| Deer Skye Quilt and Home Design

Gather your sewing quilty friends and invite them to your own quilt retreat. With a little planning and some creativity, you can come up with your own strategy for making your quilt retreat productive, fun, and memorable sewing and quilting with your friends.

Here is a list to get started with:

Decide who and how many people you will invite.
What are your venue options for hosting your quilt retreat?
Figure out a date for your quilt retreat.
Will you teach a project or have friends help out teaching or have everyone bring quilting projects to work on
Have a theme for your retreat.
Create whimsical invitations.
Supplies You Will Need.
Food for the retreat.
Put together a swag bag to give each of your friends.

Isn’t it about time you added some extra fun to your quilting adventures? A self planned quilt retreat may be just the ticket to do just that. Once you get in the flow of planning your quilt event, you will come up with all kinds of fun ideas that your friends are sure to love. Especially if you invite your peeps that love to quilt. I have covered this topic before but wanted to revisit it because you can absolutely have a 1 day quilt retreat. My other post shares more in depth what you can do if you are holding a quilt retreat away from your home and for more than a day. What Is A Quilt Retreat? What a fun way to gather with friends and family.

Who To Invite

When planning a quilty retreat, you need to keep a few things in mind when it comes to inviting people. Start brainstorming as you create your invites list. Which friends would you like to invite? Why not invite friends that don’t know how to quilt but you want them to pick this hobby up. Keep your list manageable. Your list may include family or and friends that you think would enjoy getting together to sew and quilt. Keep your list manageable and start fairly small probably four to six people.

Where Will You Hold Your Gathering

This is where you can get really creative.

Will you hold your gathering in your home?

Rent an Arbnb?

Gather in a nearby community center?

Rent a room at an event center?

Rent a cabin?

Rent a room on a University campus?

These are all good possibilities. You could charge each guest and yourself a fee if you don’t stay in your home for the Quilt Retreat and your guests would share the cost of the venue. No need to get really fancy in your choice of venue. You can make a family room or living space in your home a fun comfy place to sew and quilt as a group. This is cost effective and will allow you and your group to spend money somewhere else in your quilt retreat.

Save The Date

Grab your calendar and pick a date for your Quilt Retreat. You may want to check with close friends and family first to see if you can find a date that will work everyone you want to invite. Or just give it a go and see what happens.

Consider sewing a simple patchwork pillow.

Find A Project

Come up with an easy project for your quilting guests to make. There are many free patterns out there and you can snag one for free! Take a look at a couple of my freebies What Can I Make Out Of Quilt Squares? Quick Sew Woodland Animal Checkerboard Game easy to make and can be made from any two fabrics. You could cut and sew at least the topper in one day. Or how about a cute pillow that you could also finish in a day? Free Swiss Flag Patchwork Pillow Pattern And 6 Ways To Decorate With It. Another pillow you could make using patchwork and slow stitching, that works for the winter months is my Ho Ho Snowflake Block. Just enlarge the size of the quilt block. Create a pillow topper with it. Add a backing and fill it with premium fiber fill from Wal mart. This too you could complete in a day Quilt Retreat. You put the kits together once you know who wants to make the project you choose and each person pays for the kit. Just put the info in your invitation. A conversation we will have soon in this post.

Have A Theme

If you are going to hold your quilt retreat around a holiday, it would be easy to have a theme to your retreat. If it isn’t around holiday time, you can come up with a fun theme to tie everything in together.

Here is a really rough draft of an invitation done on Canva just to give you the gist of an idea.

Invitations

Creating an invitation isn’t as daunting as you might think. Here are some ideas for ways you can make one.

Create an invitation on your computer. There is a fun online site called The Graphic’s Fairy. You can use her graphics most of which are vintage and free to use.
Make your own invitation from cardstock, lace, fabric, etc…
Purchase some invitations at your local Walmart and customize them to fit your gathering.
Canva is a fun place to create invites. It’s free and there are lots of possibilities there!

Figure out all the various supplies you will need for your retreat.

Consider The Supplies You Need

Wherever you choose to have your retreat you will need to think about a few things. You will need tables, chairs, outlets, etc…You can request that your guests bring their own sewing machine, scissors, pins, etc…fabric kits ready to go. Your quilty friends can cut out their own project. Just have fabric, batting, whatever is needed to do a quilt topper or pillow ready to go for each guest.

Food

There are several ways you can do food. You can have it catered. You can fix it ahead of time yourself. You could do potluck. Or all of you could have a certain time frame that you all go out to lunch. Remember to have some beverages on hand for your guests as they sew. Have snacks at the ready for your guests too. Then you all can snack throughout the day. It would be a great idea to have your guests bring a favorite snack to share with all your guests. Include this information in your invitation.

Swag Bag

Have some cute swag bags for each of your guests. You can put sewing notions and a few fancy treats in them. Maybe make a pin cushion for each of your guests. Maybe something like this DIY A Cute Cottage Pincushion . Include needles for applique or slow stitching if you end up doing any. Some Perle Cotton thread for each guest would be nice and maybe a thimble and a pair of small sharp scissors. You cauld even include a small container of lotion or lip salve. With careful planning, you can hostess a fun get together that maybe will become a yearly event. Your friends or family can take turns hosting.

Host Your Own One Day Quilt Retreat