Oh dear Cathy you must be exhausted, come to the retreat for an hour to rest and I'll get you a cup of tea. Then you'll have strength to sort out your reorganised room. I find changing my room or just tidying it up energises me ready for the next project.

Geneva fabulous shapes lots of movement. Must whizz off upstairs to wh.....

I am really enjoying the virtual retreat posts. I will try to join in next week. Right now my sewing/quilting space is a mess. I rearranged some of the things. I moved my tall fabric storage cabinets across the room. I moved a twin bed out of the area and put my sewing machine under the window where the bed was. I moved my design wall to the wall where the tall cabinets were. Now I can take better pictures of things on the design wall. I turned the long arm around so the end I don't need to get around is closer to the wall. That gives me more space in the center of the room. I still need to turn my cutting table 90 degrees and move my ironing board closer to the sewing machine. In the mean time, the cutting table and the longarm table are both pilled high with bags of batting and other stuff. I have a crib I am going to move downstairs too. I saw a video on you tube where they turned one into storage inside the crib and a cutting table on top. I thought that would be a good place to store all the odds and ends of the batting I have intentions of piecing together someday for lap quilts, picnic quilts or whatever.
Besides moving all the stuff around I had to set up beds for 5 of the grandkids. My DD and her family came last night on their way to Nebraska. They left this morning, but will be back Saturday night. We aren't too far of the route and it saves them another night in a motel. Friday we are going to Omaha, for their oldest daughter's high school graduation. We will return home on Sat. Then next Wednesday our DS and wife will arrive for a weeks visit.
It doesn't sound like there is much time for sewing, but I am sewing tomorrow. My 10 year old GS is coming to spend the day with me. He is bringing his old Singer 99 for me to adjust the tension and he will be working on some 9-patch blocks I have ready for him to sew. I will bring my featherweight up here so I can work on a disappearing hourglass quilt I started at my state guild meeting in May. I will try working on my camera to see if it is fixable. I love you tube videos. They can teach us anything. If I get it working, I will post some pictures of my mess and the quilt I am working on.

Like others my day went slowly yesterday. I didn't get as much done as I thought I would. It was over 100 degrees outside, ugh!

I sewed down the black half circles on the 3" squares I made from 2 fabrics. Here's a picture.



Then I pulled two stratas from my stash. I'm not exactly sure what I'll be doing with them. I cut 2" strips from each and will sew them together, maybe this afternoon. This morning I will take my mom to another doctor's appointment.




Wendy, here is another language mix up story that I thought we would all enjoy. When you wrote out the instructions for adding the cool binding treatment, one step said to "whizz around the outside". When my 3 kids, husband and mom went to Nairobi in 1999 from San Francisco, we made a stop in London. (Thank goodness!) As I was standing in the aisle of the airplane with my 15 year old son waiting to deplane, the flight attendant announced "They are setting up blah, blah ( I don't remember what) and as soon as that is complete, we will be whizzing off the plane." My son looked at me and grinned. In America, to 15 year old boys, whizzing is urinating. (Hope I don't offend anyone.) I could just see my son laughing and imagining the possibilities! I gave him a stern look and then laughed with him.

Have a good day sewing my friends!

geneva

twiglet wrote:
Well, luckily I found a very good tutorial online and a site that will print pattern instructions based on your own measurements. And it uses a one piece of fabric construction instead of joining a front, sides, back, etc. So, that part wasn't hard.....though I've yet to insert the grommets and see if it will tie properly and actually fit. More corset-ish, not a true corset. I'm not completely insane!

Hello Heather lovely to see you back and all your sewing. Love your colourful lamp it's so like you.

Fancy making a corset top as your first garment :

Art momma your convergences are great and the ice dyed fabric is very effective. I thought of you Luann at the beginning of this show and wondered if you'd folded some of your shibori that way.

I've been absent from retreat today, had to work but hope to get some quilting done this evening. I'm just going to do loops and squiggle quilting and add the boys names every so often.

On my chair I sit on a speed pieced quilt made years ago which stops the bench taking chunks out of the chair arms and the hexagons are crocheted.

Would you believe it my chicken just ran off with my biscuit while I was chatting!

Popping in to say Hi! I think most know I'm Heather, now back in Texas after 6 years in Brazil, but can't figure out how to change my signature line to reflect that. We've been in the new house for almost a year now and settled in nicely....What will I work on though during our virtual retreat...? Hmmm. probably will work on some of the place mats I'm doing, but those are just boring in between work. Here is one finished one, and the stack of what they look like before I quilt them....





