And three weeks later…..

YIKES….it has been three weeks since my last post, so let’s catch up a bit.

The first week in November I spent 3-1/2 days at a wonderful quilting retreat for my guild, the Cotton Patch Quilters.  It is a “bring your own project” retreat and I had a great time working on a new project.   But let’s start at the beginning……

Two months ago, I took a class from Gyleen Fitzgerald about her method for piecing hexagons, taken from this book…..

It was a fun day learning a method for machine piecing hexagons.

But, at that workshop, Gyleen showed another of her books…..

Kathy and I both thought that this looked interesting and decided that we would buy the book and ruler and work on this quilt at the retreat.

So, I loaded up two three-drawer towers of scraps and headed to the retreat and quickly set up my own work station….

Everybody laughed at me for all of the fabrics that I brought, but several people were borrowing from them before the week was over.

I had a great time working thru my scraps and piecing these easy pineapple blocks….

I did make one change after this first block.   Instead of making the final strip that produced the TINY little triangle, I simply made the previous strip wider….MUCH easier!!

At the end of the three days, my piece was at this stage…..

The really fun thing about this retreat was seeing what everyone else was working on.

There was hand quilting…..

…..  scrap piecing………

….paper piecing…..

…..and LOTS and LOTS of strip piecing…..

It was so fun to walk into the cutting/pressing room and see the buzz of activity!!!

And even more fun simply walking up the stairs to the cafeteria three times each day and being served wonderful food!!!

For me, it was a much needed relaxation and then it was time to pack up and head back home again.  Here is a photo of my sad table……

I have been working more on the pineapples during the last two weeks and will show more of that in the next few days.

It’s good to be back to blogging!!!!