GRMQ's First Retreat....

It took some doing, but the retreat carried on even though several quilters who had enrolled failed to show due to illness and other commitments.  Even our great organizer, Kathy Nelson, became so ill she couldn't make it.  Several of us wanted to get to know her more and learn how she develops her beautiful modern quilts often shown in this blog.

The facility, the Christian Reformed Conference Center in Grand Haven, MI ,was gorgeous, as was Friday's weather.

 About mid-afternoon several of us took a walk to the beach, just a short ways.  The dune grasses are in fall mode as well as all the other flora.

 Later, another walk met up with a cloudy sunset.  The peacefulness was wonderful!

 Nature provides such a great inspiration for quilters, artists and humankind in general.  Dune grass with the red berries and purple whatever.....simple beauty.

 The black squirrels, about 6 of them, were scampering around harvesting nuts on Saturday morning. I haven't seen so many black squirrels since days living on Lake Erie in Ontario.

While we all accomplished a considerable amount of sewing the environment was wonderful!

Now for what we accomplished.....

Roleen's tree skirt will be gorgeous when completed.  This snowflake was almost her undoing though....just count of those pieces, some pieces only an 1"!  It took most of a day to assemble one with three more to do - but very well worth it.

Marcia, shown above in one of my many aprons made, was working on the block for the GRMQ monthly meeting....love her colors.

I need hostess gifts during the holidays so I was making the quick tea towel aprons shown on the hooks.

Quiet Norma cut and sewed her Craftsy.com quilt.  It looked very complicated.  I believe she's making two for her granddaughters who share a room.  Lucky girls!

 Adrienne's layout of a scrappy quilt she was working on is shown above.  Many of our machines faced the outdoors with a relaxing and beautiful view.

Camera shy Roni holds her beach quilt for her daughter.  The backing is a laminated fabric with a lightweight batting sandwiched in-between.  The colors are so cheery.  Since the laminate will be on the backside she wants to carefully tie the quilt together.  

 My longtime buddy and travel partner came on Saturday.  Robin is showing us her 2014 Sampler  from the Attic Window.  Rather than make a plain ordinary quilt, Robin has added prairie points and a banner type border.  It's tablecloth to use with her Fiestaware dinnerware.  The '30s fabric is perfect for the dishes.

 Robin also finished a Row by Row to use as a table runner.  Again, the snowman is the give away, it's from the Attic Window.  Kudos to Robin for finishing two projects in one day!

Many of us can spend considerable dollars buying rolling totes for our machines.  I was really taken with the Office Depot folding crate Robin uses to carry not only her machine but most of her tools, too.

Adrienne had another scrappy project started but was dissatisfied with it, thus no pictures.  :(.

A hearty thank you to Kathy Nelson for organizing this event for the last several months. Well, quilters, time to plan your calendars for the next retreat in April, 2016 at Lake Ann.