May 2020 - The Virtual Retreat and Stitch Maynia 2020

Hi everyone and hope that you're all doing well. As I type this, we are enjoying a gorgeous early summer day with sunshine and low humidity. How was your month of May?  Mine was great, and I had lots of time for quilting and stitching. 

Let's start with quilting - May is the month of my spring retreat in Shipshewana, an event I always look forward to. I am sure you can guess already that the retreat was cancelled this year due to our stay at home orders. After some debate and discussion, my mom and I decided to still have a mini-retreat at home, and we called it our virtual retreat. We had Zoom calls a couple times and enjoyed talking with other quilters and seeing what they were working on. I had a really productive virtual retreat, and here's what I made: 

I bound the table runner that I pieced last month and had quilted the weekend before our virtual retreat - it will be great to put on our coffee table around the fourth of July! 

I pulled out a kit that I bought a long time ago and finally got it put together - it is all fused, hand-dyed fabric. I'd used my scan-n-cut to cut out all the pieces back in December and it was great to get them all put on the backing. I still need to quilt it, but isn't it cute? 

I am a little behind on the scrap blocks that I am making for my son's quilt, so I got the third set of them done in blue/teal. Now that I have three colors together, I am going to put together a few of the finished blocks to make sure my son likes it before I go further. 

The next thing I worked on was my log cabin blocks that I have worked on at a few other retreats, and thought I would be happy if I got the last set of blocks together. Once I got them together, then I kept going and wound up with the whole top finished! I also got it loaded and quilted this month, but don't have it bound yet - that's on the docket for June, so hopefully I will be able to show you the finished quilt next month.

My last project of retreat was another stitching bag - I bought the fabric for this back in December and love how it came together. 

On the stitching front, it was also a great month. I participated in Stitch Maynia, an annual stitch-a-long during the month of May. This year, I decided to start a few new projects, and my goal was to find at least a little time to stitch every day. I did it - 31 days of stitching! It helps not having any evening activities that I have to be at ;)  I did finish two projects - coincidentally both by Sam Sarah Designs! 

Here are the stats for the month: 

Stash Report - 

Fabric added this month - 0 yards

Fabric used this month - 3 1/8 yards

Fabric added year to date - 0 yards

Fabric used year to date - 13 1/4 yards

Days with 15 minutes of stitching - 31 of 31 = 100%!! 

I am linking up with Donna at QuiltPaintCreate for Stash Report Sunday and Kate at Life in Pieces for the weekly Stitching report 

Exercise report - weeks with at least 90 minutes of exercise - 2 of 4 weeks