The Stitching Retreat Weekend

This past weekend I attended the A Stitcher's Garden stitching retreat. This was my seventh time at the retreat, and I had just as much fun as always. The retreat committee (Gail, Sue and Pat) always knock our socks off with the work they do for the event. Between the goodie bags they put together, the awards handouts, the little bits and bobs that we find at the dinner table, we walk out with more lovely projects than one can do in a year. Then there is always the boutique, which is filled with goodies that Jan (the shop owner) picks out from the Nashville show, where it's impossible to walk out empty handed.

On top of all that the retreat teacher they select is always incredible! This year we had Kim Nugent from Samplers Not Forgotten. She put together a lovely needle book project for us to work on. I'll be posting some photos of that in the upcoming days. I haven't gotten quite so far as to go through my photos from the retreat...I've been too busy stitching!

For now, I've posted all of the lovely charts that I received from the retreat and that I purchased from the boutique on my Pattern Stash page. This weekend I might actually have some free time to catch up with posting my finished, WIPs and even work on the retreat project a bit more!!

Thank you to all of the ladies from A Stitcher's Garden and happy stitching to all of the retreat attendees! Plan to see me at the next retreat!

A Freaking Finish

Yay. That's all, just yay:

Spring Is Coming

I love winter, but this year I'm ready for spring! And to celebrate the upcoming season I picked up a new chart when I was at the A Stitcher's Garden stitch-in last Friday. I'm looking forward to working on this lovely piece from The Drawn Thread.

While I was there I also picked up a new pair of scissors, a needle magnet and my mom's birthday gift (I can't tell you what that is because it's a secret) :-).

I enjoyed catching up with the ladies at the stitch-in and made some good progress on the finishing I'm doing for my needle case/fob/scissor case set - that I finished stitching in 2011 :-/. It's been slow going because the finishing part of projects is not the fun part for me.

 Front

 Back

Still in Progress

This weekend I also spent some time working on my Hopi project. I should be getting a lot done on this in the upcoming weeks because I have a trip to Thailand with tons of airplane time. Nothing like being a human sardine to get one in the mood to stitch!

Framed Pieces

I recently picked up a few pieces that I had framed. As usual Jackie at A Stitcher's Garden did a phenomenal job with the framing!

Stash Splash

Well here it is... the pile of stuff I got from this year's stitching retreat:

Patterns galore, silk threads, needle cases, a pair of scissors, notes cards, all sorts of stuff!! Now I need to neatly put it all into my disturbingly large stash pile.

This is one of the projects we did in class. I was able to finish it not long after the retreat.

It was a blast working this project from Olde Colonial Designs.

On the second day we started a project from Amy Bruecken Designs. I've only just started this one, but will post something when I get it done.

We had a great time, as always, with lots of laughter, plenty of chocolate and great designers! Thanks again to Jan and the crew for putting on a stellar weekend for another year... this was my 6th :-).

A Small Finish

Nope I still haven't gotten photos of the stuff from the retreat... although I thought about it. Then I forgot.

Instead I finished the retreat sampler from this year:

I was poking around trying to find some floss last night and came across the unfinished retreat sampler from 2012, so I started working on that last night. I should be able to finish that today (I hope) and assemble it with the pincushion box that I _finally_ got from Gail (my fault, not hers).

I also got around to getting an image of the WIP I've been focusing on. My mom picked this up for me when she was visiting the national parks in the Southwest US. It's a pretty neat little project and doesn't involve much thinking, so it's a great road project.

Anyhow, since I have no idea when I might get around to the photos of my stuff from the retreat, I would like to say that mom did a great job at the retreat. I was really proud of her...she had a lot of new things to learn and had a blast doing it. She only got frustrated a few times. Now if I can just get her to stop crowding me ;-).

Hopefully more to come soon!

Teaser

This past weekend was the stitching retreat at A Stitcher's Garden. I'm planning to post a bit about that event soon. I have started working on the commemorative sampler... this is what I have done so far: