Quilt Retreat in New York City!

Meet my friend Victoria of BumbleBeans in New York City. She hosted the most wonderful quilt retreat this weekend. Here she is at Rockefeller Center on Saturday. And here's our group below, from left to right: Jackie of CV Quiltworks, LeAnn of Nifty Quilts, me, Jessica of Life Under Quilts (in the blue coat), Kim of Pokeytown Kim (in the red coat), Victoria, Bonnie of The Scrappy Bee, and Helen from Long Island. (Andrea of The Little Collection wasn't in the photo.) We were in the Garment District and stopped for photos at this statue of a man working at a sewing machine.

This is Victoria's loft below, all set up for the retreat. We had plenty of space to work. She provided seven boxes of scraps for us to help ourselves to. Plus we brought more. And they were very cool scraps too! It was very interesting to see how other quilters used our scraps.

Victoria is a wonderful cook and she pampered us with all kinds of delicious dishes.

Here we are (above) sewing and talking and laughing. That's Jackie (below) working away.

This is Andrea above (The Little Collection) with a quilt that she made for her sister's wedding. See the quilting below. Isn't it beautiful?

LeeAnn brought her gorgeous eyelash quilt. We've seen it on her blog, so it was a real treat to see it in person.

Victoria showed us this stunning yellow star quilt (below) that she'll be exhibiting at the Empire Quilter's Show coming up later this month. She likes her quilts nice and big.

Here is LeeAnn in front of her zig-zag quilt that she made this weekend. Her color and pattern combinations were extraordinary. I love it.

Below are Bonnie's hand applique blocks. She alternated between machine and hand work. The foundation fabric is a pale gray, very nice. Each block has one "tile" that is cut in the shape of an object like a bird or a flower. And her stitches are tiny.

Below you can see my workspace. This quilt top in progress was inspired by a quilt that Bonnie has on her blog. I made blocks by randomly arranging the darker colors, then surrounding them with sawtooth borders. It doesn't look like Bonnie's anymore; but that's what started it all. I'll show you more as it develops.

After making a huge pile of sawtooth triangles, I took a break by starting the quilt top below. I think it needs some applique vines or something more, but I like it. There are some very unique fabrics in this quilt, including some that Victoria used in a Chinese New Year quilt.

It was so energizing and delightful to spend the weekend with talented and friendly quilters. Tomorrow I'll show you some photos from our Saturday afternoon "field trip" to see the quilts at the American Folk Art Museum.