Retreat Report Day 3

Sunday:  A Race to the Finish!

Our sewing engines revved bright and early on Sunday morning, as we all raced to the finish for the Final Show and Tell of the retreat.  Every little bee was busy sewing squares together, quilting tops, or putting on binding in preparation for the finish line.  We didn’t even take a lunch break! Instead, our awesome vice president, Kathleen, called the local pizzeria and ordered us several hearty pies (and salads!) so we could keep sew-sew-sewing while we ate ("hey, watch where you’re dripping your tomato sauce, willya?!")

But Sunday wasn’t all about our own projects – we still had a few more demos to throw in! One of our retreat committee members, Kelly, showed us an awesome and simple keyfob demo to put to good use with the supplies from our BAMQG-quilty gift bags.  It seriously took Kelly maybe 5 minutes to make the keyfob, and then we had the opportunity to finish our own and earn a klippie for prizes later in the day.

One demo wasn’t enough, however - let’s squeeze in a second! Amanda, who makes cat beds for the homeless kitties at a local shelter, brought in the trimmed-down tutorial and did a quick demo for the animal lovers in the group.  There was a good bit of interest and even a couple bed shells got made for Amanda to take home and stuff.

And if demos weren’t enough, we still had the after show and tell where everyone could show off how much they got done during the retreat.

And we can’t forget the tons of prizes! Sunday was actually the DAY O’ PRIZES, as we had to figure out the winners of “Guess the First Quilt” contest, the first, second, and third prizes for KLIPPIEMANIA, and also miscellaneous door prizes just for being our awesome sewing selves and coming to the retreat – books, fabric, and patterns, oh my!

We also had a Fat Quarter Frenzy where everyone got to pick 2 fat quarters, and so our lovely Julie from the online fabric store The Intrepid Thread was kind enough to supply us with a table of fat quarters for us to ransack – er, choose from.  There were some great new prints that our grubby little hands could not grab quick enough – thanks, Julie!

Finally, we also wanted to squeeze in some thank yous, for where would we be without all the fabulous people who helped make our first retreat a success? Thanks not only went out to the retreat committee, but also those who weren’t even on the committee but still pitched in behind-the-scenes, including Julie from Intrepid Thread who brought in her store for the weekend so we’d never have to leave(!), Sara for being our finance wizard extraordinaire and getting our guild members a weekend discount at Natural Expressions, Peggy for doing a great Quilt-as-you-go demo, Jennifer for organizing the Q2 charity block rollout, and Kathleen for writing our Liability Waiver.

When 3pm rolled around, we cleaned up and left, the stars (and stitches) still twinkling in our eyes.  It was an awesome first retreat, filled with fun times, groovy music (thanks, Angela and Ruth!), excellent conversation, fabulous food, snacks, and wine, and the most furious stitchin’ and fabric shopping this side of the Mississippi. The only question left: when’s our next retreat?  The withdrawal has set in! ;-)