I could write , as usual, about our Carrum Downs meeting, however, as I wasn’t there, and many of the usual crowd either weren’t there or only called in briefly, I felt it only right, that, for the month of May, my attention was called to the annual Scquilters’ retreat – held in the lovely town of Bathurst, NSW.
First of all, Christine Colley has put together some great Smileboxes of the 2010 retreat and put them up on the blog. Do yourself a favour and go check them out. “Leave a comment so we know you've been.”
http://2010retreat.blogspot.com/
Please do have a look and get an overall picture of the wonderful retreat from go to whoa.
Here I have just a few extra pics, as well as a little bit of info, to help those unfortunate souls who couldn’t make it there, or those even more unfortunate souls, who did attend, but for whom the whole extended weekend is a bit of a blur.
Just so where we knew where to go!!
You will have seen the individual pictures of the quilts made out of re-cycled flannelette shirts. But the impact of them all hanging together in the auditorium had to be seen to be believed – the following are a couple of shots of multiple quilts hanging – just so you can see how spectacular they looked all together. And thanks so much to Del for the wonderful idea for this challenge.
and the spectacular, winning quilt, made by Heather Hanneman, for which she won this wonderful antique wedding ring quilt……
A beautiful and well deserved prize!
Then, there was the mystery challenge – we received a small yellow “gumby” figure in our retreat show bags – the instructions were to dress it how we liked…..
As you can see, every entry was spectacular – from Borat to Rapunzel! And of course I couldn’t resist including Anne Bennett's entry of my good self, dressed, appropriately in post it notes ( thanks Lissa!) and tiara.
The much deserved winner of this challenge was Meg Edwards for the brilliant job she did in creating McCafferty – front middle photo – beside the well endowed, but brainless Borat.
Here are the blocks for the “Country block” challenge:
And here is the winner….
from clever Kay Dungavell – beautiful isn’t it?
The other challenge – of which you will have seen all the photos on the Bathurst blog – was, of course, the “Quilting Swaggie” challenge. And here is the presentation of the antique singer featherweight to the winner – unbelievably – me!!! I apologise for not making a speech, but I was really too overwhelmed to say anything coherent. I do, however, owe much thanks to my 94 year old great-aunt, who provided me with the family heirlooms and also to my friend Carla, for lending me her very own Wagga for my swag – or Matilda as they were known.
Here is a close up of the featherweight, in all its glory!
And, just in case you missed it, here is my “Jumbuck in the tucker bag” – looking very pleased with itself.
If I can beg your indulgence a little more, here is my lovely mortal, Eleanor, in front of her flannie quilt
Above are some crowd shots, followed by the handover to the Kiama girls for the 2011 retreat – to be held from the 25-27th of March – be there or be square!
And just when you thought it was all over…..
The baby tossing competition – not sure who won, but it was a close run thing – for the babies.
The winners of the drinking competition – who asked that their names not be revealed!
Some photos of the famous track - over the weekend some of the track landmarks were re-named – you will hear about this at the famous race in October, but, just in case you don’t watch it:- Conrod straight is now known as Colley Straight, Pitt straight became Powell Straight, Forrest Elbow (where Dick Johnson came to grief) is now known as Donna’s Elbow ( for similar reasons), Mountain straight is now Calder Straight (isn’t that right Karen?) and Hell corner- well what else could it be???
Finally, some photos from our shop hop and the lovely park where we had our afternoon tea.
Thanks to everyone involved for making this such a marvellous, well run retreat – see you at Kiama next year!
Your very roving reporter,
Helen Evans,
now back in Devon Meadows, Vic.
