Stitch 'N Chatter Annual Quilt Retreat

I'm a bit slow on posting . . . We had our annual quilt retreat of the Stitch 'N Chatter group last Saturday at the Firm Foundation Christian School.  I think this was the 7th year, and I've made it to all of them.  In addition to me, I had three girls there this year!  Morgan got to come because she goes almost everywhere with me (she's only been left twice).  Tara came along to take care of her, and Aimee came as a retreat attendee.

This year was our largest ever, with 28 ladies in attendance.  There were several who hadn't come before, and several who did other sewing, not quilting.  Four girls made food for us all day long, starting with hot cinnamon rolls in the morning and ending up with some kind of little chocolate delicacy right before we ended the day.

Enjoying afternoon snack.

Every year we have a silent auction, with things donated by the group.  The money earned goes into our comfort quilt fund.  I've put things together for the auction for several years.  Here are a couple pictures of some of our auction items.

 This quilt top hanging here, was one of the donations.

Each year Phyllis (I think Marti did once) chooses a quilt pattern for the group to make.  You can work on that quilt, or do anything else you want to do.  This year was the first time I chose not to make the quilt the group was working on.  I'd made a quilt similar to it last fall (right here) and didn't feel like making another one. 

This is an example of the kind of quilt Phyllis was teaching this year.  Some of the ladies were making their's scrappy like this one and some made matchy matchy ones.

I started a new quilt, but it sure didn't seem like I got anywhere on it!  I was doing applique, and between cutting out circles with Wonder Under and appliqueing them in place, I didn't get very far.  I ran out of Wonder Under and then I ran out of my thread I was appliqueing the circles on with!!  That was ok, cause I was kind of tired of working on them anyway.  The border is going to be pieced, so I got started on that.

Hard at work!

One of the ladies was working on a queen-size quilt.  I think she called it a postage stamp quilt.  The finished squares were 1" square!!  I just looked up the dimensions of a queen-size quilt and it's 84" x 102".  That's 8,568 1" squares!!!!!!!  That's a lot!!!

On the pieces of fabric with little pictures, she fussy-cut around them so the square would show them off.

I've gotten the rest of the things I need to finish my quilt . . . now I just need to get some time to work on it!!  I don't like things dragging on for forever, so I hope to get at it again this coming week.