I'm Going On A Quilt Retreat

I'm going to a quilt retreat called Sew Brimfield.  It is being run by the ladies from Brimfield Awakening.  This will be my first quilt retreat and I am so excited.  Have you been to a quilt retreat and do you have any tips (please leave in the comments)?  The retreat is in northern Virginia so I can drive and takes lots of stuff, plus it is in early November so I have plenty of time to plan projects.

The Brimfield Awakening team is all about English paper piecing, but you can work on any type of quilting at the retreat, with room for a sewing machine, etc.  I have a hand sewing project called Dot Dot Dot (pattern by Laundry Basket Quilts); this is very long term project for me so I'm sure I'll still be working on it in Nov.  If I have a quilt finished and quilted by then, I'll likely take it along to bind it.  And I'd like to take a piecing project as well.  Lots of time to plan!

Progress On My Weekday Quilt Project

I'm working on two quilt projects simultaneously.  It isn't my favorite way to work on quilts but one project is a block of the week, with new blocks dropping on Fridays so I work on them on the weekends usually.  I fill in during the week with the other project, Pirouette, from A Scrapbook of Quilts, by Joanna Figueroa and Carrie Nelson.

In the past month, I've gone from the fabric pull...

...to lots of HSTs...

...to the basic blocks.

I have about fifty of these blocks made; I need 100.  I'm enlarging the quilt from the original design with extra blocks so it will fit a queen size bed.  It was pretty slow going at first because I am a fabric placement obsessive.  Each block uses 10 smaller blocks (the HSTs) and I would hem and haw over which to place where, what colors and prints look best next to each other, and so on.  I finally landed on a system.  Because I used fat quarters and triangles on a roll, I have 28 HSTs in the same print combinations.  I put them in separate piles on my table, lined up in rows so the colors were fairly dispersed.  Then I made a block using HSTs 1 through 10, the next block used HSTs 2 through 11, and the next used HSTs 3 through 12, and so on.  I adjust only to avoid having two triangles of the same color next to each other, but it rarely happens.  It is working well and I spend less time obsessing, more time sewing.

I made this project bag a few years ago; I have a few.  They are handy for keeping all the items for a project together - the pattern, fabric, precuts, etc. - until I get to the project.  This one is holding the finished blocks.  

I'll be back soon with an update on the weekend project.