Growing Greenup
Quilt Guild Retreat
By Susan Williams
This week’s column was written and submitted by a special guest, Susan Williams. Susan is a longtime colleague and friend. She is a retired teacher and a current member of the Greenup County Quilt Guild. I asked her to share about the recent retreat that the guild held at Greenbo. Please continue and enjoy reading about this outstanding group of local, talented quilters.
~Anne Stephens
What do you get when you combine oodles of fabric, a dozen sewing machines, lovely outdoor views, delicious snacks, warm fellowship, and a shared passion for quilting? That would be the Greenup County Quilt Guild’s retreat that was held November 13-15 at Greenbo Lake State Park’s Jesse Stuart Lodge. The quilt guild meets twice monthly. One meeting is a “Sit and Sew” where members can bring items they are working on or work on shared guild projects. The other is a business meeting to plan guild events and projects. The retreat is a special time for fun and fellowship. Everyone brings projects they wish to work on during the three-day event which is set up in a shared workspace in Greenbo’s Lodge.
Members began arriving around 8:00 am on Wednesday, eager to set up and get started. The machines whirred as sewers chatted until the power company served up a roadblock in the form of a planned power outage for work on a transformer. The machines fell silent. Emergency lighting kicked on. Quilters are not easily discouraged. The president of the guild, Debra Doherty, held the business meeting for November during the outage. Then one of the members brought out the stash of quilting books and magazines that she had brought to share. The electricity-free time was spent gathering inspiration from the periodicals and discussing the new ideas we discovered. Of course, everyone found time to visit the snack table to keep our strength up! I do want to mention that quilters are resourceful. One member brought in her portable power source that she uses for camping. That battery kept one sewing machine running throughout the entire outage!
Once electricity was restored the busy hum of sewing machines once again filled the room. The types of projects ranged from smaller wall or table-top projects to bed-size quilts. Some worked from the pre-cut stacks of fabrics available from most quilt shops. Others worked on purchased kits or patterns and some on original patterns of their own design. A wide variety of techniques could be found in the work. The variety of techniques, including, machine piecing, applique both machine and needle-turn, specialty-fabrics like chenille and fleece, in use all spoke to the skills and interests of the quilters in the room.
Quilters love to learn. The retreat included technique demonstrations both planned and impromptu. The guild president demonstrated quilt-as-you-go technique which allows the sewer to quilt the squares as they are created, joining them together at completion. One member showed a technique for a near-zero waste quilt from a purchased “layer cake” of fabrics. A layer cake is a set of coordinated fabrics sold as a package of pre-cut ten-inch squares. Another quilter demonstrated the technique used for her project, “Disappearing Hourglass.” Using it she constructed a simple hourglass block, then, with a few artful cuts, turned it into a star block. Like magic! All through the retreat, people were helping others with questions and techniques. There was a wealth of experience in that room!
What would a retreat be without some games? The group played trivia games, a getting-acquainted game, and a game in which each person got to choose three quarter-yards of fabric. You really cannot go wrong with quilters if there is fabric involved!
The group ate dinners together in the Lodge’s Angler’s Cove Restaurant. Some members stayed overnight in the lodge while others traveled back and forth from home. For those staying at the lodge, the evening brought the chance to sew on into the night. It was like a slumber party with sewing machines! Eventually, the quilters went off to bed dreaming of perfectly pieced points and beautiful color schemes.
At the end of the three days, everyone shared what they had achieved during retreat. Several people completed a pieced top and everyone made great progress on whatever their piece was. It is such a luxury to have time set aside just for working on your hobby. To work on that hobby while surrounded by others who love it as much as you do is a blessing indeed. If you would like to see pictures of the projects, follow the directions below to our Facebook page. Another retreat is being planned for the Spring. Hope to see you there!
Please look for and like the guild on Facebook @ Greenup County Quilt Guild. The regularly scheduled guild meetings are held at the Greenup County Extension Office. The Sit and Sew meets on the second Wednesday of the month starting at 9:00 am and the Business Meeting on the fourth Wednesday of the month at 10:00 am. Visitors are welcome and membership is $5.00 per year. Contact Anne Stephens, Extension Agent for Community Arts, at the Greenup County Extension Office, (606) 836-0201 with further questions.
For more information, contact Anne Stephens, Agent for Community Arts and Development in Greenup County. 606-836-0201 anne.stephens@uky.edu 35 Wurtland Avenue, Wurtland, KY 41144 The Martin-Gatton College of Agriculture, Food and Environment is an Equal Opportunity Organization with respect to education and employment and authorization to provide research, education information and other services only to individuals and institutions that function without regard to economic or social status and will not discriminate on the basis of race, color, ethnic origin, national origin, creed, religion, political belief, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, pregnancy, marital status, genetic information, age, veteran status, physical or mental disability or reprisal or retaliation for prior civil rights activity. UNIVERSITY OF KENTUCKY, KENTUCKY STATE UNIVERSITY, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE, AND KENTUCKY COUNTIES, COOPERATING
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