Retreat Withdrawal

Our Wallis retreat was wonderful as usual! Premier Estates is the perfect place to sit and stitch. The peace and quiet of this small town along with the beauty of the house and grounds is so inspiring. Combined with the talent of all my Lake Jackson friends, one can't help being productive.

We were excited to have Melanie's sister, Wendy, join us...what a talented lady. She and Melanie do wonderful ribbon and fabric dyeing in addition to many forms of needle art including crazy quilting.

There was a beautiful gardenia bush blooming profusely. Wendy brought one in and asked me to make one with silk. I made some sketches while enjoying the wonderful fragrance of this flower. Monday I sat down and made my first attempt at recreating it. We talked about naming it The Premier Gardenia so here it is - just for Wendy!

I really don't like the burned edges since the gardenia is such a pure white. I'm going to continue experimenting and check other ways of doing the petals.

I promised pictures so I'm going to share a few of the projects I completed on retreat. I signed up for the pinkeeper swap on one of my yahoo groups, Silk Ribbon Heirlooms, so that was my first project. I altered one of the rose patterns I created for Artemis/Hanah silks and added it to the top.

Instead of using the regular CD I used a 3" mini CD. Two of the CDs are covered with green velvet and sandwiched together. You can slide pins between these two layers and it makes a great place to store pins.

I formed the center bud using a light rose velvet and filled it with emery...a little something extra to sharpen pins or place your needle. The rose is made with 1" wide Hanah silk satin in the Victorian Rose color. I absolutely love working with these beautiful ribbons and feel so fortunate to be able to design for them.

Another friend and I had seen several CQ bags for your clipping and such. I hesitate to call it a trash bag but that's exactly what it is. We talked about making one so I drew a pattern for a really simple box-style with a lid. I was experimenting to see if my pattern really worked so I used a floral fabric and lined it with dupioni.

It would be beautiful crazy pieced and embellished and I plan to do one for one of the upcoming issues of CQMagOnline. Pictured here is my first attempt. The green velvet on the inside lid is an emery pincushion. The weight of the emery keeps the box in place on the edge of the table. It's amazing how convenient it is and I find I'm using it every time I sit down to stitch.

In a previous post I showed you my large CD pincushion. It was an idea I got from the ladies at the Tomball retreat. Several of our group just had to have a small one when we discovered the mini CDs. Pictured here is my mini creation. Of course, all I need is another pincushion but that isn't really the point, is it? I'll have to substitute pincushion in that old saying: "He who dies with the most pincushions wins!" I may not have the most but I'm sure I'm running a close second.

By the way, isn't the box under the pincushion beautiful? Linda always brings door prizes and I was the lucky winner of this beautiful prize. She is always so generous and we always look forward to seeing what she has.