I Had A Glorious Weekend

This past weekend I attended our Quilt Pocket Jamboree at the Heritage Hotel & Conference Center in Southbury, CT. This is the first time I have spent four days with quilters and all I can say is WOW! What a great weekend I had. I came home with way more items than I left with and I didn't spend a lot of money! Here are the goodies that came home with me.

First up - I'm always kidding DH that he needs to stop bringing home bags from the conferences he attends. Well, now he can kid me about bags. I came home with four new bags. Three were gifts and one came from a quilt shop we visited.

We did an Ugly Fabric Swap. Everyone started with one yard of ugly fabric. We tore it half, tossed half on our shoulder and passed half around the circle while music was playing. When the music stopped we tore the piece we had in our hands in half, tossed half on our shoulder and started passing the remaining piece around. We repeated this process several times. When we were down to a piece about 8 x 8 inches we took the first half yard of fabric and gave it to the person on our left. The fabric we had became our ugly fabric collection and our challenge is to make something out of all the fabrics. My collection is below. I actually like the brown teacup fabric. I don't know what I'm going to make yet.

Everyone brought a gift for everyone else. Here are some of the gifts I got. There's a Moda travel bag, a beverage wrap, needle book, two scissor fobs, a small holder for needle and thread, a needle case and a small wallhanging.

Here's the patterns I now have to work on. I'm excited about these patterns. The stitchery pattern is a Brownwyn Hayes pattern. I love the coffee cup pattern. The redwork patterns will go well with my redwork alphabet blocks.

One of the women gave everyone a pillowcase. She also had me as a teacup swap partner so I got two. Aren't they gorgeous?


Another women gave us teddy bear panels with coordinating strips to make a wallhanging. These will look good in my kitchen.

Here are the books I brought home. I won the Quilts, Quilts, Quilts book. The other books I bought. Triangles on a Roll was only $5. It's full of designs for using TOARs. I'm excited to try some of them. The Empty Nesters Cookbook is just what I've been looking for since DS moved out. It's hard to cook for two. And I couldn't turn down the Coffee Cafe book. It's chock full of coffee history and recipes.

The next two pictures show the fabric I received. There's an assortment of FQs, nickel squares, 6 inch squares and some scraps. The multi-colored item in the bottom left is a bookmark. It has coins in it to act as weights to hold the book open. The sports fabric will make a great wall hanging or baby quilt.


And, last, but no least, here are the rest of the goodies: two coffee cups, a magnetic pin dish, chimes, a note holder, pin cushion, glass wrap, small journal, sticky notes, a Canada pencil, a paperweight, a quilter's pin and a Dunkin Donuts gift card.


To say I am overwhelmed at the generosity of quilters is an understatement. I would never have imagined I would receive all these wonderful gifts.

Tomorrow I will share photos and stories of what we did.