Quilt Retreat at Camp He Ho Ha - February 2015

In February, I went to a quilt retreat at Camp He Ho Ha with Jody.  

This retreat is a joint venture between the Barrhead and Westlock Quilt Guilds.  There were about 40 of us there.  It was amazing to say the least.  I have never been to a quilt retreat before, but Mom used to go to this very retreat years ago, and a lot of her old quilting buddies were there.  It was really nice to see them.  Some of them I knew through Mom, and some of them I met when I went to a meeting at the Westlock Crazy Quilters.  And of course, I met lots of new people!  What an amazing and creative bunch.

 This was Jody's labour of love.  Her and Bev and I think a handful of others were trying to figure this out!  I would call it a hyperbole in fabric form.  I'm not sure what that means, but mathematical and confusing comes to mind!  Sure looks good when it's done though!  :)

I spent the weekend working on my girl quilt squares.  I had just over half of them already cut out from a mini craft retreat in January.  

 This weekend I finished cutting them out and sewed them almost entirely together.  I love seeing all the different fabrics come together.  

 Camp He Ho Ha is special to me because this is where Tyler used to come for Diabetes Camp.

He told me they used to have a pirate ship that you could climb all over.  I didn't find a pirate ship, but I found a rock climbing wall and a maze of bridges!

 It is such a beautiful place.  The camp is situated on a small peninsula in the middle of a lake.

 And, of course, we were lucky to have a beautiful sunny weekend, even though it was cold!

 It was fun being set up as one of four tables.  I got to know the other ladies at my table, and I made sure to make the rounds often and chat people up.

 I was told about the legendary snack table.  It did not disappoint!  There was always a ton of snacks, and we ate!  And that's to say nothing against the kitchen!  We ate 3 square meals a day, and they were absolutely amazing.  I can't believe we ate so much.

 But we also worked very hard.  Next time, I will learn to pace myself a bit more.  I'm not used to quilting all day!  I hardly sew anymore, so I'm not used to doing it for hours on end in my spare time.  Some of these ladies are unstoppable!  

 I took these photos right after one of our meals.  I ate fast and snuck back in here all by myself.

 It was quiet for a few minutes, so I took the opportunity to wander through all the tables and take pictures of everybody's projects.

 I remember Mom made a few of these.  :)

 I love the colours in this one.  Orange is my favourite colour.  The Barrhead Quilters had an assignment that included black and white prints with one solid colour.  This was one of my favourites.  It's a little hard to see, because it's inside out, but it looks amazing!

 This is Alice's quilt and sewing station.  I've known Alice the longest.  She was one of the founding executives of the Westlock Crazy Quilters with Mom.  It was really great to visit with her.

Sitting in small groups by the fireplace was a really great experience.  Some of these ladies are in their 70's, even 80's, and they are so sharp and interesting!  I learned a lot just sitting soaking up the conversations.

I love bright coloured batiks!

 One of the ladies at the table behind us was working on this.  The light blue stripe is actually bright aqua, and the colour combination is amazing!

 Remember how many squares I made?  160!  I had trouble fitting them all on my table, as I laid them out to join the sections together.  I loved seeing all the colours!

 There was a piano, and it was right behind us, as we were the very last table.  This is Bev.  She works at Dad's upholstery shop.  She's a superstar seamstress.  It was really fun getting to know her better.  And apparently she's a very good pianist!  Next time, I will bring my hymnal.  I can only plunk out one note at a time with my right hand, but it's still fun!

 Near the end of the weekend, we started to see big quilts put up on the board.  I love this one.  It's all batiks, and I love big modern shapes like this.  And funky quilts with no borders.  :)

 Here is the unicorn quilt.  There is a small section in one of the pictures above.  She made excellent progress with this one!  Cute.

 Here is more of that orange and black and white one I liked so much.

 Here is my table again.  Heaps of squares!

 This is a gorgeous autumn quilt made with batiks.  I love the vibrant colours she chose!

 Slicin' and choppin'!  

One of my favourite parts of the retreat was the pool.  It was open from 7-8:30 each night, and I enjoyed it for a good hour both nights.  It felt so good.  And the few of us that swam got to have a nice visit.

 Here is the lady with the aqua and brown quilt.  Stunning.

 Bev, from our table, made this.  Funky!

 Can you tell I was fascinated with this one?  :)

 Ironin'.

 And finally, my piles of squares!  All I had left was to join the last set together, which I did in a couple short sessions in the past couple of months.

