Are you ready for more Tula? Here is the continuation of yesterday’s post Tula Pink “All Stars” Retreat (Part I).

So where did we leave off? Ah, yes – a couple crazy quilting friends decided to create their own quilt retreat in a rented vacation townhome to focus on making Tula Pink All Star collection sampler quilts together.

But before we get to the endless images of quilt blocks we made (warning: it might get mind-numbing for non-quilters reading this post), let me share some of the non-sewing adventures we had during the retreat.

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Non-Sewing Adventures

We did not just lock ourselves in a rented townhome for four days of non-stop quilting, we did do non-sewing activities…though some of these activities did involve fabric.

I took Judy and Dana on a mini Central Oregon Quilt Shop Hop over two days. This was exceptionally fun because Dana had never been to Central Oregon before, much less our quilt shops. I took them to the following quilt shops:

• Sew Many Quilts and Bernina Center
• QuiltWorks
• BJ’s Quilt Basket
• Stitchin’ Post

At Sew Many Quilts we discovered a very cool antique sewing machine on display:

At QuiltWorks we had a wonderful time visiting with the owner Marilyn Forestell who I’ve known for a long time. We also congratulated her on her shop being featured in the Spring – Summer 2018 issue of Quilt Sampler:

If you’d like to watch a video interview with the owner and more about one of my favorite Central Oregon quilt shops, here is the link on allpeoplequilt.com – www.allpeoplequilt.com/magazines-more/quilt-sampler/quiltworks. This behind the scenes video has a nice walk through of the shop.

We had a blast at BJ’s Quilt Basket, the third quilt shop we visited. They have a delightful and very friendly staff. While at BJ’s, OH NO – we discovered a new Tula Pink fabric line was just released: Zuma.

Judy and Dana could not leave BJ’s without the fat quarter collection (I was good as I currently have more Tula than I can handle right now!):

The next day we headed to Sisters, Oregon to go to the Stitchin’ Post. 

While at the Stitchin’ Post, my quilting sister Dana and I did a “Hand-piecing Intervention“.

I overhead a woman tell her friend that she had recently retired and wanted to take up quilting but did not want to do machine quilting. Instead she was interested in hand quilting, but did not know how to get started on learning how to piece quilts by hand.

Her conversation was none of my business but I could not help myself, I had to be helpful. I introduced myself and told her all about English Paper Piecing (see my series of  posts – Adventures in Paper Piecing). I grabbed Dana who was nearby wandering about and had her join me in sharing the joy of English Paper Piecing (EPP) as an option to create a quilt by hand.

We even brought over the store sample of a EPP hexagon pieced pillow to show her an example of the cool stuff she could make:

After our intervention, the woman gleefully left the shop with a package of EPP hexie templates in hand. She plans to begin by practicing with fabric scraps (and hopefully she was going to follow our suggestion to check out YouTube videos on EPP).

Dana and I felt pretty darn proud of ourselves (either we helped someone on their road to a fun retirement hobby, or we got her to totally waste her money, ha!)

In addition to our miniature Central Oregon quilt shop hop, we also dined at some wonderful restaurant in Sunriver, Oregon.

After shop hopping and dining adventures, it was time to buckle down and piece our samplers!

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Blocks, Blocks, Blocks

We pieced a lot of blocks during our four day retreat from our Tula Pink All Stars fat quarter packs!

I’ve never fussy cut (selecting a specific section/motif in printed fabric) for a quilt block in my life, but inspired by Dana, I fussy cut the feature fabric for all my blocks.

BLOCKS BY DANA

Dana, who already pieced 10+ blocks so far since our annual Quilting Sister May Quilt Retreat (see posts Please Vote On The Color! and The Votes Are In!). She focused on piecing star blocks in honor of the name of the name of the fabric collection – All Stars (the title of the collection is based on the prints in the line are updated reproductions of some of Tula Pink’s most popular retired fabrics). Here are some samples of her blocks:

BLOCKS BY JUDY

My quilting sister Judy was very adventurous and did not follow any set type of block pattern. She had fun using an old quilt block sampler book and randomly selecting blocks to piece with her fabric. Below are some examples of her blocks:

BLOCKS BY ME

Now I did not want to do a quilt with a white background. Instead I wanted to only use the fabrics in the Tula Pink All Star collection. I decided to create a sampler called “Tula in a Box” and use two different block patterns that feature boxes or boxes inside of boxes.

Here are the first 12 blocks I completed using a “Box inside a box” block pattern:

Tentatively I am planning to set the blocks using the Tula Pink All Stars stripes fat quarters.

By the end of the retreat I completed 14 blocks including these two blocks in a different block pattern called Little Boxes:

I will feature more on my “Tula in a Box” quilt blocks in a future post after I complete additional blocks.

Again, here is the “design sofa” I mentioned in the first post, with all our blocks:

FUN WITH COMBINATIONS

A very fun part of making our blocks was deciding the color/fabric combinations:

Here is another one of Judy’s cool blocks that came out of fun with putting together fabrics:

We spent of a lot of time consulting with each other on combinations.

Okay, so dear readers, are you sick of looking at blocks and Tula Pink All Star collection fabric now? No worries, we are nearly at the end of this post series.

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Special Guest

On the third day of the retreat we had a special guest stop by – my friend Marie Bostwick – New York Times bestselling author.

Marie’s book The Second Sister is an upcoming Hallmark Hall of Fame Christmas Movie:  Christmas Everlasting that airs on the Hallmark Channel on November 24th and stars Patti LaBelle.

Here is more information on Marie’s blog Fierce Beyond 50: The Best News Ever.

If you get the Hallmark Channel be sure to watch the movie based on the awesome book!

After the quilt retreat my friend Laurie (who owns the vacation rental) stated that Marie Bostwick was the first famous person to ever visit her vacation townhome rental. I teased that I should have had Marie autograph one of the walls – ha!

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Postscript

As if we were not already having an immersive Tula Pink experience, one afternoon we watched on YouTube Episode 1 of the series Tula’s House:

This episode provided some insight into the brilliant and creative mind of Tula Pink and you get a tour inside her awesome studio and sections of her home.