The retreat was wonderful, as expected! I did take The Misery Quilt with me to work on, and really made great progress on the machine quilting. It was also good to have other quilters around for input and opinions on some of the decisions that needed to be made about thread colors and quilting patterns while getting started.

And the lessons learned? Never forget extra lighting, extra pillows (to raise the chair height, or keep the butt comfy after hours of sitting on it!), or eye drops. You’d think I’d never been on a retreat before, considering the things I forgot to bring. However, the most important lesson was this: never get so stuck in your box that you don’t try doing things differently once in a while.

The tables at the retreat were much higher than my table at home, which is adjustable and I had it set at about 65 cm off the floor. I bought this table specifically for machine quilting, because I’ve always thought (and been told by all those people who study ergonomics and repetitive stress injuries) that to minimize pain while machine quilting, you should be sitting straight up, with your arms down at your sides and elbows bent at 90 degrees.

What all that means is that my table has to be pretty low, and then my view is usually obstructed by the machine itself. All kinds of maneuvering is required to see what I’m doing, and I usually end up with pain in my neck and back anyway, since I hunch down in the chair to see the needle.

So, off I go to retreat, and the tables are about 74 cm from the floor, and I can see the needle just fine, and I’m not hunching down so much in my chair. And even after nearly five straight days of machine quilting, three at retreat and two after I got home, I don’t have pain in my neck and back. Go figure. Read the rest of this entry »

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After a couple of extremely nonconstructive days Thursday and Friday dealing with plans for the Guild Quilt Show that I’ve volunteered to organize for next April (more on that big fun at a later date, when I can be a bit more positive about it all), I spent today tracing quilting designs on the outer border of The Misery Quilt. I think I put in about ten or eleven hours on it, and could probably do the same tomorrow, if my back will let me, before it would be ready for basting.

I can really use the life break that is a Quilt Retreat

I’m beginning to see the light at the end of that tunnel, but I know that if I break to work on something else, I’ll lose that focus. If I lose the focus, I may not make that Christmas completion deadline like I’d like to. So, despite the fact that this is a show quilt and I need to be able to concentrate fully on the machine quilting, I’m considering taking it to the Quilt Retreat next weekend to work on it there. The four solid days of quilting would be a great way to get a lot of it done, but I’m not sure I can do my best machine quilting in a room full of 25-30 other quilters and machines. Hopefully, I can be in sync with my Bernina like I was at the last retreat, but no guarantees. Hmmm. Have to think on that some more.

If I don’t take the show quilt to the Retreat, then I have to spend some time between now and Thursday morning whipping something else into shape to take with me to work on. Not that I don’t have enough projects in progress around to just pick one, but it’s a detour that I’m not sure I want to take at the moment. Read the rest of this entry »

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High on the (very) short list of things to love about living here: spending the weekend quilting (and eating and sleeping) in an 850-year-old monastery. The Kloster Schöntal, to be exact. The condensed version: good food, good company, good quilting, happy weekend.

The uncut version: Kloster Schöntal is about one hour from my house, the last 20 minutes or so through little towns and scenic curvy roads. The Black Forest Quilt Guild has held it’s spring Quilt Retreat there every year for the last three, I think, and it’s just wonderful. The monastery has been modernized of course, but not to the point of losing it’s essence. We had a giant well lit room for quilting, and single or double rooms for sleeping. They feed us five times a day (yes, FIVE!): breakfast, coffee and tea break with pretzels and savory pastries, lunch, coffee or tea break with sweet cakes, and dinner, and drinks are available anytime. There’s plenty of room for everyone to spread out everywhere, for relaxing, quilting, talking, quilt basting, Irish dancing (really!), whatever. Read the rest of this entry »

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