Fancy Works Retreat

Over the weekend I attended my first Fancy Work's Retreat. Fancy Work's is a stitching store in Bloomington, Indiana. It's about 3 hours southwest of here. I've shopped there several times when I get close to the area. Several ladies that attend the Hoosier Stitcher Retreat also attend this one and they asked me to please consider going. Boy I'm glad they did. We really had a great time. We headed down Thursday. On the way we stopped at the store of course...

I didn't do any shopping.....Oh I mean I did a TON of shopping haha.
Let's see if I can explain it all haha.
Tiny Modernist set Dragon Biscornu, Mermaid Biscornu and Unicorn Biscornu
Erica Michael's Defining Winter and Defining Spring
Jeannette Douglas Stitching by the Sea
Hands on Design Woof Block and the pins for it
Needle Bling Designs To the Beach
Scarlett House There's Probably...
Two Mill Hill Kits Mom picked out Beach Ball and Flip Flops
Pieces of Fabric for the Woof Block and for Adjust Your Sails. Beads for Garden Biscornu.

We arrived safe and sound at the hotel and got all settled in. A fellow Hoosier Stitcher found me a seat at her table and I got my stuff all setup. Our room included all our meals except for two but we just stayed put all weekend and never left the hotel. When we got back from our first meal there was our first goodie bag...

Wonderful mesh bag, needle slider (with a needle minder and several Pat Carson needles inside), set of different sizes of needle threaders which was hilarious because I almost bought one, pair of neat scissors with a cover on the end which is so nice because you don't have to worry about it catching on your stuff, and a magnet pick up stick for finding lost needles. What a goodie bag! I got busy stitching on a Easter freebie. My goal was to finish it before going to bed. I was successful...

A freebie from Alitadesigns I stitched it on a scrap piece of blue Aida. It was nice meeting the new ladies around the room that I hadn't met before. There was a total of 61 people attending including Mom, Jeremiah and two husbands. There were even a few from the PALs Retreats at Myrtle Beach that has now been canceled.

Thursday we got another goodie bag which was a Donna Sharp bag. How nice. We also got a cute little battery powered lamp/magnifier. I won a giveaway for a bell pull kit and neat wooden needle holder. I also found a plastic project case and a mermaid pattern on the free table. Here are all my free goodies together...

Friday I started another Easter freebie. I finished it before bed again...

This one was available on Durene Jones Facebook page where she gives away freebies every Friday. Love the cashmere stitch background even though it was a pain to get into the fabric. I kept miscounting and there is a lot of color changes to make it look like it does. I used a spare piece of yellow Aida. We also played a fun round a stitching related bingo. There were other giveaways too. We had two classed during the retreat as well. Friday was Kathy Barrick. Here is our class piece and all the goodies we received from her...

Saturday the class was taught by Jeannette Douglas and it was fantastic. Look at our goodies...

We received a beautiful pattern set and everything to finish it. Here is the finished model of the set...

I got a little start on the tray while the class was going on...

It has all silks and beautiful specialty stitches so it was a fun stitch but needs a lot of focus so I put it away and pulled out Dragon Eye for a bit and got 400 stitches into it...

This is my table mates and me with Jeannette Douglas...

 It was a really nice retreat and I have next year's on my calendar. I really hope to attend again. I have posted several more photos on my Facebook if you want to check them out.

Now I have finally explained my weekend. Last night we were tired when we made it home at dinner time. I turned on my laptop and the hard drive quit working. Luckily we had saved my old hard drive from before I upgraded in November so we were able to pop that one in. Of course that meant I spent most of today doing updates and fixing my old drive so the stupid thing would work. I hope everyone has a great week. I will be starting the April pieces first and then all my new stuff is calling me. Especially that Woof block from Hands on Design.