Fat Quarterly Retreat – My Reflections

 Apologies for posting this twice, It is my first time using livewriter & I needed to change a couple of things that I wasn't happy with.

Time flies!  Almost 3 weekends ago, (Jubilee weekend) I was at the Fat Quarterly Retreat and it is only now that I have had the time to write about my experience.
  
In the time since,
We have had half term, I have spent a couple of lovely days with the family by the River Thames at Hurley, redecorated the hallway (I spent weeks deciding on the colour to find once the paint had dried it was very almost the same colour as before sigh) Did lots of baking for my baby boys 3rd Birthday Party (just when did he grew up?), Went To Paultons Park aka Peppa Pig World (I absolutely LOVE that place and will have to do a review one day)as well as all the usual day to day running around/chores and going to work. I have been working a lot more days than I usually do, as I won’t have any work over the school holidays.

So the retreat (this is going to be quite a long post)
 
I went wearing this

a lovely name badge that had been made for by Kathleen. 
I had entered a surprise name-tag swap. My allocated person was Jo from A life in lists.
She sells Liberty fabric bundles so I used a piece of fabric that I had bought from the remnant box in John Lewis.  I thought it might have been Liberty fabric.  I wanted to have a London theme, so I used double sided tape to put the fabric thought the printer to print a London Skyline onto it. I then appliqued a little aeroplane and hand-embroidered Jo's name. I am not really into hand sewing so that took me a while to do.  When finished, I decided to give it a quick press with my new iron but....  scorched it! 
The lovely bluey-green fabric completely changed colour and I melted the ribbon loop.  I showed it to the husband, and he agreed with me that I couldn't send it.

So I made another one.  This time I had no more little aeroplanes so made the nametag to look like a London street sign.

On arrival we were given an amazing goodie bag of lovely things from the Retreat Sponsors. 

We were also given a "bingo" card of names and had to go and find all the people on our lists, a great ice breaker. The room was full of very excited women (and two guys) and so many conversations started like this "Oh hello...(reads name badge) Tammy, who are you?" meaning what is your blog name/flickr ID.  In the end it was easier to say that I don't blog as my blog is so tiny I very much doubt any of my readers where there (where you????) 

I also signed up for a sample swap, the rules were to simply make 4 useful items to swap, we would be told who to swap with on the day in a random draw. I wasn’t going to sign up for the swap as I knew I was going to be quite busy, but I was tempted by all the lovely things appearing in the Flickr group.
Unfortunately, I ended up finishing my samples late on Friday evening and forgot to take photos.  I made little pouches/purses from a  Keyka Lou pattern. 
These are the lovely swap items that I came home with

A London Pouch containing a Retreat Survival Pack from Amy A Prism Pencil Case from Christine Flower corsage from Mary and Boris the Bear Embroidery from Jo 

I also received the little blue pouch in the photo (with a tape measure inside) from one of the lovely ladies on my Iron Man team, who was only there on the Saturday (and whose name I have shamefully forgotten! Sorry & Thanks)I think that I did very well in the swap! Thank you ladies. 

Here are a couple of more swap photos that I “borrowed” from Amy and Christine. (can you guess which one is me?)

Somehow I signed up to participate in an Iron Man competition.In groups, we had to make a quilt between us over the weekend.  We didn’t win, but it added to the fun of the weekend and the quilt will be going to charity. Ours is the large Orange/Yellow one, 4th from right. (can you spot me again?)  

Photos once again borrowed from Amy & also Muriel

On the Saturday evening, I wanted to eat before heading home. I ended up tagging along with a group heading out to a restaurant nearby.  We were quite a big group but I ended up sat with just three other ladies and had lots of very grown-up and sensible conversations.  (covering all sorts of taboo subjects, such as mental health & politics) Such a nice change from the usual yummy-mummy conversations I seem to have these days. (I seriously don’t get out enough lol) Thank you, Shevvy, Judith and Jennie for a lovely evening.

After the retreat, I was reading all the blog posts here, and I was a bit embarrassed to find out that I had gate-crashed a pre-planned booking (oops) and most of the ladies “knew” each other through belonging to the same online groups and quilt guilds.  Very typically Me!
 
Still, the meal reflected the whole spirit of the weekend which was Community. Despite not “knowing” anyone, I never once felt excluded or lonely and spent the weekend in the company of some lovely people and had an amazing weekend!
You can read more reviews/reflections about the Retreat here. 
 
Next up, the actual classes….