There and Back Again

I've just returned from St George, Utah where I attended a Superior Threads Seminar. I left London's Heathrow Airport during the biggest snow storm in 18 years. The first stop was L.A. with Palm trees and sunshine and my first view of the Pacific. Then on to St George in a little prop plane that landed on the top of a big red rock plateau. Looking at the blue sky against the terracotta rock, I expected to see cowboys and indians comin' round the bend any moment.

The Seminar was fantastic. 60 people from the States and Canada attended. Coming from England, I travelled the farthest! There were professional long armers, and free-motion quilters as well as art quilters, shop owners and thread distributors. It was great fun to meet so many different people from all over who share a passion for quilting. There seemed to be the perfect mix of lectures, hands on activities and demonstrations as well as time to mingle and get to know each other. For the hands on classes and demos we were split into two groups of 30 so we were all able to see what was going on and had lots of personal attention from the superb teachers.

I've read the education pages at the Superior Threads website and also attended Bob's lectures when he came over to the Festival of Quilts last summer. Even so, I still had so much more to learn. The Seminar was like a mid-winter tonic - just what the doctor ordered. I've tried new things, gained insight and experience from the other quilters as well as the teachers. I've come back with a real enthusiasm to get quilting again. I'm so much more confident in knowing what thread to use on various projects. We also had this amazing demo from Heather about ways to go about choosing thread to go with various fabric. This was possibly my favourite. I now feel empowered to use colour in new and exciting ways.

All in all it's too much to cover in just one post. So I'll be picking out some of my favourite parts of the seminar and going into a bit more detail over this next week.