Rainbow Retreat – Colour Inspiration Tuesday and Linkup

My First Quilt Retreat!

Last weekend I went on my very first quilt retreat.  About 3.5 hours out of Adelaide, in Bordertown, not far from where I grew up. I have to say,  I had the best time. I definitely could get used to sewing all hours in fun company while someone else manages the housework and cooking! 🙂

The retreat was called a Pick-A-Case Mystery Retreat, and was run by the lovely Judy of News by Jude. Everyone on the retreat received a different quilt to sew, mostly pre-cut. What a lot of work Judy puts into this! The fabrics in the colour board above were supplied for my mystery quilt, along with a white-on-white print. Do you want to know what I made?

Sure. But first, allow me to share with you some of the experience……

Joy of Days Filled with Joy suggested I should come with her on this retreat…… to give us our first chance to meet in person! 🙂 One thing about blogging is that you “meet” lots of likeminded people. But many whom you’d dearly like to meet in person are inaccessible –  often being on the other side of the world. Joy and I  bonded last October over the Write 31 Days Blog Challenge. She being a quilt-obsessed Australian blogger in Saudi Arabia (at the time), and me being a quilt-obsessed Australian blogger in Vanuatu (at the time). 

Joy was at one of Judy’s Pick-A-Case Mystery Retreats last year on a visit home, and was planning on doing it again. – did I want to come? Hmmm let’s put that another way….. Did I want to sew all weekend instead of sitting through hubby’s German language class’ Christmas play that had been rescheduled from last December? Yes. Oh, yes I did! Ich liebe dich, Paul 🙂 but not that much!

Welcome to Judy’s place!

We arrived in Bordertown on Friday afternoon and the quilts to be sewn were allocated by lottery. 

We threw dice to determine who got to pick first. Picking was an uninformed affair of choosing a quilt purely on the face value of its name. Which may, or may not, reflect the quilt pattern or colours. Ha! Judy’s pre-cut quilts are all packed up in paper bags and hidden in little cases. Very cute and very secret! Once everyone had a  quilt name, the patterns were revealed and opportunities provided to switch projects for anyone who felt that they would rather sew something else.

I ended up with a case called “Floral Menagerie”. To start with, I had a quilt called “Folk Festival” but it was quite simple and I decided to trade it in for something more challenging……. I did have some quiet misgivings about accepting the next project with all these pinwheels though……!!

But what’s a girl to do when it’s in her colours?! These are like a bag of gumdrops!

I didn’t get it finished, but I gave it a good shot!

On the first evening I sewed all the large half-square triangles. I was weary from the drive and decided that was enough of a good start.

Saturday saw mass-production of the smaller half-square triangles to make the pinwheels. For this, I was kept on the straight and narrow by Pat, Judy’s right hand woman! I was being too lazy to sew a scant 1/4″ and I thought I would just make my quilt a little smaller than the pattern. Nope!! Not allowed! No one was letting me get away with that sort of “arty quilter” nonsense! Hahahahaha. 

So, I got my own back by churning out some pretty perfect pinwheels. Just quietly……. I surprised myself actually, they don’t normally fall together like that. There must be something in that dry iron thing……. shhhhh don’t tell Judy I admitted to that, the serial steam pressing offender that I am.

There are a LOT of HSTs in this thing. I had significant help (read “hours”) from Judy to trim them and I still had to head home with less than half of my blocks finished. Lots of the participants finished their entire quilt tops. 

Here’s Joy’s flimsy up close. 

And here’s everyone with their work after lunch on Sunday. I wasn’t the only one without a flimsy all done. What a fantastic group of ladies they were. 🙂

This was such a great weekend. If you live within a day’s drive of Bordertown and want a quilting weekend away, I recommend you give Judy a call! Judy is the one on the far right at the back. (Standing next to her is yet another quilt blogger, Susan of Granny Smith Quilting).

I was so fortunate to be able to spend these days getting to know Joy better and in person. I hope there will be more joint mischief in the future.

There are a few other things I’d like to share about my weekend, but I’ll save them for another day, because it’s late and  I think…….

It’s time to look at last week’s quilt colour party features

The first project that caught my eye this week was Quilting Gail’s account of her sister Lynn’s first quilting adventures. We had a pair of quilting sisters on our retreat last weekend too, and it provided a very fun dynamic. One of the things I liked most in Gail’s post was Lynn’s determination to quilt her own quilt.

And I  have to mention Andrée at Quilting and Learning – What a Combo again this week, for linking up her clever thread sketching project. Because I want to try it! She is using a favourite fabric as the pattern for her thread sketching, which then becomes the back of the piece. Go take a look!

I hope you will visit today’s great reads. And my sincerest thanks to everyone who linked up last week. If you were featured you can find a badge of honour here.

Now it’s your turn to share. Link up to this week’s Chameleon’s Colour party!

What are you working on, or have recently finished in your sewing room? Link up a blog post, a Flicker pic, an IG post or simply a photo from your computer.  See if you can get the Chameleon to turn quilted with happiness. We’d love to see your quilting colours.

Guidelines (more detail here):

• Link up your latest or recent quilt excitement. All construction stages welcome, from a quilt plan, a fabric pull, quilt blocks, a flimsy, to a finished quilt…. if you have a photo you love, we want to see it.
• You have 100 characters in the link description…. tell us who you are and what wonderful colours you’ve chosen. Inspire us with your colour scheme!
• URLs are not necessary to link up, but if you have one, please use the direct link (not your homepage). A link back is appreciated but not necessary. Remember you can link photos straight from your computer…. non-bloggers 100% welcome!
• Do you use muted/pastel/low volume colours? Fantastic….. the Chameleon wants to see Everything, not just the bright stuff!
• Do it now……. before you forget! 

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P.S. You might also like to check out these things going on around the web.

July is going to be very festive….. I’m in two “Christmas in July” blog hops:

Sew Early 4 Christmas, hosted by Joy at Days Filled with Joy 

And Christmas in July hosted by Carol at Just Let me Quilt.

Finally, here’s a fun project I haven’t found time to join in , but you may wish to check it out. A Sew Along with Roseanne at Home Sewn by Us. No pressure sew along with one of the internet’s friendliest quilt bloggers…. what more could you want?!

http://homesewnbyus.com/second-sew-along-begins-today/

Enjoy 🙂

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Would you like to keep in touch with Clever Chameleon and the fun quilty ideas I design as well as find all over the internet? You can follow directly for email updates, or through Bloglovin’, Pinterest or FB. All your follow options can be found here. And don’t forget to link up all your current quilting projects on Tuesdays at our Colour Inspiration Linky parties!

The Chameleon turns rainbow with pleasure when he hears from you. I am more reserved, so I will respond in gratitude by email instead. Now that it’s your turn…. Scroll right to the end, leave me a comment and tell me, what do you think? Thanks for connecting!