Home time

I got home this morning after two full days at the Fat Quarterly Retreat and it turns out I haven't taken nearly as many pictures as I thought so I will try to keep this brief.

We got to Baden-Powell House about 9 on saturday morning and had to start the day playing a version of bingo in which we had to talk to as many people as possible until we had successfully spoken to all 6 people on our assigned cards. I only managed to get about 2 of mine crossed off as I had too much fun chatting to the wrong people and didn't end up finding the rest on my list.

My first class on saturday morning was freezer paper piecing with Kerry, where I got to chatting with Lucy and Lorna, but I was still too excited about the whole event and forgot to take any photographs :(

Then after lunch with Lorna, Tanya and Cara, I went to embroidery with the very friendly, and only a little quiet, Aneela Hoey.

In the class we were given a copy of Aneela's sketch of a robin to practice with, i managed to finish my first robin but had only just started my second when the class had to finish as I had been having too much fun chatting to Caroline and Jo. I would love to learn more pretty stitches and this was a great start, see how pretty all the robins look together...

Terri brought her P51 quilt for us all to see, although some of the Brit Bees had seen it in its various stages as it was finished off, I hadn't seen it at all since I sent my blocks off last summer so it was great to see it all together.

After a huge Fat Quarterly raffle, I had drinks with the London Modern Quilt Guild, who put up with me until it was time for us to go to dinner, where we finished off the day with a Brit Bee + Friends dinner around the corner from Baden-Powell House where Judith, Shevvy, Tanya and I set the world to rights. After a day of light hearted small talk, it was a great contrast and I have a lot of respect for these fabulous women (quilting skills and brains; who could ask for more?!)

Sunday morning was the Designer Challenge with John in which I didn't take ANY photographs at all, and I have nothing to show for it as we all handed in our sketches, but you can take my word that there were some great designers in my class!

 I had a somewhat Brit Bee lunch with Ceri and Jo and learned a little about colour theory, before I went to sew portholes with Lu Summers (a class I had been waiting for all weekend!) It is such a fantastic technique that comes together really quickly once all the cutting is done- but that always takes me forever anyway; even cutting my 12" squares ready for the class the night before took me hours.

This class definitely made me want to make more and I would love to make a whole quilt of these (after I have finished all the others on my to-do list; namely my Curio and Brit Bee quilts, but it is definitely on the list)

At the end of the day the fat quarterly gang judged the 6 iron man quilts and our group won!

(left-right, team 2 are: Tracy, Sue, Emma, Lynda, Me and Teresa, unfortunately we could't find Nicole for the photograph) The granny square idea came from Sue, who has been making quite a few of these lately and started us off with the blocks.

It was a great weekend; it was lovely to put faces to the names of all those blog authors I have been following this year and I am so relieved that we were all wearing name tags! Thank you to everyone I was able to chat to, I don't think I have ever spoken to a nicer group of people who all felt like old friends by the end of the weekend. 

I'm off to unpack now and will share my retreat goodies and workshop bits and pieces later in the week, in the meantime I have a fair bit of blog reading to catch up on!

J x