The Thread House Summer Retreat 2019 Report

Last weekend I headed down to Yorkshire for the first ever Thread House Summer Retreat.

This was held at the wonderful High Trenhouse centre which is set in the most amazing countryside, close to Malham Tarn.

As I said to the slightly shaken attendees, who arrived after quite an alarming drive up steep slopes, hairpin bends and across miles of moors, that we take our retreating very seriously at the Thread House! We certainly were getting away from it all at this location!

25 of us arrived on the Friday afternoon and were greeted with tea/coffee and amazing home baked flap jacks.

After a relaxed meet and greet session and the handing out of goody bags we settled ourselves in to two separate sewing spaces.  Karen and I had divided everyone in to two groups and rather than call them group A and group B we decided to have a little fun and call the groups ‘Log Cabins’ and ‘Flying Geese’, however this only served to confuse some people (including Karen!) who thought these were the classes they would be attending and wanted to know the supplies lists!

Let’ s have a look at the amazing goody bag!

We tried to include items that would be especially useful for the classes offered. So we had a rotary cutter from Fiskars, scissors from Warm Crochet, 80wt thread from Aurifil, a Michael Miller FQ and a June Tailor mini ruler and pattern from EQS and a wadding sample piece from Hobbs Batting!

Karen and I also included a couple of things, I put in that cute Fat 16th stack of ‘Make a Mark’ fabrics and a packet of my favourite applique needles, Millwards Straw/Milliners number 10. Karen included 2 FQs and that awesome exclusive screen printed tote bag that she printed for everyone!

And if that wasn’t enough Grace from Beyond Measure gave her own lovely drawstring bag full of woollen fabrics, a leather purse kit and Made in Sheffield embroidery scissors!

Thanks so much to all our sponsors!!

After a delicious three course dinner (all the food all weekend was fantastic!) we held our pin cushion swap. And here they all are – such ingenious, beautiful, colourful creations!

Karen and I swapped with each other, and you can probably guess looking at the photos which one I made and which one Karen made! I used this excellent tutorial by Sarah Ashford on the Polka Dot Chair blog to make my Moda Grunge pocket pinnie on the left. I absolutely love my chunky Wabi Sabi mini brick which is filled with crushed walnut shells 🙂   Thanks Karen!

Some of us even managed a lovely country walk after dinner! Here we are looking very colourful. From left to right: Nicky, Alison, me, Bridget, Jane (my sister!) and Di, with Karen on photographer duties.

Saturday was teaching day with classes starting at 10 (giving us time for a lovely leisurely breakfast). Karen taught her FPP Teacup block to the Log Cabins and I taught my applique flowers to the Flying Geese. In the afternoon we swapped around.

Here’s a reminder of the combined block, you can read more about it here.

At  lunchtime the amazing Beyond Measure came and set up a pop-up shop! I absolutely love everything Grace sells and so a few pennies were spent be myself (and everyone else as her stock is irresistible!). Plus Karen and I also brought pop-up shops which we set up in adjoining rooms to Grace (the space at the centre worked so perfectly for these little extra attractions). Unfortunately I forgot to take any photos of the shops!

However I do have something shopping related to share as we launched a special Aurifil Thread House Retreat collection box at the Summer Retreat!

This is a Tailor Made box, something new Aurifil are doing where you can curate your own collection.  This box has everything you need for a weekend retreat (thread wise that is!).

We selected some of our favourite Go To threads for this box. It includes the following:

50wt – 2784 and 2311 –  off white and navy, perfect for every piecing option
40wt – 4670 – our favourite variegated in grey
12wt cotton – 4668 – pretty variegated red for hand quilting
12wt wool – 8965 – exquisite Lana Wool in pickle

All in it’s own cute box! These cost £16 and are available to buy from our store here, whether you are coming to one of our retreats or not!  They are limited edition though so get one while you can.

I will also have them in stock at our Edinburgh store from Wednesday.

The weather was pretty perfect for the whole weekend, overcast but warm and dry (you don’t want to be in sewing when it is too sunny!), and plenty of tea and coffee breaks were taken outside at the various picnic table spaces.

After dinner on Saturday evening we had a lovely Show and Tell session, this is just an edited selection as I couldn’t fit in all the wonderful quilts.   Karen started everybody off with her stunning new quilt Stars Abound, pattern available here.

And her finished Courthouse Steps BOM from Love Patchwork and Quilting magazine (on the left below).

It was so lovely to have my sister Jane at the retreat. She did come to a couple of the first Stitch Gathering retreats but this is the first time she has attended one of the weekend Thread House events.

Jane brought a few quilts along to show including her finished Up and Away SAL quilt, following on from Sarah’s recent IG sew along.

Bridget brought along this incredible quilt that she created for her step daughter. This is quite a special quilt for me as it contains the Suitcase pattern from my Vintage Home BOM quilt from Todays’ Quilter!

Sara is a regular at our retreats and brought along this lovely piece that she had made for a QAL with another retreat regular The Crafty Nomad.

Sara’s other quilt is this beautiful snowball design that was made as a group quilt during the recent exhibition of Siblings Together quilts.

On Sunday Jenni and Kay of Jenni Smith Studios came along to film some interviews for their wonderful Just One Quilt project. They filmed 4 in total including Bridget, with her lovely quilt above and Sara, who talked about the Siblings Together Quilt Drive. Jenni has this one up on the website already and you can enjoy watching it here (and you will enjoy it as Sara is so lovely and engaging!).

Sunday was also for ‘free sewing time’ with some retreaters working on long running projects like Di’s amazing Jen Kingwell quilt (sorry pattern name escapes me!).

Others carried on with their Flower Teacup blocks and this is how far they all got by the home time! Applique is slow! However in the week since we got back I have been sent quite a few photos of gorgeous finished blocks. And don’t our lovely retreaters look proud as punch holding up their wee blocks?!

We had time for one last photo of us all together (taken by Jenni and don’t ask why Karen and I are standing so weirdly -I think we were trying not to block those behind!!) before it was time to take that (slightly scary) road home again!

What a fabulous, energising, creative and joyful weekend! Thanks so much to everyone at High Trenhouse – who really couldn’t do enough for us – and to everyone that came along and joined in so wholeheartedly.

Look out for news on next year’s summer retreat in December. Meanwhile you can still nab one of the last places left for our winter retreat 2020 here!