I may have mentioned that tickets for this event go on sale this Saturday, 6 October, at midday UK time.  £200 for a weekend ticket (no day passes this year).  The weekend runs from lunchtime 19 July to lunchtime 21 July and is once again at Baden Powell House.  There may be additional quilting-related group sight seeing activities in London on the Friday morning and Sunday afternoon as well.

We’re also planning “Quilt Market” on the Friday night, a place for you to sell your hand made items, maybe have a de-stash and we’re hoping to get some fabric shops with stalls there too.  A fun, social, fabric and gift buying and selling evening.

So what’s new this year?  The basic format of the event is the same but spread over three days to allow us more time to breathe and actually enjoy the event.  We’re planning on having more attendees, more classes and more activities than last year.  We’re planning the class list to cover some classic quilting techniques (improv piecing, foundation paper piecing, English paper piecing, hand appliqué, strip piecing) and widening beyond that to cover other areas such as dress making, fabric printing, crochet and embroidery.   We’ve got many of the same teachers as last year (Katy, John, Tacha, Brioni, Lynne, Lu and Kerry) and some new ones too who will be announced very soon.

We’ve changed the format of many of the classes in response to your feedback from last year that you wanted more time to hang, relax and chat and many of the classes will now be designed to be relaxed, chatty, sociable, friendly, drop in, drop out to encourage even more mixing and making of new friends.

The ethos of the weekend is the same as last year.  To quote Lilo in Lilo and Stitch, “Ohana means family.  Family means no-one gets left behind.”  We don’t want cliques and exclusive groups and cool gangs.  We want everyone to mix, make new friends, involve people who might have come alone and make it a fun weekend for every single person who comes.

And, most important of all, I will once again be wearing my big pants.  Retreat isn’t retreat without big pants.