The Statler Gathering retreat

As promised I am back to report on the weekend just gone. The Melbourne contingent left after brekkie this morning for their 6-7 hour journey home. I do appreciate the effort they make to come back year after year. It is always a special time to renew friendships and catch up on the latest news from each other's lives. An amazing range of subjects were discussed and we sorted the world's problems out.

 And let's not forget the chance to talk our language of Statler, Creative Studio, PVM, nodes, apply, order join, and lots of other quilting terms. We bounce ideas for quilting and patterns with each other, and at the end of the day, we all say how much we love our machines and what they can do. All this conversation happens while quilts are pieced on machines, or by hand, and we take the opportunity to work on our own projects.

It was unfortunate that I had 2 last minute cancellations, due to life events, and they were missed. As usual much was achieved, as the following photos show. All the time was spent either at the meal table, or sewing, and no one sat in the lounge in the evenings. They were all on a mission.

Gayle was making a double disappearing nine patch quilt for a friend, and worked steadily all weekend, and finished Sunday afternoon............(She comments that she is so slow, but I notice that she pins, and everything is so accurate and points match, so perhaps slow and steady is good!)

.........................and then worked on her hand pieced clamshell quilt.

Elaine is usually the "over achiever" of the group and always brings lots of projects which need to be finished. She was unable to get here until a day after the others, so had a bit of catching up to do.

She made an Alzheimer's Activity Mat, (or fiddle blanket) for the mother of a friend, and shopped at our local Op shop for some of the features.

 Another project that needed to be finished was a series of quilts that have been made for family members, which feature special fabrics of their interests, and the colours of their footy teams.
Some needed borders added, and all of the bindings have been machine sewn, which made the task quicker. Then labels were written for each one.......................

...................and then they were folded up into named pillow cases for each person, and her task was complete. I think that Elaine did a great job of making up for lost time!

I showed a photo of Lisa's cute little machine and it was put to good use sewing the blocks below......

..............into this quilt.............

..........and then she packed that little cutie away and got out some hand stitching.

 Then it was onto some drawing as practice for some freehand quilting. Lots of the girls who start their quilting career with a computerised machine don't have freehand skills. We tell them it is PPP! Practice, Patience and Perseverance is what I was told when I started 17 years ago, and it's true. Just draw and doodle on paper and then draw with the needle and it will come.

Judy B worked on a lot of different projects, lots of them scrappy.

This one was curved.

She was piecing these cute little scrappy string blocks.........

....which were the corners of these star blocks.....................

.................which feature as the centre of this Bakers Dozen quilt by Jen Kingwell.
..

This is another Jen Kingwell pattern, called Smitten which Judy stitched a border onto.

Di was working on a red and white Triple Irish Chain quilt, and spent a lot of time strip piecing the red and white fabrics, and then pressing, and crosscutting and very accurately sewing the blocks. (Another one who uses pins, so maybe there is a message here?)

These are the start of the star blocks to go in between the other blocks.

...............3 blocks are stitched in a row................but a suggestion was made to change out the corners of the star block...................

..................and we think this option looks better! 

Naomi had already made some of her Scrappy Pineapple blocks and had some more strips cut, and worked steadily all weekend, including late evenings and early mornings.

.....................................about half way there.................

81 blocks are all made and trimmed!!!!!!!!!!!! There was lots of trimming for these blocks, as each round needs to be trimmed, with the special ruler that Naomi had. (Sorry no photo of this).

........................it's Sunday evening, and on a mission to sew the rows together, with a little sustenance to help!!

And by about 9.30pm, it was a finish!!! Doesn't it look great, and an amazing way to use up scraps. 

With all this activity there was often a queue at the ironing station. I did offer to set up another iron, but was told by one lady.... "No, I will wait, I want to use the "UP, DOWN" iron! Perhaps I should purchase another one of these?

I did mention that I was hoping to get some sewing time as well, and I am happy to report that I managed to achieve this.
I stitched the binding onto 2 quilts that have recently been quilted, and they now wait for some hand stitching.

I will post photos when they are complete. 

And I am very happy to report that I loaded this Dream Big panel, after I added a border,........

.............and even finished the quilting on it! I purchased a pattern set for this panel, and have another one to do yet, and will probably try some freehand designs on that one. I will say that fitting the patterns to the space was rather tricky in some parts, and I became very good friends with the nodes function of the programme!

I even found a fantastic piece of fabric for the backing. Perfect colouring to match!!

 Sunday evening I managed to get the binding stitched on, and one corner is already hand sewn.

Of course we had to have a group photo, and this time Max features in the photo too.

There endeth another fantastic retreat with a group of friends who all share the common interest of quilting, and also machine quilting. Today has been a cleanup day, a washing day, and a "finish the border of the quilt" from last week day. I even managed an afternoon nana nap in the lounge chair. Tomorrow there will be more cleanup, and I start on another mammoth custom show quilt that could take me "awhile."

I am loving the comments on my 1,000th blog post, and thankyou all. Keep them coming, as this competition goes until the 20th April.

Blessings,
From Jude