Workshop in Progress - 3/9

I went on retreat a couple of weeks ago with seven of my closest friends.  And it was....amazing, awesome, productive, refreshing, renewing and so much more.  I grew up as a bit of a tomboy and as a result had always had very few women friends.  As a kid and young adult, I related to more traditionally male interests than female.  I don't care a lot about makeup, fashion, jewelry, things like that.  I love cars, power tools, sports.  But somehow, over the last few years (coinciding with my quilting interest....)I began to develop friendships with women.  Amazing women, caring women, funny (okay hilarious) women.  And it's a wonderful thing.  The four days I spent with these seven women were just what I needed.  I laughed until I was crying several times over the long weekend.  And I got a lot of sewing done.  A lot!  We stayed at a very cute little place we have gone to several times now.  It's called The 1890's House and it's very close to DFW, making it a perfect getaway.  Everything you might need is very close by, but yet you feel as if you are way out in the country.

I spent most of the weekend working on my Mariners Compass Quilt.  Its a Kaffe Fasset quilt from his book Museum Quilts.  The quilt went from this stage to this:

It's already huge and I still need to put one more border on it.  All in all, I think I got a lot done in four days.  I posted about this quilt a few weeks ago on the Workshop in Progress and was debating whether or not to try and quilt it myself.  Well, I'm about 99% sure that I am going to quilt it here on my Bernina.  I have put so much work into this, that I just want to see it through to the end and I want it to be all my work.  I have some ideas in my head about a pattern to quilt it with, but am very undecided on that aspect of it right now.  Thoughts?  It's pretty busy, so I think the quilting will be secondary and won't really need anything very elaborate.