Autumn Retreat 2019

For just a few days, we left behind all of our dirty dishes, loving families, unpaid bills, worries, pets, and any mention of the current political scene. We escaped to gorgeous Lancaster County for parts of four days and all of three nights to hold our semi-annual quilting retreat. There were six of our regular seven present this time. As always, we shared the meal prep and clean-up and, as always, we made trips to the fabric store just a hop, a skip, and a jump away.

I had bought a pattern called Kinship and had also picked up a pack of curated solids that seemed to go well with my small collection of aboriginal prints and thought this would be my main project.

Turns out it was my ONLY project! I became thoroughly immersed.

Kinship is a paper-pieced pattern and is something that a few years ago I wouldn't have attempted. There are 100 different patterns. Fifty finish at eight by eight inches. Fifty finish at eight by four inches.

I chose to make them in pairs, using mostly the same fabrics for each pair.

In many cases, the shapes in the narrow block reflected the shapes in the full-size block.

The process became addictive.

Two participants each gave me a piece of fabric that -- while certainly not aboriginal -- seemed to go with the other fabrics.

I ended up with twenty pair completed.