March was a fun month with lots of travel, interrupted only minimally by work. It started with a weekend retreat in Crystal Lake hosted by Pieceful Gathering Quilt Shop. This was my third year attending the spring retreat and it was fantastic as always. The guest teacher (or “guide”, as she preferred to be called) was Julie Letvin of Me & My Stitches. Julie’s trunk show was very entertaining, her quilts were great, and she was so much fun to talk to! I worked a bit on my Old Town mystery and did my Unity blocks for the week before starting the retreat project. Many of Julie's designs feature log cabin blocks - below is one that I fell in love with and had to add to my "someday" list.
I headed home from Chicagoland to take a three day workshop with Katie Hartner, organized by the St. Louis rug hooking guild. When choosing my pattern for the class I fell in love with so many of the patterns Katie sells, including one that will be (when I finally get to it) the largest rug I have ever hooked. I purchased several patterns and, after seeing the rugs Katie shared, would like to get a couple more. Katie was an outstanding teacher and shared so many really interesting and inspirational techniques. I love how she has mixed lots of wools of similar value and hooked the background of this rug in straight lines:
And then in this one - hard to see in the full rug photo - she has hooked a low contrast scalloped border line to add interest. It looked even better in person (and made me want to hook this rug too😆).
From there I headed off to Branson for Missie Carpenter's spring retreat. While the view from the Branson location didn't hold a candle to the one from the Kimberling City house last fall, it wasn't too bad.
The retreat was wonderful and I managed to get quite a bit of stitching completed. I finished the embroidery on block one of my Hobby Farm quilt and got block two prepped.
I also stitched another block for Lucy Boston. I had gotten away from EPP and was hand piecing the blocks but have really been enjoying EPP since taking a workshop with Tina Craig in Houston last fall. I think I want to switch back to doing them by EPP from here on out. I will need to figure out how to merge the two.
I also worked on my Indigo Revival blocks but didn't take a picture of those. We had a great group of ladies to stitch and chat with, and they brought along some fabulous quilts for show & tell. Here are a couple that I would love to add to my list. I understand that Moda will be reprinting the fabrics in the Raven quilt later this year and there will be kits available so I am likely to be sucked in on that one. It is a gorgeous quilt!
I am continuing to keep up with the Unity QAL for the most part - I have only missed the one week when I was in Branson, and have prepped the first Serenity block (two year Wool Box project) and the second month of Indigo Revival. I have also made a tiny bit more progress on Old Town. I need a monthly retreat to help keep up! My next adventure is a quick trip to AQS Quilt Week in Paducah in April. Let's hope I can resist too much temptation there - I've had way too much 'inspiration' already this year!