 Holy toledo.  Never again.  Remind me to never mass produce 4 or 5 quilts ever again!  It would have been easy if it was only 114 squares like I needed.  LOL.  This little pile took me all weekend.

 Here she is!  I just love it.  :D

 This was one of my favourites to snoop.  The Beatles!  And funky!

 The Fab Four.

 She designed this all herself.  Amazing.

 This is a cute chicken wall hanging made by Sallly.  I met her at the Westlock Quilt meeting a couple years ago.  She's a firecracker, that one!

 And Bev with one of her completed quilts.  This one is reversible.

I can't wait to do it again!  I learned a lot, both about what to bring next time, and how to pace myself.  That was the most sewing I've done all year!  Ha ha!

Girl Quilts!

Since I have switched to working 4 days a week, it has only taken me a month to kind of get my mojo back.  I tried this work schedule in the winter (jan, feb, mar), and by the end of 3 months, I was starting to get bored in the evenings!  Imagine that!  Not wanting to come home and crash after every work day.  So, after having to go back to 5 days a week for the past 6 months, I was not happy and could tell that my life was not in balance.  In September, I asked to go back to 4 days a week.  And I was expecting it to take longer for me to feel better.  I'm thankful that it's going so well, and it didn't take that long.  I feel like on my day off, I get to be a domestic diva.  I've been spending a lot of time in the kitchen, especially since it's harvest time and I had to power through all those tomatoes!  I'd still like to make another batch of salsa, but I'm watching my tomatoes to see if they will tell me when it's time.  Or perhaps we'll make another trip down to the farm and I can pick a bunch of new ones.  My mother-in-law has bins and bins of tomatoes!

Anyways, I have slowly started daydreaming more, which is a good sign that my mojo is returning.  And all of a sudden, this week, I was inspired to do something about my girl quilts project.  I started them quite a while ago, and I prepared all the squares during the quilt retreat in February.  As with my boy quilts, which I made 4 of, I wanted to go big or go home.  So, I decided to make enough squares to make 3 baby quilts and one twin.  Hee hee hee.  Somewhere in my calculations, I overshot.  By a LOT.  Haha.  When I laid out all my squares today, I had enough left over to make a 5th quilt, in lap size (5x7 squares).  Whoops!  Oh well!  I guess I have an abundance now!

This week I emailed Christine, who works at the office at my church, and asked her if I could come to church on Friday and use the ample space in the basement, (including 3 fuzzy divider thingys!) to lay out all my girl squares.  

 She said absolutely, so this morning, I quickly finished pressing my last stage of squares, packed them all up, and came to the church basement.  Here are my blank slates.

 I made a quick calculation that the first board would be big enough to fit my twin quilt, which is 6x9 squares.  As you can see, the last two rows are on the floor.

 I told Christine to give me about half an hour to get started, and then she could come down and have a look at what I was doing.  She was kind enough to take some pictures of me in action.  :)

 I laid out the 3rd baby quilt on the table.

 And when I realized I had a very large stack of squares left over, I laid more out on the floor for quilt #5!  This one is lap size, 5x7.

 I don't know why I always have to make my projects so huge!  I used to make 13 pairs of PJ pants for Christmas presents.  I haven't been able to do that for a few years now!  And yet I still have 12 pairs either half made, or cut out, hoping to finish them for another big batch of PJ gifts.  LOL.  Maybe this year, with my day off, I'll actually get to a few of them.

 When I was cutting and assembling squares at the quilt retreat, I knew this was a lot of squares, but I had no idea how excessive it was!  It was a lot of work!  I think I made 160 squares!  I followed the directions for the king size, and then divvied them up into multiple quilts.  

 After counting them today, 100 would have been sufficient.  6x9=54, and the baby ones are 4x5=20.  3 baby quilts and a twin would use 114.  And there's always a handful of extras.  

 I suppose I had to choose between making 100 squares, for queen size, and 160 squares, for king, and I opted for the more the merrier!  Ha ha!  Oh well!  Now that the hard part is done, I can tackle these one at a time.

 I wanted to show you how lovely our church basement is.  We have our quilting bees down here.  There's actually one tomorrow that I will be going to.  It's so light and spacious!

 I'm glad that's all done with!  Now my squares can sit in little organized piles and wait for me to assemble them into quilt tops.  :)

I am optimistic, however, that now that I have my mojo back, I will be sewing more and more often.  The fact that I had the gumption to do this today shows that anything is possible!  

