Quilt retreat in Amish country

Recharge, relax, revisit:

Recently I went on a rare for me quilt retreat.  Sometimes the cost of the outing makes me pause, but the cost is small for the amount of fun in return. 

The retreat was planned by several of my longarm friends for us to get to spend some time together and the idea was to replace the days of Quilting with Machines that we had gone to for the last 6 years.  I don’t miss QwM but I sure miss the evenings there when all the work for the day was done and I got to spend a few minutes with these splendid comrades who were retired in the bar as I staggered back to my room, tired from my day in the registration booth.  I must say, retreat in Amish country was far more fun for me.

Going shopping in the rain

I talked my dear friend, Pattie, into going.  It has been 4 years of cajoling her but I finally got her to tamp down the panic long enough to get her into the car and to the amazing house in Charm where 9 of us spent 4 very busy days sewing. I will admit there was booze and food and fabric intermingled with the rotary cutting, stitching and stepping back to admire our progress we hung on the design wall.

my project on design wall

An interesting pass time for me is seeing how others organize their getaway stuff and how they work.  I sat for hours sewing.  This alone is worth the price of admission. When I go I prepare by planning several quilts, figuring out the instructions for each, cutting all the fabric I need and putting each project into a container for ease of transport and keeping it all organized.  I must be organized. I won’t go into the other peoples prep.  Pattie did like the idea of “quilt in a box” and prepared several for herself. She even surprised me with strips of fabric for a black and white project for us to do together.

result of one of Pattie's shopping forays (she tried to hide it in the car)

I did not get any particular project done but I got many parts of many projects to some stage of doneness.  I was satisfied. I brought a bag of blocks along and sewed them into rows then into a quilt top so I did seem to have ‘finished’ something.

The best fun of the retreat is the shopping.  There are quite a few shops in the area we stayed but I only visited two. Pine Tree quilt shop in Kidron and Mrs. Millers dry goods, which was next door to the house where we stayed.

Gayla and the poor little homeless kitten

The cat on the back porch was somebodies pet and such an opportunistic little devil.  He came right up on the porch of the house and crawled into any lap that would not reject him.  He looked so much like Toby and he acted like him as well.  He was very much at home sleeping on the porch furniture.  When new people arrived to stay in the house behind ours, he deserted us for them. Gayla was so certain he was an abandoned kitty but he knew exactly what he was doing.  Apparently Amish cats like retreats too!

Perfect end to day of storms that missed us