Fabulous Retreat Weekend

Friday afternoon I got the car packed - suitcase for clothes, pillow, towel, etc. Bag for coffee cake, M & Ms, peanuts, wine, tea, sugar cubes. Bottled water. Two stitching bags for a friend who would be arriving straight from a business trip. Two stitching bags for me. Stand. Floor light. 

I will confess to packing 7 projects:  Molehill to Mountain, my Kimono, the Leaf Collage, and 4 Pam Darney samplers. 

I only worked on 3 projects. I brought the Kimono out of guilt because I'm behind for April and to share with a friend who is also stitching this. 

I brought the Leaf Collage to share with friend who had to leave that class early so we could go over what she missed. 

I brought 4 Guildhouse Samplers because I could. LOL 

I only worked on 2 because somehow I've misplaced the Q-snaps that really help when working on the area where two fabrics are joined together. Without them, I didn't even attempt working on that one. 

Did I make any progress? 

Sure. 

First, here's a photo of the house where we were staying. 

And here's what I worked on first. This was a class back in 2009. We showed these off in January 2010. I knew then that mine wasn't quite finished. That I wanted to do a little tweaking. I also knew that I needed to put it away for a while to let things percolate.

The class was a design your own diamond shaped Quaker. As this was my first time doing anything like this, I'm happy enough with it. Looking at it now, objectively after more Quaker stitching experience, I would completely change it. I guess I would say I learned a lot from this piece. Mostly about balance and design. And I still love the colors. 

Here's my Garden Gate sampler.

I stitched the columns and the gate. If you look at the gate, you can see the outline of the birds that are in front of it. At least I can. 

We all had a terrific time. Sign me up for next year! 

edit:  Sorry no photo update on Molehill to Mountain. Picture wasn't that great. And there's wasn't that much progress on it either. But I am really happy with how the Dallas Star square is turning out.