Stitch Gathering Retreat 2019 Report Post

Sunday saw the SEVENTH annual Stitch Gathering Retreat in a very dreich and rainy Edinburgh.  I am just amazed that we have now hosted so many of these! And I know I probably say this every year, but this was the best one yet!

And it’s all down to my fabulous team, which includes these two bright stars – Barbara on the left and Jane on the right – I really couldn’t do any of this without you!

Once we had all received our amazing goody bags (more on these soon) and swapped our name tags it was time for the morning classes. I was teaching my Dandelion Clock Block class for the first time (though I have taught the technique many times) and it went very well, as you can see by these fabulous blocks and happy students! You can check out my tutorial for the freehand foundation piecing technique here.

Other classes were happening in the other rooms and my wonderful teacher/helper/’quilting little sis’ Sarah Ashford captured these photos (and many of the images in this post) while she was teaching her Walking Foot Quilting class (on the left with Jenni and Kay’s Manx log cabin class on the right).

Sarah comes up from England to teach at the Stitch Gathering every year. She always stays with me and becomes my willing slave for a few days, lifting and carrying and rushing around. I really don’t think I could do this without her either now! I tried to repay the debt this year by hosting a fabric launch party for her new Dashwood Studio collection at our store on the day before the event. We created a lovely display in the window (below).

Dashwood sponsored the event and gave us enough fabric for everyone to get a FQ in their goody bags and for us to make up FQ and F1/8th bundles that we could give as prizes. You can read more about Sarah’s new fabric line here.

Lunchtime not only means a delicious buffet lunch but also shopping at our myBearpaw pop-up shop, and next up,  our legendary Lucky Dip, where EVERYONE wins a prize!

Huge thanks to our fabulous sponsors, including Fiskars, Aurifil and Lewis & Irene for some of these amazing prizes.

Every year we have a different ticket project and this year we chose Hoop Art. You can read more about our hoop art ticket project here.

The hoops were all so creative and beautiful! We displayed them all so everyone could enjoy them at lunchtime, and then we did a ‘lucky dip swap’ where participants took a random ticket and got the hoop that matched.

Doing the swap this way meant I didn’t need to do the time consuming allocating and it added another frisson of excitement to the day.

Though I liked all the hoops I think these two are my favourite, and apologies to the makers because I have completely forgotten who you are!

We also had an exhibition of the Edinburgh MQG’s Message Quilts which everyone viewed at lunchtime. I haven’t yet posted about this project but hope to soon. We asked everyone to vote for their favourite and I am pleased to announce that the gorgeous Mags, our president and the one who came up with this fantastic challenge, WON! Congrats Mags and very well deserved. Unfortunately I didn’t get any photos of the exhibition, sorry! I will try to get hold of some for the blog post.

Lunchtime is packed with so many activities! It’s time for the best bit… Show and Tell!

Last year our ticket project was cat and dog blocks and at the end of the event I asked for volunteers to take away a number of the blocks and turn them into charity quilts. That’s exactly what Carol did and she produced this gorgeous quilt which will be going to Social Bite Village Quilt Drive.

Marilynne also took a stack of cat and dog blocks but instead of making one quilt she made FOUR! and they were all double sided!  She had a lot of fabric to de-stash so she used it ingeniously to make these fabulous quilts. They will go to both Social Bite Village and Siblings Together.

Margaret and Glynne are regular Stitch Gathering attendees but they do something that sets them apart from the rest, they actually finish the projects they start in the workshops and bring them along for show and tell the following year!

Glynne made this striking modern version of Mandy Munroe’s Kasbah Star Quilt (right) and Margaret made this stunning version of Krista Hennebury’s Quarter Round quilt after she visited and taught us at the Edinburgh MQG last April.

There was much oohing and ahhing at the sight of this incredible Ice Cream Soda EPP masterpiece by Nicola. It’s still to be quilted, and in fact Nicola only brought it to get advice and buy wadding, but it is already a super star quilt, and Nicola’s beautiful hand stitching has to be seen to be believed!

Two more quilts from this edited show and tell section (there were so many amazing quilts it was hard to choose what to feature here!). On the left is a fabulous version of my Pickle Dish quilt by Margaret and on the Right is Jane’s amazing Tula Pink sampler quilt.

Well done to all the wonderful quilters who shared their quilts and their stories with us all! I love this sharing part of the day the most.

For the first time ever I only taught one class this year, which meant in the afternoon I could join in with Jenni and Kay’s Storytelling with Cyanotype workshop. This was fascinating and I am sure I will do more in the future but the very dull Scottish weather meant it was taking a really long time for the ‘blueprints’ to fix.

So Jenni and Kay very generously repeated the class they had taught in the morning while we waited. And so I got 2 for 1 and learnt how to do Manx Log Cabin too! And I absolutely loved doing this, what a clever and addictive technique! I’m just finishing up my block with a little Aurifil 12wt hand quilting (above). Thank you Jenni and Kay for sharing it. A huge thanks to all the amazing teachers this year!

And just like that it was all over for another year and it was time to say goodbye!

I will leave you with this fun photo of me peering through this fantastic hoop art ring made by talented myBearpaw regular Suzanne (who likes to pass herself off as my daughter!).

But wait, there is more to come…

As in previous years I have kept aside 2 goody bags to giveaway, one here on the blog and one on Instagram.   However I am going to make you all wait a bit longer for this as tomorrow I am off to Denmark for a weekend of teaching with my Thread House pal Karen Lewis! I am so excited about this and can’t wait to see so many Scandinavian friends, from both real life and Instagram. Hubby is joining me for a few days in Denmark on Monday followed by a visit to see our son, Felix and his partner Colleen, who live in Southern Sweden.

So you will need to wait until the end of next week for the giveaway post. But I promise it will be worth it!!