Retreat was fabulous as usual. I slept well both nights which meant I was pretty productive during the days.
Here's a short synopsis of the weekend. I drove up Thursday and got caught up in traffic. That's pretty typical for the I 95 corridor and the 495 beltway. My 3 and a half hour trip ended up being 5+ hours although I will admit that I spent more time than I usually do for lunch. Not a fun drive this time.
Sharon and I left early Friday morning, went over the Bay Bridge and did our normal stop for a breakfast at Cracker Barrel. Yum. We were set up for sewing by about 11 am. It helps having the retreat start early Friday morning in terms of how much you can get done. We all spend a lot of time catching up and chatting. The first day I was working on finishing some projects so I put the binding on a quilt, a zipper in a pouch, binding on a kit for some sort of envelope. Didn't get to finish the envelope because I failed to bring velcro I would need. Sigh.
 |
| Girl "Happy Quilt" from blocks made by FCQ E-Quilters. Pattern is here. Mary has some wonderful, easy patterns. |
Saturday dawned with heavy clouds and all day rain in the forecast. Perfect weather to keep us sewing! I pulled out my batik rails and got all the 6" rails sewn into 12" blocks and then sashed it all in black. It seemed to take me forever although I will admit I had to make some more of the 6" blocks. By the time I was done I was sick of working on this one. It's going back into the UFO pile for a little while. All I plan to do to finish it is put a small (maybe 3") border on it. (Down at the bottom right you can see the small zippered bag I finished up.)
 |
| Five years ago at the FCQ retreat we swapped 6.5" rail blocks made with either "hot" colors or "cool" colors. It was time to do something with them. Remember this quilt I shared from the FCQ show? I think I like her more subtle colors. This quilt will live with me for a while and then I'll give it away somewhere. |
Next out was blocks I won at Country Piecemakers retreat 2 or 3 years ago. Before I left home I made one more block and organized them into rows so all I had to do was sew them together. No individual picture of them but they are at the bottom left of the picture below. Sharon and I spread out everything we worked on on her family room floor. Brett was interested but didn't decide to curl up with any of the tops.
 |
| The top two and middle left are Sharon's. The middle right and bottom two are mine. The hot pads were a make and take. Mine is blue and Sharon's had cute cooking chickens on it. Definitely not her style but they looked great in a pot holder. |
My goals last week were so vague that I succeeded at all of them!
May 16,
2016
View a couple of lighthouses in the Outer Banks of NC √
Enjoy fun times and good food with Bob and Barb √
Add a few pieces to each kit √
Enjoy the FCQ retreat in Maryland √
Sew like a fiend and get whatever I can done! √
Now, this week is different. I've got very specific things to get done!
May 23,
2016
Load and quilt customer quilt: Slide Show
Clean and organize all spaces under the cutting table
Put borders on the batik rails
Start organizing the back bedroom closet
Pick a quilt in the waiting pile to quilt! Load & quilt.
And, here's why a lot of organizing and cleaning up will be going on in my household for the next several months. First the back story. Pat and I moved to central Virginia 6 years ago for a job. We ended up about 40 minutes west of downtown Richmond because the job was another hour or so southwest in a very rural area. For the first several years we loved it. But as we've aged (gasp!) we realize that keeping 2+ acres of yard mowed and being 25 to 30 minutes from stores, hospitals and restaurants wasn't exactly part of our retirement plan.
So the long and the short of it is we put our house on the market in late February. It went under contract to the folks who saw it first. (Isn't that a nice reflection on all the things we did to the house?) Except, it was contingent on the sale of their house. Which, didn't happen. Eventually, a family who did not have a contingency made an offer we couldn't refuse. (Nor did we want to really!)
We had been scouting 55+ communities a little farther north which would make us closer to our kids (1 hour and 1.5 hours away if there is no traffic on that blasted I 95 corridor.) One community we liked better than the other two and had a model that we like. We'll be moving into a new home in the community although we looked at nearly every resale that came up for sale. The whole let's move thing happens at the end of June. Needless to say, once again it is time to clean up, clear out, downsize and ... well whatever else needs to be done. We are selling some of our furniture and the lawn tractor and anything else we can move out. So my postings won't be as quilt oriented and no doubt will be sparse as the move out date arrives.
Here's the new house. Reminds me of our years in California where the houses are close together. (Read that -- less yard to mow!) Sod is piled under the tarp ready to make the mud a yard. It's slightly smaller than our current house but I have a nice big space in the finished basement to set up the sewing studio. Eventually we'll probably finish the other basement room to make an office for Pat which will leave us 3 bedrooms upstairs and we'll still have a lot unfinished basement to store odd ball things. No doubt I'll continue to post about the move over the next few weeks.
That's it for me today. I've got a closet to clean out! I will need to make a list of all the areas I need to work on and assign a day to them. That way I will get it all done. I'd rather spend the day sewing but that will be curtailed a lot over the next few weeks.
Happy Quilting All! 
