Sew Me St. Louis 2015

This past weekend, I happily got to join about 45 other members of the St. Louis MQG at our second annual retreat, Sew Me St. Louis, and it couldn't have come at a better time because I have so many projects going right now, several with deadlines.

The few nights before, I worked on getting all of my projects packed and ready to go. The problem with sewing retreats is that I usually pack way too many projects, so when I get there, I'm overwhelmed with choices and end up wasting too much time getting started. This time, I had three things on the agenda. I started by finishing up my Brass Ring quilt (more on that later this week). It was basted, and I'd made the binding, so I got to work on some simple quilting, bound it, and was done.

Then, I moved on to what turned out to be the big project of the weekend. I started on a quilt composed of way too many of these tiny triangles. I'd cut out the first batch ahead of time, but then they need to be pieced, pressed, and trimmed.

And then came the indecision, as I started trying out layouts but wasn't pleased with anything I tried. It turned out that I really couldn't make my original idea work, and I needed more triangles. Cue sad face. So, it was back to cutting, piecing, pressing, and trimming.

Finally, I got closer to something I thought might work (not quite this, but close).

After piecing all of the rows together, I decided to save the final pressing for when I got back home and instead moved on to project #3, which is a play on a snowflake/star quilt. I'm not working from patterns for any of these quilts, so it took a while to get all the math worked out, but I managed to get the first block mostly done before it was time to go.

It was a huge help to get so much done over the weekend, and I'm starting to feel better about those looming deadlines. And, of course, I had a wonderful time chatting and laughing with my guild buddies. It's such a wonderful group of ladies (and one gent)! And to top it all off, I won the jackpot of door prizes -- this big box of Aurifil thread in colors inspired by Vanessa Christensen's new line. So pretty! I love weekends like that.