Believe Retreat Project

In 2008, my sister, Patsi, and I went to the Believe In Yourself Retreat in Blowing Rock, North Carolina, given by Kristin Steiner and Susan Edmonson! It was 4 days and we had a GREAT time, mostly just being together and working on this project above. However, we neither completed ours.  As often happens, you get home, put it on the shelf and years, yes years later, you realize it's never been touched. I decided it was still not too late and was worth doing and enjoying the memories of it.

Here we are - ready for the evening!

We all received these goodies to begin our mixed media project. And yes, the cookies were delicious!!!

 Our teachers, Susan and

Kristin.

Here is Patsi working on her project. As you can see from our table, there were lots of embellishments we used! Now the rest of my project below!

 As you open the screen doors, here is what's inside! A little quilted booklet you might say. There's a little bird nest at the very top made of scrap threads.

And the back here.

 These pages are fabric/paper/embellishments all combined.

Here is the flip side.

 Now the close ups and details! The little booklet was made of corrugated cardboard that was the packing for some kind of tuna. Susan Edmonson found those.

 Fun with paint and writings, painted laces, scrapbook paper, gesso, canvas, etc.

 A little more sewing here and embellishing.

We took some things that were special to us to put in our embellished treasure chest.

We made a little side trip over to the 'Blowing Rock' and the legend. Great memories and what a fun time we had and now a finished birdhouse, too!

More Charity Quilts - Cathedral Pattern

 First, let's just get this out of the way - this fabric that is. I figure after 20 years of aging it and using lots of pieces off of it, I must not be going to sew this.

 I recently packed up three shopping bags full of fabrics, a little cross stitch, etc, and let someone else be in charge of sewing it. Actually I had one long arm customer who was making many charity quilts take one shopping bag full.

 Some of these ended up in the quilts below but the rest went to Goodwill. No more guilt for me on not sewing these fabrics!!! It truly felt so good to share these with someone else that would use them.

 The Cathedral by Villa Rosa Designs is the pattern here. I've shown them before, little 4 x 6 postcards with simple cute patterns.

 I added some fun 'newer' fabrics to make these older ones pop, bought a beautiful sunflower batik almost half price for the backs and had two quilts ready. Here is my machine binding that I'm so thrilled about - thanks to Nancy at Tattered Garden Quilting.

 These quilts are very similar but different quilting designs and bindings.

 Now to find them a home!

 These fabrics were leftover from a little quilt I made last year. Just enough to make this baby quilt!

Another all machine binding!!

And, just as a word of caution! Yesterday as my husband and I were eating lunch, we heard a really loud crash. So loud we even looked outside. When we went to the other end of the house this is what we found in the guest room bath!! The glued mirror had fallen off of the wall and shattered into a million pieces. A mess to clean up and wash quilts and things that were laying close by but mostly we are just so THANKFUL no one was in the room. This is where the crib for the babies is and could have been so tragic. So, now all our mirrors have clips at the top to hold them in case the glue lets go. I have now heard of several instances like this, even our next door neighbor, but many times a towel bar or adjacent wall caught the mirror before it crashed. Don't let it happen to you!