(This post first appeared on Jo’s myBearpaw blog)
Last weekend I hosted the third Thread House Winter Retreat alongside my dear friend and partner Karen Lewis.
This is a residential weekend of sewing, fun and friendship held in the middle of beautiful countryside near Bristol, England. You can visit the retreat page on our website here and read about last year’s retreat here, and our first retreat here.
The retreat started as usual on the Friday afternoon with a session of meet and greet which also included a name tag swap and the giving out of our wonderful goody bags! Our sponsors came up trumps this year with all this fabulous booty!
This included fabrics from Moda, Art Gallery, Karen Lewis Textiles and a whole Dream Big panel from Hoffman fabrics! There was thread from Aurifil (and a tote bag) and Mettler, a copy of Love Patchwork and Quilting mag, a Sew Tites magnet, Sew Fine Thread Gloss and an amazing Yo Yo Magnifier from the Daylight Company! Photo courtesy of Kerry Green.
And speaking of Kerry here she is on the right, teaching her Dresden Plate class. We had two guest tutors this year Kerry and Sari Thomas, also known as Sariditty (Sari, rhymes with cherry) who came all the way from the USA to teach with us! This is her FPP geese workshop on the right.
I taught my EPP Mini Sea Urchin workshop on Friday afternoon. Here’s my class looking pretty happy!
We were super lucky this year to secure a sponsorship from Bernina to supply machines for the retreat. Most people bring their own but we always need a few extra for those flying from further away (this year we had folks from USA, Denmark and Germany!).
These beautiful Bernina B 335 machines came straight out of the box and were wonderful to use! And not only that but Bernina also provided a Q24 long arm quilting machine for us to play with!
And the gorgeous Sari knew exactly how to use it and was happy to demo her gorgeous quilting on Friday night.
With much excitement we also swapped our mug rugs on Friday night, and even I took part swapping with the lovely Kerry.
I think you can guess here which one I made and which one I received!
It’s ages since I’ve swapped anything and I completely forgot about ‘extras’! Kerry didn’t though and gave me all those fabby extras (there was chocolate too but that didn’t survive the journey home!). That little button magnet was made by a fellow Retreater Sara, who kindly made these during the retreat for anyone who asked!
The Mug Rugs were all so amazing that we had to get them together for a little exhibition, check out the photo at the top of the page to see them all.
Saturday brought more classes like Karen’s fabric printing classes on the left. At lunch break it was time for the Eternal Maker’s pop-up shop! Anna brings this over every year and it’s extremely popular.
The other lovely surprise we provided this year was a visit by a proper sew-lebrity – the uber talented Nicholas Ball, aka Quilts from the Attic! Nick works for Bernina and was able to give amazing demos and help everyone have a go on the Q24. Thanks so much for coming over Nick!
In the afternoon I taught my Freehand Curves Landscape class and discovered that sticking my class samples to a window gives an impression of stained glass. Somebody called this a ‘Church of Quilts’ on IG!
My hard working students did so well in this class! This technique can be a bit of a brain ache but I think they all enjoyed it in the end and just look at some of the amazing results…
Special congrats to Jo who went a little off piste and created a yacht sailing on the sea with a large sun! Fabulous work Jo!
On Saturday night my favourite bit of the whole weekend takes place – the Lucky Dip! This is like a raffle but EVERYONE gets a prize! Again our wonderful sponsors were so generous and much excitement occurred when a big prize went to a lucky recipient. This year we remembered to get photos of all the big winners…
Clockwise from top left: Robert Kaufman, Daylight Company USA, Oakshott and Aurifil. Thanks you so much to all our super Sponsors!
Next up was Show and Tell (the excitement never ends!) and this year we had so many stunning quilts, including many for Siblings Together, that I’ve put a selection in a mosaic (or we’d be here all day).
What a talented bunch of quilters!
Sunday morning brought more workshops including my Tiny House Streetscape class. This is one of my favourite classes and a nice easy way to end the retreat. This is the result – a whole Tiny house village complete with Coach House and Alms House!!
Meanwhile Karen was teaching her Hawaiian Applique class and I love this photo of everyone with their colourful panels outside one of the buildings. Thanks so much to all our wonderful Retreaters for coming along and making this such a successful weekend!
Karen and I both feel this was the best retreat yet (we do say this every year but it seems to be true!). And Monday saw us launch our new Summer Retreat, which will be held in July in the Yorkshire Dales. A smaller more intimate affair, I was hoping to ‘sell’ you this in this report post, however it sold out within hours of the ticket launch! So sorry about that…
You can read about it here and if you think you might be interested in attending future Thread House Retreats, both Summer and Winter, sign up to our newsletter here.
