Quilt Retreat on Lake Michigan

Off I went last week on my Bee's annual quilt retreat. This year we rented one a these cute cottages on Lake Michigan. A little shorted than usual (usually 10 days) but still 5 days of wonderful friendship, laughing, great food and quilting.

The color was inspirational.

                        
                          A short walk to the beach for more inspiration.

  
    By the end of the week a cold north wind blew in. The waves were beautiful.

The following are a few of the projects we worked on.  I made this little Thanksgiving wall hanging. The photo is a reproduction antique postcard printed on cloth.

                      I added borders and a little machine quilting to it.

Deb C. made a wall hanging with her post card pieces. She now has it finished.

And she pieced this one too. Now finished.

My big project I worked on was putting together my Sun/moon quilt. I'm going to cut and piece the left over dark blue wool strips together and sew it on for the borders.

I needed one more block for the quilt so this "autumn" wool became...

a harvest moon.

I made a couple winter flannel pillow cases.

                       Kay pieced a graduation quilt for her grandson.

His favorite sports and memories of Grand Haven as the accent blocks.

Deb C.  pieced this wonderful vintage truck lap quilt with cute peppermint pinwheels.

I have to tell you the story behind this quilt Mary pieced.
Mary's good friend loved black and white fabrics/quilts.
A couple of weeks before ours, Mary and her other bee went on a quilt retreat. Her friend also went even as she was fighting cancer in the last days of her life. She made it a couple of the days and then went home to weak to stay and passed away a short time later. The black and whites of hers were gifted to Mary.  

Mary added her own soft green fabric and pieced this memory quilt.

The green doesn't show up to well in this picture.
The name of this pattern is disappearing 9 patch.

At night while watching Hallmark Christmas movies lots of hand stitching was done. Deb C. started a new hexie quilt which will be full size, all hand pieced and hand quilted. Each individual hexie piece is 1/2 inch in size!