Russellville Retreat Recap

A week ago yesterday I left for our annual Russellville retreat.  I met up with the peeps at a rest stop just south of the city.  This year I drove by myself since my usual travel peeps were heading on to Florida after the weekend.  Me, I had to come back to the grind.  However, I wasn't alone in the car!

I had Señior Frog to keep me company along the way.  He and I listened to my iTunes through the car's bluetooth and away we went!  The girlies following me have now dubbed me Mario...ahem!  Yes....I do tend to have a lead foot.  I blame it on a really smooth riding car.  Yep, that's it!

We made a stop at The Finishing Touch in Louisville to stretch our legs and do a little shopping.  Gotta enhance the stash dontcha know. As you can see a few little things had to come home with me.  We got back on the road for a short hop south of the city for lunch and then we kicked it on into Russellville.

 

Here's a peek at our nest.  We usually spend our first night at the "hive" setting up and settling in.  We have a pizza dinner so as folks straggle in they aren't missing dinner.  The next morning we get down to stitching!

 

This was our group project for this year's getaway.  It's Blackbird Designs' "Summer in Bloom - Pinkeep Drum."  We used the called for GAST floss and 28ct. Silkweaver Days Gone By linen.

 

Here's where I was at the end of the weekend.  I'm a lot further along now.  I've got all the leaves and stems in and am working on the flowers.  I'm hoping to get this one done really soon!

Speaking of finishing things, I've alluded to a round robin group project here on the blog.  Well, we finally got to reveal them.  This was the first time we saw them all together after they were finished.

 

I purposely left the picture scaled small for privacy sake.  Most of these have the names, city and state of the participants on them.  Some things just don't need to be put out there.  I know you all understand.  I can tell you we had participants from Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana, and Michigan.

 

I'm sure you are curious how we accomplished this.  Our organizers distributed the same set of quilt square charts from Susan Greening Davis (used with permission) to all of us.  Each of us chose our own fabric, floss, and layout.  As we received the stitched squares, we tried to choose a block to stitch that hadn't already been used.  We tried to use complimentary colors so all the blocks would look nice as a group.

 

We sent them out each month by the 15th.  We were paired up in groups of two since that's how our geographic location worked out.  After I stitched my square on the two I received, I passed them along to my peep in the city at one of our stitch-ins.  She sent them on when she was finished stitching her squares.  And so it went until we were done!

 

They all turned out really nice and each is so different from the other.  They really do reflect all of us.  There is talk that we may do another round robin.  The Queen Bee was quite impressed and maybe a bit envious that the worker bees struck out on their own.  Giggles!

 

I have another couple tiny finishes to share too.  This bag was given to us at last year's retreat by the Queen Bee.  We were to stitch little "passport stamps" and attach them to the bag.  They could be anything that was meaningful to us.

I chose to stitch a bee skep with tiny bees and my monogram since we all have the same bag.  The skep represents our "hive" where we stitch each year and the bees represent us as stitchers aka worker bees.

In case you are wondering, the monogram is from a vintage DMC chart and the bee skep is from Prairie Schooler's chart #193 "Where there are Bees."  I used 32ct. cream scrap for them both and finished the edges with nun's stitch.  I used the called for DMC on the bee skep and NPI 947 & 572 on the monogram.

Each year the Queen Bee likes to give us little gifts during our getaway.  This year she gifted us with this super cute hand made pin featuring our symbol, the bee!  She also gave us this pretty journal to keep all our important thoughts in it.  She suggested we could stitch our initial and put it in the square instead of the paper one that came with it.  She also gave us a gold bee skep needle minder.

 

See the camel up there?  Each year we like to patronize the local businesses just around the corner on Main Street. The camel was my souvenir from Pearl's Antiques. It's a figurine from the Red Rose Tea Company.  It's made by Wade in England and offered as a promotion in the tea box.  It just cracks me up!

It reminds me of the Geico camel which is my all time favorite commercial ever!  I can't watch this video without laughing.

Well folks, this one has gotten pretty lengthy today and I'm not done yet.  I'll leave you on this funny note and pick up again tomorrow with show and tell as well as the stash I got from the Queen Bee's "boutique."  Hope you enjoyed the recap so far!


More to come,

The Inspired Stitcher