Report from retreat

I had a wonderful time on retreat from Friday to Sunday with my sewing group. There were eight of us and we ate, laughed, ate, sewed, you know how it goes. The weather was stormy outside for a lot of the time, perfect for sewing. This is the bag I wanted to get finished, most of us tackled it, only two finished so far. It's the quilters carry all from willow designs. It has eight pockets! I have to say, it was a big task and I did a lot of unsewing.

There are four outside pockets, one coin pocket and three large main pockets inside with the middle one having a zip. Here's a shot inside. I had to get DH to make a delivery of more fabric since the side pockets I had made just weren't working. Lucky we were only five minutes from home.

Today I had a go at making a boxy pouch to accessorise. There's a free tutorial here. Not the easiest pouch I've made in this style, I'll show you my favourites another time. I added a beautiful hand made glass bead to the tassel. I made this one quite a bit deeper than the instructions said to.

Here are a couple of photos of the projects the others were working on. A spools colour wash being hand pieced.

This gorgeous Karen Cunningham quilt pattern that a friend is doing at Quiltsmith. It's the same one Jean is doing.

The same friend is working on this quilt as well and has a pieced border to go on it. I'm sorry I did not get a photo of the William Morris quilt she had there, all appliqued and hand quilted. It was a stunner.

There was some piecing, lots of unsewing, some hand quilting and fun going on and now it'll be another year before we do it again.