Virtual Quilting Retreat

With International Quilt Day being celebrated this past weekend, it was time for a quilt retreat!  Being fiscally responsible (if you believe that, I have some property to sell you) we decided on a virtual retreat.

Now when you are at a retreat you usually stay at a hotel with meeting rooms, university dorms where classrooms are put to use, bed and breakfast with room to set up tables.  There are demonstrations, classes, show and tell, great food, shop hops, evening entertainment....you get the idea.  With a virtual retreat there are no restrictions.

One member of our group posted links to demonstrations and tutorials.  Forget a one weekend retreat.  We had enough for a month long cruise.  Speaking of cruise....another member posted photos of wonderful meals and snacks that we would have.  All calorie free since they are only photos.  But sure made me wish it was for real.

This retreat was held in a older historical home.  Huge, with nooks and comfy corners just waiting for guests to sit down with a cup of tea for a visit.  I loved the photos of this home.  It's lovely setting.  It would have been wonderful to stay there for real!

As the weekend progressed all of those participating posted photos of the quilting we were working on.  You would think there would be less progress because of the time spent on the computer chatting and posting.  That wasn't the case.  Everyone made so much progress and learned new things.  I'm not saying that a virtual retreat is as good as a real retreat...but it's a close second.  A big thank you to everyone on hearts2hands for making this fun.

What did I work on.  Over the years when on shop hops, I picked up a lot of fat quarters with a musical theme.  The original intent was to make quilts for my sister-in-laws.  Both are very talented singers.  But I've come to realize that they need another quilt like they need....well you can fill in the blanks.

When our virtual demonstrator posted a link for how to make a Bento Box quilt, I decided to pull out the musical themed fabric and make this quilt.  It was good experience on not what to do.  This quilt would have looked great, if I had used one main fabric for the dark and the fat quarters for the lights.  I would have liked the top then.  I don't think even fancy quilting will save this one.  This first photo is of one corner.  The second is of the entire top.

I tried so many different ways for block placement.  In the end I went from light to dark.  Got it sewn up late at night so I wouldn't change my mind and try something else in the morning.

The next project was to quilt and bind the red work embroidery Canadian Provincial Flowers quilt.  Years ago a friend made two blocks for each province and territory's flowers.  One set was made into a quilt for her.  This set was given to me as a thank you.  And I'm sorry to say, sat in a bag for years.  A quilter on hearts2hands put out the challenge to get our oldest projects finished and out of bags or boxes.  So this is the latest completed project:

I'm up for another virtual retreat in a month or two.  It's going to take that long to put my sewing room (and the rest of the house back in order.  Time to clean my machines, change the needles, clean the iron, re-organize all the quilting tools...the list never ends.