Sew Many Pretty Quilts

I'm still on a creative high after this weekend. This was our quilters and scrapbookers' retreat at the Charlie Elliott Wildlife Center. It is always a wonderful experience. This year we had a great crowd. I think the total came to 30 and it was pretty evenly split with quilters on one side of the big conference/work room and scrapbookers on the other side. Every once in a while someone from one side of the room would need to stand up and take a stretch break from what they were working on and wander over to see what's going on on the other side of the room. We are each in awe of the artistry and creativty of the others. But with all the mutual admiration, I believe we only had one "cross over" this weekend...that is one quilter who decided she now wants to be a scrapbooker, too. I believe she's going to Hobby Lobby today to start shopping for her scrapbook and some accessories. My friend, Mellie, has a son, Sam, who is a junior in high school and is an awesome football player. He has been scouted and talked about in college football circles for a couple of years already. He was delighted to be offered a scholarship to MSU. That's where Mellie and her husband, Lin, went to school and where they met. Their older son, Ben, will graduate from MSU this spring and Sam will graduate from high school next December...a semester early...so he can be at MSU in time to start training with the football team in the spring. All this to say that Mellie has a lot of newpaper articles and pictures and items she has printed off the computer at scout.com about Sam and his football abilities. I have told her she needs to put them in a scrapbook. She realized she needs to keep them for him somehow, but she has seen the adorable scrapbooks Jodi has of the kids and although she thinks they are wonderful, she couldn't picture doing that sort of thing for her son. Well, as luck would have it, there was woman at the retreat who was working on a FOOTBALL SCRAPBOOK for her son! It was awesome and Mellie got sucked right in. She fell in love with the layouts, the specialty papers, the stickers and the book itself (with a 3-D football on the front). Here is a picture of her deep in conference with her new "mentor".

In other "retreat news", there were a lot of beautiful quilt tops completed by our group. I was so grateful to get away for as much time as I could. Jerry and Jessica were wonderful to stay with mom and take very good care of her for the better part of 3 days so that I could attend. I came home each night instead of staying in the rooms there, but I did get in a lot of quilting time and it felt so good to get a chance to do that and to be doing it among my friends. I just worked on a project for a while and then switched to another. So, even though I did work, I don't have a whole lot to show for it. I made some more fish bowls for Emery's fish quilt and started making blocks for Savannah's pink and purple pinwheels quilt. The only quilt top I actually finished is this brown/tan/blue half square triangle quilt. It is a reproduction of an antique quilt that I saw in a magazine a while back and I just liked it. It has no deadline so, of course, it's the one that got finished!

As soon as I get time...either later today or tomorrow some time...I will try to upload the rest of the pictures I have from the reatreat so that you can look at some of the other projects that got finished.