Saturday, October 16, 2010

Alex Anderson Quilt Retreats -- Session I

AAQ Retreats started ten years ago when cyber quilting friends from a message board on Alex Anderson's website wanted to find a time to meet and sew together. That first retreat, in November 2001, lasted four days and had about 25 people attending. Most of their time was spent in independent study with both Alex and I on hand to answer questions and give opinions about fabrics, etc. Alex did a "breakout session" on hand quilting and I did one on machine quilting. Both of us would occasionally do impromptu demonstrations when someone asked a question about a technique that we thought everyone might like to know.

In 2003, the third year of AAQ Retreats, the waiting list was so long that Alex decided to open a second session and there are still two sessions: this year, Session I opened Thurday and will run through noon on Sunday; the second session starts Sunday afternoon and ends Wednesday at noon.

This year, Alex is teaching some curved piecing techniques and she has two auxiliary teachers: I am spending a day at each retreat teaching how to choose quilting designs, including a demonstration on marking and spacing border stencils, and Dale Fleming will be teaching pieced circles on the second full day of each retreat.

On Friday, I did my 1-1/2 hour demonstration and then walked around the room talking to all of my friends (many Session I retreaters have been coming here for years and years; we only had 3 new people this session) and taking pictures.....


Sylvia has been with us all ten years; here she is piecing two quilts at once out of her scrap bags. Not a bad idea -- think of all the things we could work on simultaneously out of our strip buckets!

Definition of "Strip Bucket
": Whenever I finish piecing a quilt, I piece whatever fabrics were used on the front of the quilt into the back. Whatever is left over after that either gets put back on the shelf, if it is at least 1/2 yard, or if it is smaller, it gets cut into 2-1/2" strips and tossed in either the light, medium or dark strip bucket. That way, when I'm ready to make an easy quilt, there are all the strips already cut and waiting!


Sitting across the table from Sylvia, Carol is working on her fall applique quilt; I took a picture of the pattern cover, too, so you could see it the whole thing....



















Alex giving one of her curved piecing demonstrations; that's Carolie Hensley of The Cotton Patch looking over her shoulder. Carolie brings a selection of goodies and sets up a store right here in the hotel for the retreaters. They also have Friday evening on their own to visit local shops, but you can't beat the convenience when you gotta have something right now!


Julie with the basket quilt she was working on last year -- she's ready to choose border fabrics now. I think it needs a narrow stripe to stop all the action before the final border....


Cindy's project is also an ongoing one -- she's appliquing Christmas tree lights on the border of her tree quilt from last year. Last year Alex taught isoceles triangles using her method; I taught scalloped bias binding which, of course, I do totally differently than she does. It's kind of a joke at the retreat: Since Alex and I do everything almost totally opposite, if someone asks one of us a question and doesn't like the answer, they go ask the other one and they'll probably get the answer they want!



Natalie and Jackie are a daughter/mom team that comes to sew with us every year...


Lynda works on very small, intricate designs -- we always love to see what she is doing!










At right is the center block of an appliqued quilt; she also had the borders done...all beautifully hand appliqued...


Danelle and the circles blocks that she brought to have fun with this session.....

I'm off to teach "Free Motion Boot Camp" at The Cotton Patch today and then will drive back to the Hilton Garden Inn in Livermore where the retreat is held and spend the night there. I'm not teaching tomorrow so will most likely be going to the Pacific International Quilt Festival which is being held this weekend in Santa Clara, about a half hour drive from Livermore. PIQF is always a good show and I should be able to get some good pictures if there aren't 50 people between my camera and each quilt!

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