CMQG retreat

As I've mentioned before, my guild is totally awesome.  We had our first ever quilt retreat the first weekend of March.  It was super fun and I'm so glad I went, as I imagine I'll be pretty busy soon and won't be able to have a carefree weekend.

It was a very unstructured retreat, so everyone could work on whatever they chose.  It was fun to see what everyone was working on, and just to have dedicated quilting time. It was great getting to know people better--sometimes you don't have a ton of time at a meeting to hang out and chit chat, so it was great to have that. We had a few "10 minute tips" where a member would show a neat trick/tip that they know.  We also had a charity challenge where we divided into teams and raced each other to see which team could make the blocks for a rail-fence type quilt the fastest. My team won! What did we win? Bragging rights, glory, fame...

Here is the "official" write up of the weekend on the guild blog.  Here is Emily's post with her take on the weekend.

I worked on a table runner and a baby quilt (future posts as they are so close to DONE), and got to use Ebony's AccuQuilt Studio Cutter, "Mr. T".  Wow. Who knew that a die cutter would be so popular? There was a sign up sheet and I'd say Mr. T was in high demand all weekend! 

I got a ton of pieces cut for a drunkard's path quilt.  I've wanted to make one for the longest time but the prospect of cutting out all those curved pieces using a template made my head spin.  With the die cutter, I did 80 blocks in about 40 minutes. 

I still have to sew them together, but my initial tries at sewing the curves has been great--they fit together so perfectly that I don't need pins!  Can you believe it? No pins for curves.  I told Ebony that she should rent time on the cutter--it saves SO much time that it would be worth it to pay $10-$15/hr just to use it. Seriously, if there was a quilt store with one, I would totally pay to rent it.

Overall, a fabulous weekend--and I didn't feel guilty leaving DH at home because he was at a conference in DC! We had such a great time that we'll be doing it again in the fall and next spring--the dates are already confirmed!