The workshop was lovely----ten participants, at a member's beautiful home on a lake (thank you, Jo!!!), lunch & hand-piecing. Feed back was wonderful & Pattye was a very good teacher. As soon as lunch was cleaned up, I headed to Chesaning to join up with my 'modern' friends. Detroit Area Modern Quilt Guild (DAMQG) was having it's first retreat!! It was being held at Creative Passions, starting Friday at noon (I was last to arrive at about 2:30pm), ending Sunday at 3pm.
First, the place. Creative Passions specializes in hosting scrap-bookers and quilters. They have TWO buildings, both former churches. We were in the smaller of the two. This one holds about 16. Bedrooms are small and shared, 2-3 beds per room, with a larger 'suite' in the basement (sleeps 5?) that had a bathroom. On the main floor, large open sewing room & kitchen, a couple of the bedrooms, and 2 bathrooms (with showers) to share. The small, shared bedrooms are fine, as all your waking time is spent sewing in the large open room, set up with one long table per person, nice office chair, lamp, cupholder & scrap bag. This space is wonderful, great you can all be together in one big room. There was a cable tv over the top where you could watch something if you wanted, but also MUSIC channels, which we used. We were sharing the space with maybe 6 or 7 scrap bookers. Retreat owner brought in & set up continental breakfast each morning. A few of us walked over to see Creative Passions 2 (also in an old church) on Sunday morning. That holds maybe 25-30 and seemed really nice----bigger, more recently re-modeled, more bathrooms, still dorm style shared bedrooms 3-4 per room. Creative Passions was very nice!
At our sewing station, we each had been given this little gift bag, and they all had a slightly different message, but all included "DAM girl". We had a few products in there with our DAM logo on it. Sew cute!!!
We did a great pin cushion swap! Everyone brought one, then we did the open and maybe 'steal' thing, which can be fun. It happened to work out that poor Marie was stolen from REPEATEDLY. Here are the pincushions we made---very very cute!! (the one I sewed was made with selvages, has blue around the edges with the green ribbon & green button).
Our member Lori, was teaching us how to make the Sew Together Bag. Lori is interested in making a career in quilting & wanted to perfect her teaching skills. She did a great job! This is a fairly complicated bag (but really cute) and the lessons were planned to be broken up over the 3 days, to allow us to work on other sewing projects.
Our Sew together bags!!!!
The weather was DAM cold, but we had a great time! It was so fun to spend time together, as we are all still getting to know each other. Everyone was friendly and this guild seems to be very important to all of them. The energy and enthusiasm are encouraging. This has the makings of being a GREAT guild with all the positive energy that is flowing these days! Thank yous go out to Donna, who organized our retreat & made the pillow cases, Vicky, who organized the swaps & swag bags, and Lori, who put a lot of preparation time into her class & was endlessly patient & good humored with us!
I'll be thinking about this weekend for awhile and can't wait for the next one!!
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