Retreat!

I'm home after a fantastic weekend away.  My car is still full of my sewing things but I'm sure I'll get around to emptying it soon.  Maybe.

Judy, Kate, Kay and I stayed at a lovely Airbnb in Ballarat.  We're spoiled when we go to The Retreat, Gisborne as all the cutting boards and ironing things are there ready for us to use so it's tricky if we go to sew somewhere else.  The Airbnb had a table we could eat at in the kitchen and a separate table in the living/dining room so we could use that table to sew on and not have to remove everything to eat.  The kitchen was also big enough for us to lay out our cutting boards on one of the workbenches so they were at a nice height for ease of use.

We all met at Millrose Quilting and Gallery in Ballan on Thursday morning and had a lovely time looking at their fabric ranges and we then went to their little café for hot chocolates before driving on to Ballarat.  We stopped at Beechworth bakery for lunch and then checked out Gail's Patchwork Emporium while we waited for check in time at the Airbnb.  

The other ladies did a lot of sewing over the weekend.  I hardly did any which I found amusing because I was raring to sew my Rugby Stars!  Here's Kate sewing flying geese and half looking at me suspiciously!

She's putting her flying geese together to make this quilt block.

Judy made a couple of baby quilts.  She started off with this bear panel.

And here's the quilt top complete!  She also did another with navy blues instead of the bear panel. In this picture Judy is holding her quilt top, Kate is sewing away industriously, Kay is laying out bonus half square triangles to make a table runner and I was sat watching them! 

Both Kay and Judy sewed some binding to quilts they brought with them.  Here's Judy displaying the one she made out of a ghastly jelly roll.  It looked great in the end!  Look at Judy's cute little slippered feet!

In this picture Kay is sewing stems on this flower appliqué using a satin stitch on her sewing machine.

Here are the busy little bees!  Oh but look, you can see some of my sewing!

Kay put bonus square scraps together to make this table runner and whipped up a couple of bags for a  birthday gift.

The Airbnb is conveniently across from an IGA supermarket, fish n chip shop and bakery so we didn't have far to go when we fancied a snack.  Or ANOTHER bottle of wine ;-)

I didn't get any pictures of me or my sewing so this is what I took when I came home.  I managed to sew *drumroll please* two stars! So I have three with the one I made before I went. Ha ha! 

But quite a few pinwheels with my bonus half square triangles.

Although I didn't get as much done as I had been anticipating, it was just so nice to go quilt shopping and to hang out with my fantastic friends!  I can't wait for the next retreat!