After dropping Edna and my bags at the\u00a0Radisson\u00a0<\/a>I ambled over to the\u00a0Baden-Powell House<\/a>\u00a0to meet up with lots of crafty and creative ladies and gentlemen. It was so much fun to see some ‘old’ friends and meet lots of new ones. Soon it was time for my first class, EPP curves. I didn’t get much done as I was having too much fun chatting with Di from\u00a0Quiltova<\/a>\u00a0and Helen from\u00a0runquiltknitwrite<\/a>. However, I have taken all my bits and bobs out today and am hoping to finish this little block tonight.<\/p>\n Friday evening was spent on the terrace chatting and looking at fabulous quilts. Delma from\u00a0Siblings Together<\/a>\u00a0came to pick up the quilts that people had made for the charity. Because I’d been ill before the retreat I hadn’t managed to hand sew the binding onto the back of my quilt. So I sat on the terrace stitching like mad to get it finished. The lovely Jane (Teacupfaery\u00a0<\/a>on flickr) offered to help and I gratefully accepted. It was very much a last minute finish so I didn’t actually get to take a picture of it. If you’d like to see it finished there is a picture\u00a0here<\/a>\u00a0in the Siblings Together group pool.<\/p>\n Saturday morning my first class was Improv with\u00a0Lu Summers<\/a>. I’ve been admiring her improv minis for ages and was incredibly excited about learning some of her techniques. I had so much fun (I think Lu is one of the funniest people on this planet) as I was sitting with some great people. I shared my sewing machine with Rachel from\u00a0House of Pinhero<\/a>\u00a0who is such a nice, beautiful and generous person. I’ve been following her blog for quite a while as she makes the most wonderful clothes. She gave me lots of tips and I’m now really excited to start making my own well-fitting clothes. It’ll probably have to wait until after our move but that’s alright.<\/p>\n I was under a bit of pressure to finish my improv mini as my next class was hand quilting with the lovely\u00a0Mandy<\/a>. Mandy’s hand pieced and quilted quilts are totally drool worthy. The one below is her version of the\u00a0Green Tea and Sweet Beans quilt<\/a>\u00a0by Jen Kingwell of Amiti\u00e9 Textiles and I would have loved to discreetly stuff it into my bag. I brought some batting and backing for my mini so that I could hand quilt it in Mandy’s class. However, they were both too small as my mini ended up rectangular rather than square. I’ve decided to unpick the quilting again and start again with a bigger piece of batting and backing rather than cutting off some of the quilt. Watch this space.<\/p>\n My last class on Sunday morning was making a flexi pouch with\u00a0Tacha Bruecher<\/a>. I loved making the x and + blocks from tiny little pieces but got a bit stressed out by the fact that Edna doesn’t have a quarter inch foot. In the end I didn’t finish my pouch as the top was falling apart because I hadn’t backstitched properly. I might just take the whole thing apart again and fix it with the help of my Bernina. I still had lots of fun chatting (I think there might be a theme here) with the lovely\u00a0Claudia<\/a>,\u00a0Amy<\/a>\u00a0and blogless Helen.<\/p>\n Right, those were my classes and they were all brilliant. I came home totally inspired and am already looking forward to next year. In the next blog post I’ll tell you all about the wonderful gifts I received and goodies I bought. TTFN!<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" First of all, the retreat was great. If you have been dithering about going, stop and book a ticket for next year as soon as possible. It is so much fun. Friday morning I got ready to hop on an earlier train to London as I had been given a last minute ticket to the\u00a0Liberty\u00a0talk… Continue Reading Fat Quarterly Retreat 2013: The Classes<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[80,98,115,147,205,238,262,271,294,308,377,379,389,415,449,456],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sharksdinner.ch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2526"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sharksdinner.ch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sharksdinner.ch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sharksdinner.ch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sharksdinner.ch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2526"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sharksdinner.ch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2526\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sharksdinner.ch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2526"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sharksdinner.ch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2526"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sharksdinner.ch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2526"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Waiting](\"https:\/\/sharksdinner.ch\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/IMG_1295-768x1024.jpg\")
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<\/a><\/p>\n![\"Basting\"](\"https:\/\/sharksdinner.ch\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/IMG_1265-768x1024.jpg\")
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<\/a><\/p>\n![\"Mandy's](\"https:\/\/sharksdinner.ch\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/IMG_1306-768x1024.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"Tiny](\"https:\/\/sharksdinner.ch\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/IMG_1317-768x1024.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"Claudia](\"https:\/\/sharksdinner.ch\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/IMG_1316-768x1024.jpg\")
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