Monday Meandering -- October 13, 2016

Retreat was fabulous.  Weather was iffy but never became too horrible.  We saw a lot of cloudy weather, several rain storms but we've seen much worse while at retreat.  Everyone had a great time. And, a lot of fun projects were worked on.  Over the next week I'll try to share all of projects that I got photos of -- and really, I didn't do that great of job of taking photos this year. 

This picture was taken before I left.  Hohoho and Mistletoe were prepped and I spent most of one day sewing all these pieces down.  I have one block left to do -- YEA!  It is a poinsettia but first I need to piece the backing.  I need to check over each block to make sure I have all of the fused items on and stitched before I put the quilt together.  Mistletoe has some hand embroidery still to be done.  There are some three dimensional pieces that will be added. And then a bunch of buttons.  But I'm am so pleased with how much I got done on this.  

I made a couple of blocks while away.  This one is called Box Kite and Sharon took it to go to FCQ lottery. You can find directions for this block at The Quilter's Cache. Scroll down to the drop down menu to find the various blocks.  This one is 12" finished.  

One of the fun things with this retreat are the shenanigans that go on.  This year it was quite fun and not overdone.  Because we always go at the beginning of October we have these two additions to our retreat. 

MEET Templeton: 

For those of you who don't remember, Templeton is the rat's name in Charlotte's Web. Some of us called him different names through the weekend, but I like Templeton.  Here he is messing with some fall fabric. He was surreptitiously stuck in bags, behind sewing machines, around pillows to surprise the recipient. It didn't take long for us to be a bit jaded but he continued to show up surprising us sometimes.  And there was "The Foot" that would be found. Unfortunately, it's looking pretty ragged.  It landed on my machine when I left it alone for a bit.  Fun shenanigans -- nothing vicious.  

I was successful getting my main goal of finishing more of the Christmas blocks accomplished.  Here's what the rest of my goals look like:

Sept 26, 2016

Prep a few projects for the Fall Retreat next week√

Finish Snowman hand embroidery√

Have a great time at retreat√√√

Work on more Christmas Favorites blocks√√

Sash A Tisket, A Tasket Didn't happen. Worked on a different project

Border Snowman embroidery Ran out of time

And now this week I'll turn back to long arm quilting and some other items. 

Oct 3, 2016

Continue quilting secret quilt

Work on a handquilting project

Start machine embroidery projects

Unpack from retreat

Load next quilt on Ruthie

That's it for today. I'm linking up with Monday Making and Main Crush Monday.  Spend some time looking around the internet for some great inspiration. 

Happy Quilting All! Bonnie