Sunshine On My Shoulders Makes Me Happy

Sunshine Quilt Guild held another retreat (our third, we do them every couple of years).. this one was in my neighborhood. BH and I were the organizers. Fifteen people came from Maine, Texas, Nebraska, Oregon, California, and of course, Minnesota. We had a blast!

BH and I wanted to make sure they had fun, so we didn't expect them to put their noses to the grindstone, doing nothing but sewing. We intentionally included some fun outings in our plans. This included a couple of quilt shop visits. They had a blast at this first one where the fabrics are always 50% off.

We visited the biggest candy store in Minnesota. This is some of us outside the store:

We had a nice dinner at BL's house (it was chilly, but the company warmed us from the inside out):

We did manage to get a lot of sewing done, despite having many fun outings. Our final total was 142 tops made (Wed. through Sat.)!

Another outing, on the most perfect weather day one could ask for! This is Minnehaha Falls. We ate lunch outside under the shade of some beautiful, green oak trees under the most gorgeous blue sky with puffy white clouds. Minnesota was showing off that day! Sadly, my phone stopped taking pictures so I had to be content with just memories and no visual proof.

Other activities and outings included teaching them to ice dye, teaching how to make an improv house block, and visiting an original Dairy Queen built in 1947 which happens to be a half block from one of the best quilt shops in Minnesota. We also went to the Mall of America and ate dinner at the Rainforest Café. My sister discovered a great shop there called Lotus Jewelry and Gifts. It carries 100% Minnesota-made art items, thereby supporting local artists. I love that.

And, of course, we put in many hours sewing our tops. The blocks had been made by many volunteers over the last year, and this retreat was for the purpose of assembling the blocks. The quilts turned out great and so cheerful. I think it was our best quilts of the three retreats so far.

We packed up a bunch of the quilt tops to send off to volunteers who will finish them for us. We had the system pretty well honed this year. It worked out great so that we have very few to still dole out to future volunteers.

There is some talk of where the next retreat will be in a couple more years...I'm not spilling the beans just yet.