Tuesday, April 12, 2016

Cindy Needham Retreat in Auburn CA



If Cindy isn't making rounds, or "blessings" as she calls the walkarounds she does to see what we all are doing and to offer help and suggestions, this is what we see of her -- as much as we can see in the reflection of her machine light! I met Cindy a few years ago when she was teaching a two day design workshop at the Ridgecrest CA quilt guild. I took that class, then a couple more in the Sacramento suburb of Rancho Cordova, then a couple of retreats at the Mercy Retreat Center in Auburn. All of my previous work has been quilting, but I relaxed a little this time and brought a couple of piecing projects.


The retreat is set up with plenty of room; these tables in the front are higher and usually have cutting mats on them. Cindy had just set up to do a mini-workshop explaining the use of her ultimate stencils and the transparencies that can be used with them. I've used the ultimate stencils as well as the ultimate backgrounds and they are an awesome tool! To find out more about their use as well as how to make a set your own, visit her website.  Her retreats take place both in Auburn CA and  McCloud CA.  The 2016 and 2017 retreats are full however interested quilters are encouraged to put their names on the wait lists for any retreats they'd love to attend... plans change and cancellations occur!



There was daily show and share with some very nice quilts being brought to share. I never get as many pictures as I want of this type of thing because people always walk to the front of the room, hold it open for almost enough time to get the camera to my face and then close it up and walk away. Talk a little longer, people!


This beautiful guild raffle quilt was displayed and I'm sure every one of us bought tickets! This was several years in the making and is just stunning. I stood there for about 20 minutes, following the blocks around the quilt and thinking about how the trees looked in each month. I would never do this much work, but sure enjoyed looking at it!


I got the final three borders on the quilt that has been laid out on my work tables for weeks, so happy to have that done...


And I started working on this modern quilt -- when I went to QuiltCon in February, almost every single quilt was made up all of solids, so I decided to try one. The "A" blocks are the bear paw style blocks with the pinwheel in the center and the "B" blocks are the flying geese blocks. I spent all of one day making the components for the "A" blocks; the next morning, pack up day, I got a couple of blocks done so I could see what it was going to look like. I've sewed on it a little bit this week, so the remaining "A" blocks are to the point where the white strips are all on, waiting for all the little triangles to be sewn together.


Cindy is such an inspiring quilter! I have a Pinterest board devoted to her work; to see it, click here!

You might also like My Annual Cindy Needham Fix or  My Designs Workshop with Cindy Needham!


No comments:

Post a Comment

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...