Quilt Retreat 2011

After 2 years of being away (one due to a sick son, another one for a family trip to Disney World) I returned to my happy place last weekend... Quilt Retreat at Camp Lebanon with dear, dear friends.  So happy.  I knew I missed being in this beautiful space with an amazing group of women, but didn't realize quite how much!  And this camp gets hospitality.  They take such good care of everyone!  Friendly people, food to die for, comfortable accommodations.

A week before leaving I stopped at my most favorite local quilt shop, Hannah Johnson Fabrics.  Can I just say I LOVE this place?!  Amazing fabric.  And Janet, the owner, is so sweet.  It had been quite awhile since I had been in (needed to cut down on fabric consumption!) and she immediately mentioned how long it had been since she had seen me.  Awwww, thank you for noticing!  While there I saw the new Amy Butler line of fabric, Lark.

Amy Butler Lark

 Love it!  And she had charm packs.  Grabbed one of them, knowing this is what I wanted to use in my quilt retreat project.  No idea how, but it would be used.

Then I remembered this quilt I had pinned on Pinterest:

From LRstitched at Moda Bake Shop

I love circles.  Polk dots.  Classic Mickey Mouse silhouette shape.  Perfect!  And that Lark fabric would look awfully nice.

Made a mock up of the circle to make sure everything would work out.  Good thing I did as my circle and applique pieces didn't print out to quite the right size so I had to look for another circle item in the house to use to trace.  Dug through the tupperware drawer, pulled out plates, nothing.  Until I found a leftover paper plate from our son's birthday.  Ding, Ding, Ding!  We have a winner!

The trial run block I turned into a case for my Nook:

Added some handstitching.  Made my first button too.  Fun!

It was a winner of a pattern.  Time to trace and cut out a bunch of the applique shape.  A couple of evenings in front of the TV, a church council meeting (I'm on staff at the church and sit in the back during the meetings... got to use each minute I've got! I usually doodle but at least this time I was productive), I got all 210 shapes traced and cut out!  Then at another super informal meeting I pulled all the paper off of from the Heat n Bond.  My friends thought I was peeling off band aids and were curious if I had some weird fetish.  :)

I also decided I wanted to make my quilt bigger than the pattern.  And that I would want to quilt it in circles.  But a big quilt and circles being quilted on my machine might be tricky.  And then I remembered a friend doing blocks in a quilt as you go style.  Google is my friend and I found a tutorial.  That I cannot find again.  I'll keep looking for it and post it once I find it.

Got all my background blocks and backing blocks cut out and ready to go.  It's quilt retreat time!!