Sew Much Fun at Retreat

STLMQG held our annual retreat this past weekend; the event is called Sew Me St Louis. We had 60 attendees; more snacks than we could possibly eat; a nice space with great lighting and lots of windows; and several workshops for those who signed up.

It was crowded, with two people per table, but I think we all had a great time. Even with all the power cords and irons, we only blew one fuse all weekend!

I spent a lot of time socializing and visiting. It was fun to see what everyone was working on. Most of the other people spent a lot of time socializing as well as working, too.

Because of the presidential debate in St. Louis last night, all the hotels in St. Louis were full. Ours was full of security people: Homeland Security, Secret Service, FBI. A cluster of them were having their coffee outside our sewing room windows yesterday morning. Those guys looked straight out of central casting: very fit, sunglasses, pistols, radios, uniforms with various insignia.... There was a bit of commotion as a lot of us clustered by the windows to check out the hottie in the crisp white shirt. Oh, my...  Some of the bolder girls went out to ask for photos, but no photos were allowed.

The other highlight of Sew Me STL was the scrap exchange. Participants brought a baggie of modern scraps, dumped it into the pile, and with organized chaos, pulled any scraps they wanted to refill their baggie.

I took along plenty of projects to keep me busy, and I got a lot done. In fact, I'm really pleased with how much I got done. Because it was so crowded in our sewing room, I didn't spread out my projects in progress to take photos of them. I'll get photos and post them later.

• First I got blocks sewn together for my Bento Box project; that took most of the day Saturday. 
• Then Saturday evening and Sunday morning I got my Crayon Challenge blocks made. It's just a table runner but I got the top together and I'll be able to get it finished in time for the November meeting. More about it in another post. 
• Then yesterday I got the rows sewn together for my Roman Road top. I also got the parts made for the first border, assembled the border strips, and attached the top and bottom borders. You can see how the borders extend the X shape with the black hour-glasses. Here it is on my design wall this morning. It needs a good pressing before I can add the side borders. 

All in all it was a fun and productive weekend, and now I need to unpack my projects, regroup and see what my next steps are. 

Linking up with Patchwork Times, Em's Scrapbag, Sew Fresh Quilts