What I need to work on is an improv Christmas quilt that I've messed with in fits & starts, and am not certain if it will finish up or become something different. I began by trying to mesh traditional fabrics (given to me, and used for my Christmas tree skirt and then Christmas stockings for the family) with more contemporary fabrics that I like better, to try and make a couch throw for Christmas that would mesh my style with the style of the tree skirt. I think I pulled in too many fabrics though and am not certain it is going to work to become a complete quilt. No pictures of that mess just now, but if I get it out to work on I'll post photos....

In the meantime, I am also working on a first-ever garment piece for myself.....my sweet husband is taking me to Argentina for a weekend (using air miles he's accumulated in all his extensive work travel, and while he's there on business so hotel is covered, etc.). and we'll go see a Tango show while there. I'm attempting to sew a corset-style top for the occasion, to wear with a skirt and then a wrap/sweater/jacket/something over it. As I do NOT do garment sewing, we'll see if I'm successful or not.....

Here's the view from my sewing machine, so you can see where I'm working

Susan,
I love your flowered convergence quilt. What are it's dimensions? Did you have the opportunity to catch the first segment of the latest quilt Show? Ricky and Alex do a bit of dyeing. I think that I may be doing some later during this retreat month of mine. I'll post pics if I do.
Luann

I love your water fabric, AnnieLu. It will be fun to watch you develop your art quilt. The brown fabric is purchased batik. The ice dyed fabric I sent with the convergence picture was likely one used to create that piece. I used two pieces from that same dye group.

Twiglet, your birds are fun. I made some for decorating a tree several years ago. Thanks for sharing your sew happy area. I will take a pic of mine at some point and share.

It was comforting to hear other people's days do not always go as planned. My husband is just beginning retirement life. I have enjoyed that blissful state for a few years. I am learning my days are subject to change at a moments notice!



This is another convergence art quilt. I created flowers to cover my not perfect seams!
Susan

Well, day one of my retreat is done. I had great intentions, but with the hubby home, rain in the forecast, and a request to go out to lunch,, well I'll just say things didn't go as planned. But, I did get the fabric chosen to use for the water in my next art quilt.



It's a batik that I hope will do a lot of the work for me. I don't have a specific picture I'm trying to represent. It's more of a composite of many pictures. And I've gotten some rocks cut out and pinned about the water. I'm pleased with a couple of them, but tomorrow will be soon enough to decide if they get to stay, or be replaced with other fabrics.




Your comments are welcome.
Luann

Welcome! Glad you're here and that you aren't standing on any formality about posting. That's how I hoped it would go. Just people sharing their way of doing a 'virtual retreat'.
I really like your fabrics in both pictures. Did you dye the Browns in the tumbling block quilt? They look like they are low water immersion dyed.
And your convergence piece is awesome. By any chance did you take a picture of the fabrics before you started the process? If not can you give us an idea of what each one looked like? When I did one I used 4 very different patterns and it turned out quite nice. I'll look for a picture of that one, as I gave it away a couple of years ago. It was the only quilt I ever ripped out more seams than I could count! I said I was going to keep it forever, but that didn't happen. Not too long ago I got a bright idea about doing this again, but with curvy lines and all cuts done with fabric stacked on top of each other. There was a lot to learn from that experiment but I do have 4 interesting pieces to work into something bigger. I'll check for photos of those also.
Glad you joined in the fun.

Ok. I am just going to apologize in advance for any thing "odd" I say! Also, not a posting pro so am going to just jump in the fun and let the details work themselves out. The first image is a Tumbling block quilt I just started for my nephew. I wanted something subdued and not bright. I believe the fabric choices qualify.

I love ice dyeing. This is one of my pieces.

I went to a fun three day class with Ricky and Alex. I used my dyed fabric to create this piece inspired by what I learned for Ricky. I what to use it for the middle of something. That is waiting to be decided.

This is turning out to be quite funny. I can just see all of us chuckling at this info. I'm so glad you're all 'retreating' with me! Now that's a new meaning for that word.
Luann
Not doing much, I'm currently 'on call' for my hubby, as he is trying to get AT&T service fixed on our TV. He's been on the phone for almost an hour now. I just heard him say, I just got flashed. I'd better go check on his clothing situation! Giggles!!
Luann

Thanks funny!