Retreat Fun in Shipshewana

 I just returned from the Jane Stickle Quilt retreat in Shipshewana, Indiana, last Sunday.   I wasn’t much in the mood to quilt before last week, but I am now.  It’s so great being surrounded by such talented quilters.  There were some there that I hadn’t met before, but there are some of us that have been attending this retreat for over 20 years so it’s great seeing old friends again.  I love visiting Amish country.   

                                                          

I took the photo of the horse outside the Emma Cafe.  Emma is a small town just south of Shipshewana.  This was a great lunch spot years ago, but they closed.  It's nice to see that they are open again.  The food was wonderful.  I kept talking to the horse trying to get him to look over at me.  Finally when I got quiet, he turned his head in my direction,  

Friday night show and tell at the retreat is always great.  Each quilt is a work of art.  I showed my 1797 revisited quilt.  This quilt is my version of a quilt in the V & A Museum in London.  

I also showed my 3' block swap quilt.  I'd been looking at the blocks and realized one of the girls that had been in our group had passed away.  These blocks were fun to do.  At several retreats we would each pick 6 blocks from anywhere we wanted as long as they finished at 3".  There were usually 6 in our group, so each exchange we ended up with 36 different blocks.  You can see that we exchanged blocks at several different retreats.  

Besides the full sized quilt, I made a small quilt out of the blocks that were fall or Halloween.  

The blocks in this little quilt were just some that were my favorites.  I have these two smaller quilts layered and thought that I might do a little hand quilting in them.  Hand quilting isn't one of my favorite things to do so they may end up with some machine quilting in the sashing.

I took my usual project to work on - hexagons.  I have several projects in the works that use 3/4” hexagons, so I always have a container prepared and ready to stitch.  Here are just a few I did at the retreat.

I found this puzzle in my sewing room and took it to put out on the "puzzle table".   I'm not sure where I got the puzzle.  I think a friend brought it to me from the Bennington Museum.  I left it on the table when I left so hopefully it will show up on the table to work again another year.

Once the doors to the sewing room open, the days just fly by.  Then we pack up and look forward to coming back next time.  

Thanks for stopping by for a visit.

I hope you are finding some time to stitch today!

I have an idea for a new project.  More about that in my next post so stay tuned.