Editorial Note:  The following is a guest post by our very own Vicki. Thanks, Vicki!

Approximately 40 Seattle MQG members met up November 7-9 for a weekend of quilting at beautiful Camp Berachah, located in Auburn, WA. The weather was chilly and drizzly, and we had a wonderful time.

The sewing room at Camp Berachah was well-lit and very roomy; each of us quilters had our own entire table to set up and sew for the weekend. We had a snack table in the sewing room; bedrooms in the same building as the sewing room and meals in a nearby building.

We had some fun scheduled retreat activities: the quilted gift swap was a big hit. We played dirty Santa style (you could steal an already opened gift, or unwrap a new one), which was pretty fun. Some of us also swapped Christmas fabric charm squares and UFOs.

On Saturday night, we had a fun campfire complete with s’mores and the creation/performance of a very funny quilting campfire song. I’m not sure but there might be video of the song online somewhere…. (editorial note: oh, yes there is! Sing along with us...”My bobbin lies over the ocean…”)

We also had a free motion quilting demo by Vicki Christensen. She showed us how to get started with FMQ and then went around and helped out and encouraged those who were practicing their quilting. We have some very talented new free motion quilters in our group!

 

The swag bags for retreat attendees were amazing! Swag bag goodies were procured by the retreat committee, with items for the entire group provided by the following companies:

• Nancy’s Notions
• Pacific Fabrics
• Quilt Sandwich Fabrics
• Aurifil
• Fat Quarterly
• Zipper Island
• Jenny Mullins Mary Kay
• Quality Sewing and Vacuum
• Madeira
• Modern Yardage
• CVS
• The West Seattle Fabric Company
• The Quilting Loft

Another huge THANK YOU to all those who donated to our retreat swag bags!

Over the course of the weekend, our retreaters worked on so many amazing projects. The gorgeous Seattle MQG charity quilt top for QuiltCon was revealed. Deborah C and Martha completed the backing for this quilt while at retreat.

We wrapped up the retreat on Sunday with a show and tell before cleaning up and heading home. Here are a few photos from the show and tell; check out #seamqgretreat on Instagram for more retreat photos and fun.

 

 

 

 

Overall, we had another very successful retreat! We have so many wonderful people in our guild, and retreat is a great opportunity to get to know each other better, to make new friends and grow old friendships. And you get to sew for a whole weekend and not have to worry about anything else from “normal” life. Thanks so much to our retreat organizers, committee members, and everyone who attended, for making this retreat such a wonderful experience! We can’t wait for the next one!