Rangeley Maine Quilt Retreat

This weekend my husband Mike and I journeyed up to Rangeley, Maine for a romantic vacation of skiing and quilting. Mike did the skiing while I did the quilting. We stayed at a wonderful bed and breakfast, the Pleasant Street Inn. The proprietors, Rob and Jan, couldn't have been nicer and the Inn was just fabulous. Jan is also a quilter, so I peeked into all the guest rooms to see more of her quilts and dresser scarves. Our room had a super comfortable king size bed, complete with a nine-patch quilt and a spacious bathroom with a jacuzzi tub, perfect for soaking away aches and pains from a long day of quilting or skiing. The bathroom even had a heated tile floor! We saw deer in the back yard every morning. Rob is an accomplished cook and we had yummy waffles and blueberry french toast for breakfast!

Mike went skiing at Saddleback. He is having fun trying out different mountains each time he takes a ski trip and he thought that Saddleback was one of the best mountains he's tried so far. He had a blast!

Best of all was that I was able to go with him. Sometimes I go on Mike's ski trips and just sew by myself in our hotel room, which can get kind of lonely. Mike went web surfing and found the Cabin Fever Reliever Weekend for me at the Threads Galore Quilt Shop, owned by Carol and Dan Perkins, so I was able to spend my whole weekend sewing with a group of other quilters. What fun!

Threads Galore is a full service quilt shop and they also have a retreat center next door. Your quilt group can rent the retreat center and hold their own quilting weekend. There is a full kitchen and several bedrooms upstairs. The retreat will hold up to nine quilters comfortably.

The work space is great, spacious and full of natural light. We sewed every day from 9 to 5. The retreat also included lunch, home-made daily by Dan, Carol's husband and business partner.

Everyone got their own table and design wall.

There was a large cutting table and three ironing stations.

My workspace at the retreat.

Our project for the weekend was Galaxy by Deb Tucker.

Here are the different size units for the different block sizes, shown below. The itty bitty one at the top finishes to one inch and is NOT part of the pattern. Dan is making a quilt with one inch pieces, which I will show you towards the end of the blog.

You can make the quilt in three different sizes, simply by choosing a different size block.
Shown at top is the small block, then the large block, and the medium block.

I chose a palette of black and blue inspired by the blue and black print shown second from the left.

This was one of the beautiful class samples. This is the small size quilt.

This is the other class sample, shown in the medium size.

Our group had seven people, plus our instructor, Carol. The shop is right next door, so we could take a break at any time and shop. The inventory is fairly traditional in nature but they do have a small room of batik (one of my favorites). Carol also sells the full line of Deb Tucker's patterns and rulers. They had lots of samples made up in the shop that inspired me to purchase a few new patterns. It was great to see all the bag samples so I could easily see the finished size. I bought some really pretty black and white fabric to make the Tahiti tote. The fabric will be featured in the Maine Shop Hop in April.

Here I am with my new quilt in progress. I got a lot done!

Sue's quilt, using the large size blocks

Ella's quilt

Peggy's quilt, a wedding gift for her son.

Betsy's quilt, a gift for her granddaughter.

Our instructor Carol was working on these
wonky star blocks, made from her scrap stash.

Dan came in to show off his star quilt in progress.
Each star block is a tiny three inches finished.

Here is a close-up. Each individual piece in the block finishes to one inch!

Larry Pug, Mike and Elvis (Romeo is sleeping in his crate).

Today is Monday, February 18th which is Presidents' Day in the United States, and also the day that Mike and I went on our first date five years ago in 2008. We both have the day off from work and are going to eat lunch at Minerva, which is where we met and also where Mike proposed. On Wednesday, February 20th, we will celebrate our first year of marriage!

Happy Anniversary Babe! Love You!

Happy Presidents' Day!

Pugs and kisses,
Nancy