After we received our Welcome kits and completed our necklaces, all of the teachers gathered together to display our class projects for the weekend. Janie and I signed up for Track A - Jeannette Douglas, Paulette Stewart and R&R (Pat Ryan and Ann Robbins).
Our first class was with Jeannette Douglas. She designed a beautiful autumn piece that just draws you in with all of the beautiful fall colors.
She also designed an option where you could add little people to the bottom as well as family names.
...and she also designed a set of Smalls to go with the sampler. This is my favorite of all of the classes offered.
We had a break Friday afternoon for a nice lunch break and some time for stitching in our condo. We all gathered together for an evening of button making with the experts in button making, the ladies from JABCO (Just Another Button Company) Cecile McPeak and her daughter Rachel Martin. We were provided with a variety of colors of clay and basic instructions for making different buttons including flowers, pumpkins and sheep. Here are the fruits of our labor. Mine are on the left and Janie's are on the right.
The teachers stayed up until 2 AM to bake our buttons in toaster ovens and presented them to us in these sweet little jars at our banquet tables Saturday night.
Our Saturday morning class was with Pat Ryan and Ann Robbins of R&R.
Our last class was with Paulette Stewart
Both the R&R ladies and Paulette designed smalls to go with the main sampler. Here is a picture of the ones designed by R&R.
In addition, we spent Thursday evening being introduced to our Shared Stitches Project that is a band sampler that we will attach to a tote bag from Adams Originals. Each of the bands was designed by the teachers.
The banquet on Saturday evening was a traditional Thanksgiving feast with turkey, dressing, mashed potatoes and gravy. We played Richards Thanksgiving Bingo which was a blast. At the end of the evening we were presented with a final gift, a sampler commemorating the theme of the retreat.
From Chessie and Me