Sisters' Retreat

Sorry, I've been away from my blog for a bit... I was busy getting ready for my Sisters' Retreat. But it has now come....



.... and gone.



It was such a WONDERFUL time. I had two of my sisters, Nancy and Peggy, and my brother's significant other, Deb, here for about half a week.

We laughed, and sewed, and shopped, and laughed some more.

We laughed until our throats hurt and our voices croaked. We gave our local economy a shot in the arm, including the purchase of a Babylock by Deb. We even got tatoos... LOL



I gave a little class on hand piecing,which hopefully didn't bore them too badly. If it did, they coped well and were good sports!!! :) And we had lots of discussion about Dear Jane, as Deb is also going to be creating her own, in civil war themed fabric I believe, right Deb?

Deb settling in, getting ready for business with Baby Grace, her new Babylock.



And Peggy....



And Nancy....



Dennis to lend a hand in supervising operations...



Then a few friends dropped in to sew with us for a while.



Deb had a great idea for everyone to bring a grab bag. At the beginning of the retreat, each person got a bag by random drawing. Nancy had a clever idea for the method of drawing to choose the bags to start out with. Instead of drawing names or numbers, we drew words on a piece of paper: cutting, piecing, borders, and binding. The order of initially choosing a bag was in the order of the quilting process (ie: Nancy got to draw first since she drew the word 'cutting'). Then throughout the days, people could sneak and switch bags, whenever they could get away with it, until the final predetermined hour. At that time, whatever bag you had in your possession was the bag you ended up with for good. What a great idea, and we had lots of fun with it!

During the days of our reteat, my granddaughter Darian turned 15 (how can that be????) As some of you will know, in the Latino culture, the 15th birthday is a very special birthday for a young lady coming of age. It's called Quinceñera. So while living in Tucson, I had picked up a darling little figurine of a beautiful Latino girl with a banner across her torso with the word "Quinceñera". I have held it for two years in waiting for this birthday. (It was just a novelty, she's not hispanic, eventhough she could pass for it in this picture with her beautiful, very dark hair.) :-)
I also want to make very clear that the bottle in front of her, which looks like a beer bottle, is actually root beer!!!

We all worked on separate projects, other than our piecing class. And it was so fun to fondle and drool over all the beautiful fabrics. I'll close this post with a picture of one of Nancy's card trick blocks.