The Stitch Gathering Tickets have landed…

…hopefully on your door mat by now, if you are coming! If the postman hasn’t delivered your ticket yet, you might want to look away now so as not to spoil the surprise (though if you own a pair of eyes it is probably too late!!).

We have been having such fun planning stuff for our first Retreat in August.
And it was Jonathan (my hubby and one of the 3 ‘SG teamsters’) that first suggested a fabric ticket.
‘A fabric ticket?’ I said, ‘that’s a great idea. But of course they’ll need to be some sewing involved, or what’s the point in it being fabric?!’.

So the idea for our special Stitch Gathering ticket was born. Jonathan and I designed it together and got Spoonflower to print 2 yards of them on Kona cotton and send them all the way from America!
We were so excited when they arrived, and very pleased with how they turned out.

So I got cutting them up and they started going in the post, with instructions, about a week ago.

The idea is that everyone will work on their ticket (improving and personalising it), hand them in when they arrive at the event (accompanied by oohing, aahhing and general squealing), and then I will turn them into a beautiful Stitch Gathering Quilt. Not immediately, I’ll need a bit of a lie-down once the Retreat is finished.
We can then display said quilt at the following year’s Exhibition and Retreat and then raffle it for charity. Genius idea, I hope you’ll agree!

In the instructions I promised to show a few samples of ‘improved tickets’, to get you all started.
I have used needle-turn applique to sew petals all the way round on the top sample.
The one above is the simplest and quickest. I just log-cabined on top with strips from my scrap box.

This one is also needle turn applique. You could easily machine applique this sort of thing if you didn’t want anything so fiddly.

And then a bit of embroidery round the last one.

I hope this has given our Retreaters some ideas, but I am also hoping you are going to come up with some even better ideas! And if you want to show them off before the retreat you can add them to our Flickr Group Pool. Or if you want to keep it a secret that’s fine too.
If this all seems too much, don’t worry. You could just add your name and location somewhere. Or hand them back untouched. Absolutely no pressure, this is going to be a delightful, fun event, and I don’t want anybody getting stressed out before we even get started!

There are just a handful of tickets left to The Stitch Gathering. If you’d like to get your hands on a special fabric ticket it’s not too late. Click here for more details.