Quilting Retreat – Part 1

I am going to have to break up the post about our quilting weekend into several posts.  I took about a hundred pictures, both of the facilities and of the quilting.

So I thought I would start with the facilities.  We stayed at a place in Danville, California called San Damiano.  It was built in 1961 as a retreat.  The buildings are Spanish style and are nestled into the hillside above the town of Danville.  It is very peaceful and quiet.  Just the environment you want when you are on a retreat. 

The buildings consist of a chapel, a dining hall, meeting rooms and guest rooms.  They are built around a central courtyard that is just gorgeous – beautiful roses, columbine, English daisies, azaleas ~ the list of flowering plants could be a post itself.   It rained all day on Saturday, otherwise I would have more garden pictures.

The buddings are all connected with fences with signs on all the gates reminding everyone to close the gates to keep the deer out.  Outside the gates there are 55 acres of other gardens, walking paths, ponds and private meditation areas.  Every where you go there are benches where you can sit and contemplate. 

I almost slid down a muddy hill trying to get this picture.   That would have been fun.

We were set up in a large conference room where my sister and niece had set up seven long tables around the perimeter of the room for each quilter.  We sat with our backs to the walls so we could face each other and talk.  In the center of the room there was a large cutting table set up.

I’ll post pictures of the room and talk about the quilting tomorrow.

Our guest rooms were just outside the conference room.  The rooms were plain but all either had a beautiful view of the courtyard or the green hills behind.

Three meals a day are included when you stay at the retreat.  They are served buffet style in the dining hall.  The food was simple and probably the best meal was breakfast.  We actually never did stay for lunch.  We ventured out on Saturday and left before lunch on Sunday.  The food was nourishing and plentiful but maybe not the most exciting culinary experience.  There are a lot of nice restaurants just a five minute drive down the hill though (meals are included in the price of staying there but it’s so reasonable anyway that you wouldn’t feel too guilty about skipping a meal or two).

Everyone there was so friendly and seemed genuinely happy to have us there and was interested in what we were doing.  Several times a friar would peak his head into the door of our conference room and ask if he could come in and see what we were working on.

We’ve decided to make this an annual event and are already making plans to book our visit for next year.  San Damiano is a very popular place so you pretty much have to make your plans early.

Tomorrow – we’ll get to the quilting!  I actually almost finished something.