Quilting retreat

I went to a quilting retreat this weekend with one of  my daughters. 

I went solo last year and stayed the weekend. I also went to a retreat by myself in January and stayed the weekend. If I am by myself I stay. 

This year, with daughter to drive, we came home each night and ended a day early. She did all the driving. 

So, she took Friday off and we arrived just as the weekend started at 10am Friday. 

About 5pm Friday, I hit my limit and was very tired. We headed for home. We arrived home 1 hour and 15 minutes later. We then had our whole evenings, as if it were a slightly late work night. 

We arrived at 9am Saturday, just as most people were getting going. We were there in time for the 9:30am group photo. 

We shopped briefly at three places Saturday morning. If I had been by myself, the shopping would have been much quicker, but that was okay. 

We took all our own food, so we were actually at the event (in the room) much more than most other people who both shopped and ate at restaurants. 

I got very tired, again about 5pm Saturday, we packed up and headed for home. 

My husband packed both dogs in daughter’s car, on our driveway, and headed to her house. Daughter and I met him at her house, she unloaded her stuff, husband got in my car with me and we headed home. He then unpacked my stuff. 

We did not go back Sunday, people start packing and leaving for home about noon, the event is cleaned up and over by 3pm. I find Sundays at a retreat awkward. 

This worked well for us, we plan to do it this way again next spring. 

For the January 2027 retreat, I am finding a buddy or two to go with me. I am going a day early so all my driving and unloading is Thursday. I am taking my own food. And I plan to come home early Sunday while I feel good to drive. 

Scrap jail mentality

 I have been quilting for decades. 

I have never kept my fabric scraps. I have a bag going at all times. My larger/useable trimmings go in the bag. When the bag is full, I give it away. 

When I start a project, my good with color quilting friend often calls dibs on specific fabric. So she not only gets the scraps, but she gets the larger leftovers too.

Other quilters have commented on this habit of mine, over the years, because it is unusual, most quilters have lots of scraps. In fact people write extensively over how they store and save their scraps. Again, not me, I rehome all scraps.

A unique recent comment caught my attention. 

I was at a sewing bee, and we were talking about my not keeping fabric scraps, and one of the quilters said she just recently realized she is a slave to her scraps. 

When most people say that they are talking about sorting and storing their scraps, that’s a big topic.

But that is not what she meant. She was talking about being creatively restricted by her scraps. Most projects she sews are all about using up the scraps. She is not really designing or planning her quilts, she is just using up what is on hand. 

Do I make scrap quilts? Yes, I love them. But mine are not made with literal scraps. I plan and collect fabric to have a scrappy look, without using actual scraps. 

Slightly stinky fabric

Anyone collecting vintage fabric might be interested in my recent experiment. 

I have asthma, so I have always washed all my fabric to remove all the chemicals and to allow it to shrink before I cut it. I was also sewing/quilting in the 60’s-90’s when dyes were not always color safe, a topic for another day, which reinforced my pre-washing habit.

Here’s my experiment with slightly musty fabric:

I washed with liquid Tide and white vinegar, smell still there.

I rewashed with liquid Tide and baking soda, smell still there.

I rewashed with liquid Tide and powdered Oxiclean, smell totally removed. 

I used the combination of liquid Tide and powdered Oxiclean, dissolved in very hot water, for the rest of my vintage fabric loads, it worked like a charm - on the first try - every time.

Note - I dissolve the powdered Oxiclean in very hot water (in an old gallon milk jug that I can shake), before adding it to the warm water in the washing machine, then I add the fabric. 

I did not put any fabric in the dryer until I was sure every trace of the smell was gone. The dryer would have heat set the smell.

Washing older fabric in Oxiclean is now my standard procedure. Fabric from the free table at the guild, fabric from a resale shop, fabric from an estate sale, fabric gifted to me, all gets washed in Oxiclean before it gets added to my own fabric.

Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks

Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks (2001) was a book group assignment from last week. I finished listening to it about a mile from our meeting place, close one. 

I thought this book was excellent. I really enjoyed the writing style. 

I put holds on all her novels for my mother who is reading again.

I have added a bio, at the end of this post, from Geraldine Brooks’ website. 

    

I maintain accounts on GoodReads and StoryGraph, thanks to youngest getting me organized. 

StoryGraph - 

In each book post, I utilize https://www.bookseriesinorder.com/

This is a wonderful website that helps clarify the publication order of books and verifies book series. I use this website because there are no spoilers. But if I need a description, I can click over using the links, easily. There are also author bios.

“Australian-born Geraldine Brooks is an author and journalist who grew up in the Western suburbs of Sydney, attending Bethlehem College Ashfield and the University of Sydney. She worked as a reporter for The Sydney Morning Herald for three years as a feature writer with a special interest in environmental issues.

“In 1982 she won the Greg Shackleton Australian News Correspondents scholarship to the journalism master’s program at Columbia University in New York City. Later she worked forThe Wall Street Journal, where she covered crises in the the Middle East, Africa, and the Balkans. In 1990, with her husband Tony Horwitz, she won the Overseas Press Club Award for best coverage of the Gulf War. The following year they received a citation for excellence for their series, “War and Peace.”  In 2006 she was a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies at Harvard University. She returned to Harvard as a Visiting Lecturer in 2021.

“She was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in fiction in 2006 for her novel March. Her novels People of the Book, Caleb’s Crossing, The Secret Chord and Horse all were New York Times Bestsellers. Her first novel, Year of Wonders is an an international bestseller, translated into more than 25 languages and currently optioned for a limited series by Olivia Coleman’s production company. She is also the author of the nonfiction works Nine Parts of Desire, Foreign Correspondence and The Idea of Home. Her latest book, Memorial Days, was published January 24 in Australia, and February 4 in the United States.

“Brooks married fellow journalist and author Tony Horwitz in Tourette-sur-Loup France in 1984 and were together until his sudden death in 2019.  They have two sons, Nathaniel and Bizu, She now lives with a dog named Bear and a mare named Valentine by an old mill pond on Martha’s Vineyard and spends as much time as she can in Australia.  In 2016, she was named an Officer in the Order of Australia.“