For the second time, I took a weekend and went on a quilting retreat at Asilomar. The retreat is organized by Janet of Hen Scratch Quilting. She does several different ones during the year. The retreat is great because the time is ours to just quilt. We each have our own table to work at and there are ironing stations that we share. The truly motivated start early in the morning and work away until midnight when we have to lock up our sewing room.
Not that I'm not motivated, but I am a girl who likes her sleep. I don't start sewing until after breakfast and am generally in bed by midnight. I also find that a walk now and then is a good thing. Even with my slothful ways I was able to get quite a bit accomplished.
Aside from the room to sew, there are nice rooms to stay in and a great dining hall where they feed us a bit too well.
Here's the dining hall. This front portion of the building was designed by Julia Morgan back when the park was a YWCA camp. We are all to happy to go there three times a day for delicious meals that we don't have to cook or clean up after. It is rather sad how pavlovian we become. No sooner does someone hear the bell signaling that the hall is open then we all start packing up our things and heading over.
Saturday was a beautiful day and by our morning walk the sun was shining and the beach was crowded.
It took a bit of waiting to get a photo without random people in the frame,but worth the wait don't you think? I did get someone's shoes in there though. As beautiful as the weather was it is still a Northern California beach which means cold water. Brr, someone had chilly feet.
Even the surfers were out in full force. You can see that they wear wet suits here to stay a little warmer.
I worked on the French Kiss blocks from the workshop at Quilting in the Garden. After much sewing and even more trimming up of angles, I did manage to finish all 50 (!) blocks. Now they are packed away for later as I have other projects in line first to finish. I did spend some time working on an old Hawaiian appliqué project as well as started on a little Moda kit which makes 6 small Christmas stockings.
I'm quite happy with all that I was able to accomplish over the weekend. The women at the retreat were wonderful so I'm sure I'll be signing up to go again next November.
-- marcella
Thanks for the review, love your blog posts.