Quilting Retreat at Banksia Springs in Dwellingup

Two weeks ago I went on my first five day quilting retreat with members of the Primarily Patchwork group. As there were so many of us we stayed in the lodge rather than in the cottages at Banksia Springs.

The place was lovely and peaceful set, in the bush away from town. With the poor phone reception making it even more isolated, meant that a lot of work was able to be done, in between keeping the fire going and taking in the scenery.

The variety of projects being worked on was pretty impressive, and I’ve only listed the ones I remember as some had multiple ones on the go and I didn’t take any photos:

• Lesli - knitting a purple dragon hand puppet,

• Fran – working on her applique and sewing a yoga bolster cover,

• Jan – making a table runner for her zoo friends,

• Sue – hand quilting,

• Mary – piecing large quilt tops,

• Beverley – paper piecing her version of a Star of Bethlehem,

• Lauren – hand piecing hexagons,

• Julie – making bookmarks for her son and starting a XMAS strippy quilt,

• Trish – piecing backing for a quilt,

• Annette – making quilt tops and sandwiching them.

I was told to take a number of projects, and I did end up working on three, but was really happy to finish piecing 24 of these blocks. Now I just need another retreat in order to get them pieced together to make the quilt top. Iris