A busy retreat with Sue Nickels

We just completed a busy weekend retreat with Sue Nickels. Sue is an excellent instructor. She taught machine applique and the students were allowed to choose either her Ashley's Flower Basket Pattern or her Jessica's Flower Basket Pattern. As you can see in the picture the students made great progress. They also reported learning some new tricks. I did not take the class but hope to put the new skills to use some day soon. I am also looking forward to making the flower basket blocks in the near future.

Karen's Thunder Bay Curves and Ribbons Quilt

Karen from Delaware, Ontario was here at Thunder Bay Resort to participate in our Quilter's Murder Mystery Retreat. She brought along her Thunder Bay Curves and Ribbons Mystery Quilt that she made during Mark Lipinski's retreat in August. The quilt turned out just beautiful. The colors were great and so was the machine quilting. I am anxious to see more of the quilts. Our Murder Mystery Retreat was lots of fun. Karen, one of our staff members was murdered by a jealous former friend of Karen's husband Fred. The mystery quilts were also very beautiful. I will post pictures of Sherrie's quilts in a future post. Right now I am busy getting ready for this weekends retreat with Sue Nickels.

Snow Pellets

Yes, we had snow pellets here in Hillman on Sunday morning, October 11, 2009. As we got out of our car at Church we saw the little pellets land on the hood of my red car. They didn't look like flakes, they looked more like pellets. They didn't last very long. After Church, Steve and I went leaf peeping. We went for a fun and beautiful ride and actually ended up on the other side of the state. We dove down some beautiful roads with lots of pretty colors. We drove along Lake Michigan and saw some absolutely beautiful homes. Quite a few of them had "for sale" signs so we had fun dreaming. Although it was a cloudy day and the colors aren't at their peak yet we still had a good time.

Fall has arrived at Thunder Bay Resort

Fall has certainly arrived here at Thunder Bay Resort. I took this picture this afternoon on the Elk Ranch. The leaves are turning all kinds of beautiful colors right now. I hope that we can go for a ride this weekend to see some more of God's handiwork. With the temperatures down in the 50's it sure does make me think about quilting (who am I kidding, I think about it all of the time). Yesterday after work I started making one of the Grommet bags. I hear they, along with so many other bags, are all the rage right now. I didn't quite get mine finished but I will get back to it soon. I have been busy getting things ready for our Quilter's Murder Mystery Retreat next weekend. We still have a couple of openings if you are interested. We also have some openings for our Sue Nickels retreat on Oct. 22 - 25. We also have some openings for day trippers if you live close and would like to take a two day class with Sue. Just call the resort at 1-800-729-9375 for additional information.

A New Found Love

Like most quilters I had a lot of craft projects going BQ (before quilting). I enjoyed crocheting, plastic canvas needlepoint and macrame. I never did get the hang of knitting. Once I fell off the deep end for quilting I quit all of the other projects, except for a plastic canvas Christmas ornament that my family loves. As I posted earlier I started doing a little crocheting after my surgery until my eye sight was healed. I crocheted a baby afghan. My Mom brought over a bag of odds and ends of yarn that she had been given. I made two doll afghans with those and then decided to make a full size afghan using the left overs. I have the bag almost emptied so my Mom brought over a box full of yarn. This picture shows the afghan I have been working on. I am not sure about the dark stripe but I am not going to tear it out either. I may get another in there real soon to perhaps balance the afghan out. It looks like I may have enough yarn to make a second one. My husband asked the other day if he has lost his quilter. I wonder if he was thinking about all of the totes of fabric, patterns, tools and gadgets in my room. I had started the large afghan because I was enjoying the process and all it took was the yarn and a crochet hook. I enjoy having a travel project and this way I didn't have to worry about fabric, thread, needles, pins, scissors, etc. Well, I finished hand piecing a quilt last week. During the weekend the weather turned cold and damp so I pulled out a quilt that I started hand quilting in January. I haven't worked on it since then. Hand quilting is truly my real "love" in my quilting world. I totally enjoy it. My husband has not lost his quilter, I just am shall we say branching out a little bit.