can't wait to see how it actually works in the hands of a 2 year old!

The night before everyone arrived, I pulled out a project from a few years ago.  I had actually designed this for Quilt MN in maybe 2011?  I had all of the blocks together and necessary fabric, but hadn't finished the borders.  So I managed to get 4 borders sewn together and now it's ready for the quilter! (That would be me!)  And I like the look of the design, and discovered that I had done all the math for the quilt in multiple sizes, so maybe it will be a good pattern to publish for 2015!

And, oh yes, there snacks!  This is one I made, long story short, I have discovered the tasty goodness of the elusive caramel bugles, so I made my own from a caramel popcorn recipe.  It's energy food!

Stay tuned for more retreat pictures!