It's Sunday so I'll be linking up to Slow Sunday Stitching and hope you visit Kathy's Quilts to see all the beautiful stitching that has transpired over the past week.

We are currently at Longstreet's RV park in Amargosa Valley, NV which is only about 50 miles from our home base.  We came over a day early as today is a bad weather day with high winds and rain headed this way.  For those of you not familiar with desert life, rain means flooded roads which we did not want to encounter.  Tomorrow I'll be attending my first ever quilt retreat which is being put on by my local quilt guild, Shadow Mountain Quilters.  I can't even begin to tell you how excited I am.  Below is a picture taken this morning from our RV.  On the other side of those mountains is Death Valley National Park which we visited a couple times last spring.

 



This week, I finished Rosette 2 of the La Passacaglia Quilt.  This is the first of three Rosette 2s that I need to make.  I have one other Rosette finished so I have a long, long way to go before I have the quilt finished.  I'm thinking I will probably hand quilt it when I've finished the top since all the Rosettes will have been hand pieced.

Over the last two days, I have prepped one of nine Rosette 4s that I will need.  I may be working on this Rosette during the retreat.  Here is what all the pieces look like as of today.

 

I also completed blocks 4 and 5 of The Splendid Sampler and now need to make Blocks 6 which came out Thursday and Block 7 which came out today.  I brought 4 small tubs of material with me so I should be able to get these made before the next one comes out next Thursday.

 Block 4

 Block 5



All 5 Blocks together

 

I also prepped several of the redwork blocks that I'll be stitching this month.  My goal was three blocks a month, but I'm going to step that goal up to at least 4 a month.  I want to have the quilt finished and hanging up by Christmas and there is sashing to add as well as quilting it.  I'll most likely be working on these today since it is too windy to be outside.

 

My iPhone was dead this morning and I'd love to throw it into the desert as I've hated it since I got it last year, but will see if it can be brought back to life.  We're thinking (hoping) that it is just the charging cord and not the phone itself as it was working fine last night.  I don't have an extra cord so will ask around at the retreat tomorrow to see if anyone has one I can borrow to see if that is the problem.

 

I have brought several projects to work on during the retreat.  The main one is using a Strip-It Bundle that I had purchased on sale last year.  I'm using a pattern (Spiral Strips) from the book "Jelly Roll Quilts".

I also brought fabric for a baby quilt and some moose material with a panel that I plan to make into a quilt that I will need to design.  I'm not going to use the panel as is, but will be cutting it into pieces and used somehow in the quilt.  So far I've been thinking of using bear paw squares.  Time will tell.

That's about it for now.  Happy Stitching.