Weekend Retreat at Home

Due to the lockdown the quilt show I was going to go to in Exeter was cancelled so when I read about a virtual quilt retreat a few weeks back the money I would have spent on entrance and coach fare went on joining the retreat instead. The retreat took place on Saturday and yesterday.

This was run by Jo Avery and Karen Lewis of The Thread House, who have run retreats near Bristol and in Yorkshire in addition to their own businesses.  This was the first virtual retreat they’ve done and was done via a private Facebook group with a mix of live and pre recorded videos

There were two projects to make over the weekend and like a normal retreat there was some preparation ahead of last weekend and requirements list.  There were a few videos in advance about getting ready.  The two projects were tendrils and leaves pouch on the Saturday and a foundation pieced butterfly/New York  Beauty block on Sunday.

Jo is well known for her use of tendrils in her work, seen on this storage pot tutorial here and with stage by stage videos helping along there were soon fabric leaves and bias strips appearing on prepared quilted pieces. Here’s my efforts below.  I decided for my quilted piece that I would strip piece and rejoin low volume and turquoise fabrics for a fresh look and used a dark blue Moda Grunge  fabric for my tendrils.

The afternoon was for making up the pouch by Karen, and there was a bit of confusion (then named ‘zippergate’) as her method for inserting the zip was different from Jo’s but that was quickly sorted and it did give participants the chance to follow one or the other instructions. So by the afternoon I had a large completed pouch.  This would comfortably hold a small quilt/embroidery project and I might use it for holding my Sew4thesoul project.

I had printed off the pattern for Sunday’s workshop for the foundation piecing,  I’m not a fan of this method of piecing,  but I following the video instructions from Karen and Jo it was easy to follow, with making up the New York Beauty blocks, which was the beginning of the Butterfly piece.

 By lunchtime I managed to get both the spiky panels done and the butterfly tail.

For some reason I managed to muddle up two sides of the head and antenna bit, my fault rather than the instructions and couldn’t match up the seams.  Fortunately I had a busy background fabric so it didn’t notice too much, so I didn’t go back and try again. So this was the end project.

I’m pleased with that and it was good to see other participants butterflies emerging too.

The good thing about the virtual retreat is that you haven’t got to pack fabrics, sewing stuff and machine and the ‘kitchen sink’ thinking whether you had enough of the right stuff and sewing in the comfort of familiar surroundings.  The only downside is the chatter and community spirit that you’d get at a workshop or retreat, but seeing as no one can go anywhere at the time being, we would not have that anyhow,

The workshops were well presented, seeing as it was the first time Jo and Karen had done a virtual retreat and apart from one or two glitches the processes we were well  explained. I’d definitely recommend this and would probably do another in the future.