Reflections on the 2013 Fat Quarterly Retreat

The Fat Quarterly London Retreat is over again for this year.  Once again, it was a wonderful, fun and exhausting weekend with lots of lessons learned and ideas gathered to make it better next year.  There were many highlights for me including meeting and spending time with new and old friends:

Teaching Touchdraw and precision piecing:

Meeting Delma from Siblings Together and handing over 31 quilts:

meeting Alex Veronelli from Aurifil who I have worked with for a couple of years now but never met:

 

 Spending time with the wonderful Michael Oakshott and his wonderful Oakshott shot cottons:

 

Seeing all the beautiful quilts people brought to retreat including this one by Susan Claire (Gourmetquilter) which had been featured in Quiltmania and which had actually been the reason I bought that issue of Quiltmania two years ago.

Working with the Fat Quarterly team:

But my overriding feeling from the whole retreat is the happiness I get from being in the company of so many quilters for a whole weekend.  Sometimes we feel like we're so busy rushing around trying to keep the retreat running smoothly that we don't have time to stop and smell the roses, sit and relax and just spend time and chat with and properly welcome each and every one of you.  So that's our top priority for next year - to spend more time with the attendees and put more work into making your weekend as relaxed, fun, enjoyable and sociable as we can, whether its your first visit and you don't know a soul or your third year and you know most of the room.

Thank you to every single attendee, teacher and team member for making our dream of a modern UK quilting retreat a reality for the second year running.