Taking a private retreat

Last Friday, in the middle of the first snow storm of the year, sweet hubby carried me off to a little getaway. We have friends who have a timeshare, but they weren’t able to use it this year, so he conspired with them and we ended up with a week away in French Lick, Indiana.

Sweet hubby wanted this to be a little private retreat for us, and he told me to pack up my Janome, my table, and some projects to work on. As soon as we arrived, I set up a little sewing center next to the couch. We spent the first two days hidden away in our little condo, watching SyFy and old movies on DVD, snoozing (him), snacking, reading (me), and sewing (me!). The temperatures were in single digits, so there wasn’t much incentive to adventure outside our door anyway.

The first task I did was to block my push-up #2 that I was working on last month. If you remember, I had hurriedly attached the facing without I blocking it, so naturally I wasn’t happy with the way it wouldn’t lay flat. I removed the facing on either side so I could block it properly. I found an out of the way corner of the condo, spread out the quilt and sprayed it down. After smoothing it out, I left it there to dry.

Next I finished quilting the background on “Acceptance.” It was wonderful having uninterrupted time to quilt. Once that was done, I found another corner of the condo to block it. Then, I went back to “Push-up #2: Growth.” I re-measured and re-trimmed it, and then I reapplied the facing. I spent the afternoon watching old movies with sweet hubby while I hand stitched the facing in place. Lastly, I added the sleeve and Push-up #2 was complete except for the label, which I’ll do once we get home.

Monday, I turned my attention back to “Acceptance.” A couple more old movies and I had it trimmed, bound, and the sleeve sewn on. Wonderful! Now it was time to play a bit.

I didn’t know anything about the area before we came. What a wonderful surprise it was for us! French Lick was built up around some mineral springs. In 1901 and 1902, two massive resorts were built. In the following century they went through various ups and downs. More recently they were completely refurbished. What amazing buildings. While our timeshare was on the adjoining property, we were still able to explore all the common areas that are open to the public. It was an extra bonus that everything was beautifully decorated for Christmas besides and every area had its own Christmas decorating theme.

The French Lick Resort is absolutely massive. It is lavishly decorated and full of Art Nouveau touches. About a mile away is the West Baden Hotel which is built around a 200 ft, 110 ft high, free-standing dome. The dome is surrounded with six floors of hotel rooms, all overlooking the dome. The floors are paved with 14 million hand-laid mosaic tiles. Those mosaics would make some wonderful quilts, don’t you think? I forgot to bring my camera the first day, so we had to go back a second day to get pictures. Good planning, wasn’t it?

Back at the condo, I worked on preparing this blog post and I wrote an article (more on that another day). Then, finally, I got out some fabric and started cutting and sewing some strips for a new quilt in the Push-up series. Hold on! I’ll blog about that one very soon. I’m glad to be home. I just need to finish unpacking and I need to set up my machine again so I can get down to business.