Looking Forward to November!

I am so happy that October has arrived.

Because this means its only a month away until I go on a quilting retreat!

1st day, look how tidy everything is! I can assure you it didn’t look like this for long!

I went for the first time last year with my local quilting club “The Cut Ups” and I had so much fun. 

Look at the beautiful view we had from the house “Four Mounds”

I am so lucky to be a member of a fantastic group of ladies who get together once a month to sew and quilt together. We call ourselves the “Cut Ups”. I look forward to our monthly meetings, where it is a time for me to talk to a group of like minded ladies that love to sew and quilt. We share ideas, discuss patterns, books and quilts we are working on, talk about the stores we have visited or stores online that we have bought fabric from. We help each other with quilt math problems and share and promote tools that we have found useful. But we also just enjoy each other’s company.

Here is a photo of some of us at last years retreat.  I know  we look like we had not slept for days! Probably because we didn’t.  We were up all hours sewing away, unsewing and having a great time.

Each year we organize the decorating of a Christmas tree. The decorations are all handmade and usually there is some sort of sewing involved. It usually takes us about 3 months to make the decorations for our tree. Our tree is then raffled off in the Festival of Trees/Tiny Tim Gala Benefit. Proceeds from the raffle are then distributed to local charities.

Last year while we were on retreat the Festival of Trees/Tiny Tim Gala Benefit took place. This meant that none of us could attend, but we were updated by friends and spouses about the event and our tree was a hit with everyone that attended.

Here is our tree from last year after we had just finished decorating it in a local warehouse. The process took hours and we did it over a number of days.  Each individual decoration had to be wired to the tree, so that when it was moved to the gala, the decorations did not fall off.

If you are a regular reader of my blog you know that I moved a couple of months ago.  This has certainly not stopped me keeping in touch with these wonderful ladies.  I have already had a visit from one of them.  My son also started college half an hour from where I used to live so when I collect him for a weekend at home, I go early on a Friday morning and hang out for the day with my quilt friends and then collect him at the end of the day on my way back to our new home.

This year at our quilt retreat I would like to be able surprise everyone by either giving them a goodie bag, or by giving them the chance to win some great prizes for some of the games we play. As a way of saying “Thank You” for just being a great bunch of ladies and for their hard work in giving back to the community and all their work with the Festival of Trees.

I am currently in the process of contacting sponsors to see if they will donate items for goodie bags or prizes for the games that we play.  And what can I say I have had a great response from most of the sponsors I have contacted, the ladies are going to be in for a real treat!

Just look at some of the sponsors who are donating  to our quilt retreat!

If anyone else reading this blog post would also like to donate prizes for our quilt retreat, please leave a comment and I will get back to you straight away.