Fat Quarterly Retreat 2012 is over :-(

Today my cheeks still hurt from smiling, my voice is hoarse from laughing and I'm feeling a bit teary at the prospect of having to get back to 'real life'.

I will keep it short and sweet as how the hell do you sum up something THAT amazing in a few paragraphs?  I can't really think coherently today, but i did want to stop by and say Thank you!

It was amazing to have all of the FQ crew in one place at the same time.  Thank you John, Katy, Tacha and Lynne for all your fabulousness. I love you all - you are THE BEST!!!!

Thank you to Lu and Mandy for mucking in and helping us lug stuff between floors to make sure we had everything we needed in the right place at the right time.

Thanks to Terri for giving me the best quote ever that makes me howl with laughter every time it pops into my head:  "Mexican?  I don't even like guacamole".

Thanks to Tom Starkey at Pfaff for loaning us 20 sewing machines, and taking time out of his Bank Holiday weekend to bring and collect them.   Thanks also to our other sponsors for providing us with some great stuff for the goodie bags, and thanks to my hubby Curly Boy for spending a whole day filling them!!

Finally, HUGE thanks goes to all you lovely folks who came to the retreat to hang out with us and make it the best weekend ever. You are a lovely, funny and warm hearted bunch who showed that you wanted it to be as successful as we did, so put your hearts and souls into making it the best weekend ever. Thank you!!

I am sad that i won't get to see you all today but even more excited that I'll get to see you all next year. Roll on 2013!!!

Fat Quarterly Sewing Retreat 2012

I’m a little late to the link party but for those of you that don’t know me, I’m Brioni.  I’m one of the founding members of Fat Quarterly.   I live in Leeds with my curly haired American husband, the most adorable little 2 ½ year boy old ever, and 2 kitties.

(This pic is not how i usually look. i usually have bits of toddler food stuck to me and my hair usually looks like I’ve been dragged through a hedge backwards!)

Just another couple of days running around like a blue-arsed fly* and then i get a whole weekend pfaffing around with bits of fabric at the Fat Quarterly Retreat.  Haha, ‘Pfaff’ geddit? 

Katy, Lynne and I have been busy familiarising myself with our Pfaff machines so that should disaster strike we can hopefully sort it.  I have faith in myself given that i un-jam the work printer on a regular basis and became the queen of un-jamming the automatic hand towel dispensers at Spring Quilt Market in KC.

Curly Boy is currently busy stuffing goodie bags. There is a lot of stuff.  I was tempted to spread it all out on the floor and roll around on it. I didn’t, you’ll be please to know.

I really can’t wait to meet you all and I can’t wait to spend some more time with my Fat Quarterly buddies Tacha, Katy, Lynne and John. This will be the first time that all 5 of us have been in one place at one time so i can’t wait.  Eeeeek!

Hope to see you all at the weekend!!!!

*For those of you who were wondering.... A Bluebottle is the proper name for blue-arsed fly.  They're the large, noisy busy looking flies similar to a worker rushed off their feet, hence the phrase “I'm running around like a blue arsed fly!!

It's been COLD where we are.

 I longed for snow so i could take little J out. Last year when it snowed bucket loads he wasn't with us and was barely walking so i knew it would be a pretty exciting first for all of us. We didn't get a ton of snow and it didn't last very long but thankfully it fell over a weekend when Curly Boy was home and there was enough to make a snowman. Little J helped by patting handfuls of snow onto him and had a whale of time.

On our walk back home there were some pretty decent puddles so Little J had a good splash around. Pity you can't also hear the giggles!

Sewing has been going pretty well but most of it is FQ related or secret projects so i can't show you anything yet, but i can show you this.

This is in Issue 8 of Fat Quarterly available here. I used in total about 18 yards of scraps, strings and fabrics that i wanted out of my stash. Can you believe i didn't use it all?