We arrived at the Hen House on Friday, September 7th.  We were so excited!  We moved in all our sewing/quilting supplies, food, and personal overnight belongings.  Except Cindy.  She brought a car full of everything anyone could possibly need for a fab quilting retreat, except her own personal ovenight belongings.  Big grin.  It was so nice of the owner's husband to make us each a Hen House T-shirt.  That way Cindy had something else to wear.  But who needs all that when you have quilting to do?

Meanwhile, Phyllis had made some incredible stack n'whack blocks and proceeded to dazzle us all.  She put them on the design wall and moved them around and added stunning blue triangle blocks in between.  She got over half of her quilt top pieced together while at the retreat.  Carol made progress on several things, but not like that.    

Be sure to scroll clear to the bottom of this blog to view all the photos.  On Saturday morning, Cindy and Carol took a refreshing walk. Found the local market and bought Cindy a toothbrush and on the way back Carol took a photo of a cute kitty on a window ledge enjoying the morning air.



Carol's wavy landscape wall hanging.


Mary and Cindy make the coolist wavy landscape things. They make jackets, vests, wall hangings.  Mary gave me an in-service on how to make one of the wavey landscape wallhangings.  Thank you, Mary!   I am really pleased with how it came out. I just need to quilt it and bind it.



Mary put up her die-cut triangles to make an eye-catching pattern.

 Wow! Knock your socks off originality!  That Mary really knows how to dig into something new!  It is contagious. I had her show me how to use that die-cut machine, and it really saves a ton of cutting time when you are cutting blocks for piecing or designs for machine applique.  I can hardly wait to see her quilt when it is finished.  The best grandson quilt I have ever seen, and it is not even finished yet! 

Daria worked diligently on her dainty bow-tie quilt.    It is lovely.  On Sunday, we rather had a pow wow at lunch about making a group quilt that we could donate. We all like this bow-tie quilt so much, that is the pattern we decided on.  When we went to check out we all agreed on a main fabric of which we later all got a small piece of, so we can choose two fabrics of our choice to make two block each (that may be three blocks; I can't be expected to remember everything).  The good news is, I discovered two absolutely smashing fabrics in my very own stash, so I can feel fiscally responsible when making these blocks for our group quilt.  Way to go Daria!  Thank you for figuring out all the dimensions and fabric amounts, too!  Thank you Confab team!




Phyllis's fabulous string pieced star block.

 
Day three of our retreat, was Sunday. We had to tie up some loose ends, go last minute shopping in the Quilt Barn, tidy up, and prepare to depart.  We had so much good food on the weekend, that everybody brought to share. We helped each other learn new things and it was probably a good thing it was over, because we were all plumb tuckered out!

String pieced blocks on phone book pages.

On Saturday, we learned how to do string piecing on paper and on muslin. We each contributed a block or more to this layout on our design wall. (to the right)

Mary was all fired up and proclaimed that we should do a retreat every three months!  We may well attempt a retreat a little closer to home next time, but this was well worth the drive from our stomping ground of Boise.

Kattie's on the left, Carol's on the right. Fun blocks on the design walls!



We all had a terrific time and some made great headway on their quilting projects.



Joni with her sweet baby quilt.



An awesome group of quilters.







Photos of Kimberly, ID

I took some photos of Kimberly, Idaho, on Sunday Morning.  I am attaching them on the right hand side of this blog.  A lovely small town, with a wonderul quilt shop, retreat, and sites to photograph.