With Love, From Cattail Retreat

February 10, 2019February 10, 2019Leave a comment

Our Cattail weekend retreat has ended. The projects worked on will be around for a good, long time. Quilt tops sewn, sun dress (and accessories planned) for a little granddaughter was stitched, photos scrapbooked (yes, actual paper copies, not digital ones!) and a new hobby was learned, paper piecing fabric to make mini works of art.

The food started with this…coconut mango cherry dream with fresh whipped topping…

We did have dinner with lentil soup first…salmon spread, homemade deli rye buns, beets from Mom and Dad’s garden, Carr Valley cheeses, sprouts and capers for greens. Yum!

Saturday lunch was pheasant wild rice soup, taco dip and sandwiches with tiramisu. Saturday dinner was chicken enchiladas, refried beans, rice and chocolate pudding layer cake which was frozen so it was like an ice cream treat. Sunday is leftover day plus bonus chocolate cake. Plus samples of Nessalla hibiscus cardamom ginger kombucha and home brew peach kombucha and moscato. All very delicious!

Pillow gifts…fabric bowls with truffles from Dawn, hearts themed potholder (too nice to use this way, it will be a table center piece for a bit), pillow box from me compliments of Paper Pumpkin.

My new experience for the weekend was Dawn teaching me how to paper piece quilt blocks. The teapot took about 6 hours but took breaks and had dinner in that time too. The teacup (not pictured) took about 90 minutes the next day including a sewing machine tune up with Pauline’s help.

Dawn worked on her dresden pattern…

The scrapbooking girls..Jeanette, me and Tiffany. Tiffany zoomed home first thing this morning due to the snowy weather. She got home in good time but Jeanette was slowed by the weather.

We had a fun and productive weekend making memories in a country setting. Looking forward to next time when we just have the August heat to contend with!

Click here for a tour of the retreat house starting in the craft room. I filmed the video in Facebook so add a comment if you are able to view it. This is the first time I tried sharing a Facebook Live video to my blog.

Super Awesome Weekend Getawayer Shirley

Weekend Getaway at Cattail Retreat

October 24, 2018October 24, 20186 Comments

We had a fabulous time during our weekend getaway at Cattail Retreat. We split the room with half working on paper crafts and half working on quilting and gifts. Creativity was flowing in all directions!

First up was piling kits for upcoming Christmas card making sessions. I took advantage of the free table space until other guests arrived. That’s about 100 kits pictured. I did another 100 after these were stuffed in their envelopes.

The design for these kits uses retired designer series paper and ribbon…gingerbread punch is in our annual catalog!

Since Halloween is next week, I designed a spooky pillow gift. Dawn sewed a fun pouch to share as a pillow gift too. Thanks Dawn!

After my kit piling was done, I worked on reducing my whisper white paper scrap pile by punching bows from the Candy Cane builder punch. I used all my scraps and created about 150 bows. I stamped the hohoho words using real red ink from the coordinating Candy Cane Season stamp set. They are attached to glue dots strips for easy assembly.

We had lots of great food including taco dip, chili, southwest black bean soup and chicken chili in tomato sauce. Treats were an apple pie from #NorskeNook, gluten free brownies from #chocolatecoveredkatie and mango turmeric #Nessallakombucha. All delicious!

I set aside my paper crafts to hook a few loops on my pear centerpiece. The photo on the left is progress from the August retreat, the first 2 pears hooked. The photo on the right is progress made this weekend. I completed 3 pears! #patience and #goals learned while rug hooking for sure! It takes me a couple of hours to hook 1 pear.

Group photo right before packing up with some of the quilts worked on while at retreat in the background. We missed a few people that departed early.

The original retreaters…Tiffany on left, me in the center and Jeanette on the right. They are scrapbooking super stars! They design layouts and print photos prior to the weekend. During retreat, they match photos with layouts. They stay on task and usually meet their goal and matching all the photos with layouts. Pretty impressive since they have littles and take advantage of life experiences so have lots of memories to keep!

Thanks for a great weekend! Catch you next time at Cattail Retreat!

Super Awesome Weekend Getawayer Shirley

P.S. Future retreats are February 8-10, 2019, August 9-11, 2019 and October 18-20, 2019. Message me if you are interested in attending these dates. Thanks!

Scene 2 A Journey Starts…with triangles!

October 26, 2017October 26, 2017Leave a comment

The ladies I retreated with are quilters. One made the journey to Wisconsin a few years ago for work. The other made the journey to Wisconsin for the weekend to visit her friend from their home state of South Dakota. Pam wins the award for the most miles traveled to get to a retreat!

I noticed this quilt square and asked about the story because my Mom loves to be on the lookout for barn quilts. She and my sister have even made their own barn quilt. So I know Mom would want the story behind this barn quilt square. Notice the barn quilt has tiny, tiny triangles.

This quilt square commemorates a shop hop trip Dawn and Pam made with a few others to Minnesota. Each shop hopper made their own square and then shared the square with the others. The idea is that they would each get the same square to sew together to make a quilt of their own. Pam recalled her square has planes on it, partly because she would rather take a plane, than drive if I am recalling the reason correctly. Dawn said she incorporated the words “joy ride” because she was the driver and joy is her favorite word. This barn quilt square made the journey back to South Dakota with Pam.

Pam sent a box of supplies ahead of her trip so she could work on this pattern. She had a few squares done prior to the weekend but most she assembled during our retreat. Her goal is to enjoy the process and not measure how much she has finished. I watched while she assembled one square because piecing together all those triangles seemed a little crazy to me. Although there were a few triangles, it was mostly strips that she pieced together. So she got a few points off the crazy scale for using strips!

Dawn was the other quilter at retreat and worked on many projects over the weekend. This was one of those projects. The tree and words were already printed on the panel. She added the piano key border first. I heard them talking about piano keys so I think that is what the rectangles are called along the left. Then the similar border along the other sides. Last is the detail in the bottom right. No triangles on this quilt.

Dawn’s quilting journey started with thinking quilters are crazy (just like me) for cutting up perfectly good fabric into triangles and then piecing it back together. It sounds like it took a few years for Dawn to realize that quilting is not all about triangles. There are other methods to quilting including fabric books which she sewed over the weekend as well.

I did not tell them that I have always thought I would reserve quilting for when I retire. For now, rug hooking fills the time when I am not paper crafting. It was neat to watch Pam assemble a square and listen to their lingo throughout the weekend. They also were pretty focused on their math skills because just as in paper crafts, we know the instant we cut wrong the second the cutting is complete. In paper crafts, I have to redesign if I cut wrong. My guess is that incorrectly cut fabric may result in triangles being pieced together! 🙂

The triangles appear in our story again before the weekend is done. Catch that in Scene 3 along with my silver glimmer paper pile!

Super Awesome Math Skills Person Shirley