Boston Modern Quilt Guild Retreat

The Boston Modern Quilt Guild retreat was held at the Franciscan Guest House in Maine.  Accommodations were rustic.

The sewing room was set up in the large gymnasium.

There were irons, design walls, and cutting tables set up.  In addition, each person had a table with a light and electrical outlets.

I made myself a name tag -- well, kind of a name bag -- with two zippered pockets and lots of personality!

You can see that I actually made two of them.  I forgot to add the neck strap to the first version (right) and so I had to make a new one (left).

I participated in creating the charity quilt (every one makes one block and before you know it, you have a quilt):

As you can see from the photo above, I watched a tutorial video on creating "accordion method" half-square triangles. It is such a fantastic method, so I'm sharing the video with you today (there are three parts to the video, but the meat of the technique is here in part two):

As a side note, I always work along with a video.  It's the only way to do it, in my opinion.  It's so hard to learn a technique simply from watching someone do it.  Difficult to remember all the nuances. I often create with my iPad near me and keep pressing stop and play and rewind until I get it.

Here are my squares before I stitched them together:

And here is the glorious quilt that these simple squares are now a part of:

source

How flipping amazing is that?!  Pardon me for being rude, but I never would have guessed that those ugly little squares could make this kind of magic!  I love it!  To learn more about the pattern used for the quilt (called "Ocean Waves"), you can visit this blog post (it's the one recommended in the instruction sheet posted above).

A very nice touch at the end of the retreat was that everyone got a "prize."  You randomly drew a number from a hat.  There were packages labeled with numbers and so you matched your number to the number on the package.

I can always use another pouch to stuff with craft supplies!  AND, can you see that the "wrapping paper" is actually fabric?  What a nice touch!

I made March's quilt while at the retreat -- from design to piecing to quilting to binding.  But, you'll have to wait until tomorrow to check it out!  Because I am packed up and out of here!  ;)

Thanks for stopping by!