2008 Retreat pictures

I have added a link to a slideshow of great pictures from last year courtesy of Debbie Woods who is a professional photographer. If you attended last year and haven't checked this out you should have a look as it is great. For newcomers please take a look and see the fun we had. Looking forward to a repeat performance for 2009. Click on the link and then choose your story and the password is quilt. Enjoy.

Where we stay

I have added a link to the website for Sunnyside Christian Centre at Sylvan Lake. If you have not been there before please go take a look. It is a beautiful location with lots of space and if weather co-operates you can go for a lovely walk by the lake. 

History of our quilt retreat

Our retreat started in 2003 when we went to Camp Caroline in June for the weekend, there were 17 people at this first retreat and it was great fun. Our only problem was that we did not have enough people to meet the minimum requirements and they were booked for 2 years in advance. So we moved to Rustlers at Sundre for Fall 2004 & 2005. In 2005 we had about 25 people so did 2 retreats 2 weeks in a row as they had only room for 16.

We Began to look for a new location for 2006 and we found our current Sunnyside Christian Retreat Centre which has been great. First year we had a room downstairs(which meant a lot of up & down) as we were sharing the centre with a group doing "stamping". In 2007 we requested a room upstairs and we ended up being the only group there and having the large central room to ourselves which was wonderful. We had close to 30 attendees that year so we asked how many we had to have to guarantee that we didn't have to share the facility so on we grow. It was so much fun we decided to add another day so we would have 2 full days of sewing and I put out the challenge to meet the 35 minimum people so we didn't have to share.

The challenge was met and we had 39 people from Thurs to Sunday in 2008. At this point we have expanded from our original local group to include people from BC, Ontario, NWT and all over Alberta which makes for a very fun & interesting group. It was at this point that we adopted the new name of Prairie Hens(formerly Fabric Fantasy Quilters) which everyone thought was a great name.

The next challenge arose when we had to change our date from the weekend after Thanksgiving which we had booked to the last weekend of the month but everyone has once again come through, thank you, as we currently have 37 registered for this year.  

So onward to Oct 2009 which will some sooner than we think, hopefully we get some summer before then...........

Welcome

Welcome to the NEW Prairie Hens quilt retreat blog. I will try to post updates, reminders, new ideas that need feedback.