I go to a quilt retreat every April with friends from guild. I go to Quilt Odyssey at Hershey PA every July with my friend Katie. And some quilting friends and I rent a shore house in Ocean City NJ every September and we use the dining room as our sewing room all week long!
I find that I like to have simple sewing to do when i am with other people; nothing complicated, nothing fussy, nothing that I need to really concentrate on-- just nice simple straight sewing.
The rest of the year, I sew alone here, most mornings at the crack of dawn. I get up at around 5:30, let the dogs out, make the coffee, and start sewing. I save my difficult patterns or complicated techniques or anything new for these early solitary sewing sessions.
I get a few blocks made or a row sewn together before I have to face the real world. The real world for me is other people's quilts; I'm a longarm quilter. I just feel better when I have spent an hour sewing on my own project before I spend the day quilting on someone else's.