Adventures in Upholstery - 7'4" Bench, Anyone?

As a break from doing lots and lots of restaurant boothing, we got to upholster a very long bench.  It was fun.  Now I want one.  Mind you, quite a bit shorter.  This one is 7'4".  You could fit two small people in there!

Erickson is photobombing.  I love it.

 We made a 3" seat cushion for the top.  Done exactly like all our other booth seats, so that wasn't much of a stretch.  Except for the ridiculous length!  It's nearly twice as long as most of our booth seats, which usually fall between 48" and 66".  This one is 88".

 Juffrey is admiring how nice and tight he made this.  *Smack!*  

I love my job.  We are having so much fun working together as a team.  Good things are happening!

This is why I haven't been sewing...

My sewing room is a mess!

 I took these pictures in January.  This situation has not improved.  If anything, it's gotten worse.  There is a spare bed under there somewhere.  LOL

 So, this weekend, our condo had a garage sale.  The condo board (which my husband is on) decided to rent a dumpster.  Yay!  

 So, far, I haven't found much garbage.  95% of my stuff is going to be donated.  I'm ready to purge!

 This is the junk closet.  You can't even walk in here.  I would like to get this set up with a small table and a couple sewing machines, to free up more space in the actual bedroom.  

 I have about 6 sewing machines, and I intend to use about 4 of them.  I would also like to save up for a separate coverstitch machine.  Mine is an 8-thread Babylock, so it does both, but it's nice to have a separate one when doing lots of knits.  I'm also saving up for a corner sewing cabinet.  A really nice one.  Costs about $1700.  And I'm worth it.  :D

So, today I started in earnest.  I already accidentally found a permanent home for my laptop!

This is one of my sewing cabinets.  There's a nice Singer in this one.  But I don't intend to use it until I get more organized.  So, for now, it will be home for my computer.  I brought it in here so I could listen to my iTunes.  It's such a perfect spot!

Anyways, I better quit blogging and playing on the computer and get back to work!

Fun Upholstery Update

I haven't said it in a while, but I still love my job.  I am absolutely blessed.  We live in our own little world upstairs in our huge woodwork shop.  It's just the three of us, and it's very cozy.  Our workspace is close enough to the offices that we get an awesome wi-fi signal.  I found some big iPod speakers at a garage sale not too long ago, and I am the DJ.  I have the Slacker Radio app, and I love it.  The guys love music, and they seem to be happy with whatever I play.    I like variety, so I change stations every day, sometimes twice a day.    This is something I am thankful for every day.

 This week we are working on 57 booths.  These are the parts to cover the seats.  Above are the panels, and below are the sides.  I cut these out in just over a day, and it will take me about a full day and a half to sew them.

 This is what they look like on the finished product.  :)

 Downstairs, upstairs, everywhere, we are surrounded by piles and piles and piles of boothing.  I believe we are working on 3 different projects.  The guys downstairs are building these for us.  Often we build our own.  I love dabbling in woodwork.  The project we are currently upholstering consists of 57 booths, which includes a bottom base (usually covered in carpet or rubber), a top base, a seat, and a backrest.  All four pieces are approximately the same size when finished.  Lots and lots and lots of rectangles!

 Here are backrests on the right and bases on the left.  Top and bottom bases are almost the same.  Top bases get upholstered.

 Like this!  Bottom bases are left plain and covered on-site.

  

 Upstairs in our workspace, this is Jerry's current pile of backrests.

 And here is Jerry.  This is a great shot.  It captures his smiling face.  He's almost always happy.

 This is Juffrey.  Him and I get along extremely well.  We make a good team.  He is very good at upholstery, even though he only has 2 or 3 years of experience.  He's a perfectionist.  He does very nice work.  :)

 And last but not least, here's me!  I've decided to make a simple change and go for a 12-20 minute walk on my half-hour lunch break.  I say 12-20 minutes because that's the range I've ended up with in my first four days.  :)  The faster I eat, the longer I get to walk.  I'm pleasantly surprised that this is a habit that so far is really enjoyable.  I look forward to going, and I enjoy being outside.  This trail is about 4 minutes away from our shop.  It's quite lovely.  The rain didn't even stop me today!  I brought my jacket, and the skies smiled upon me and the rain let up enough that I didn't need my hood.  It was merely spitting.  It felt really good after our little heat wave.  :)

Happy Thursday!