North to Alaska

Kaye and I have just just returned from a magic two and a half weeks to Canada and Alaska to go on the Stitchin' Heaven Alaskan Quilting Cruise. I attended this as an observer. We arrived in Vancouver a week before the cruise and did a Rocky Mountains tour.
The countryside is very beautiful. Vancouver is a beautiful city. There are flowers everwhere. I was very impressed with them. After this we took a bus to Seattle in the USA to join the cruise to Alaska.

The quilting cruise was run by Stitchin' Heaven from Texas. There were 48 ladies attending the classes (including five from Australia) with three instructors. They divided the group into two. I was previliged to meet Toni Whitney whose work I have admired and have I completed some of her designs. She is a wonderful lady and a great teacher. The two ports of call in Alaska, Juno and Skaway, both had beautiful quilt shops. It was very hard to resist buying heaps of fabric. I did manage to restrict myself and buy only a small amount. In Alaska Kaye and I did a rafting tour down one of the rivers. This was not white water rafting but gentley gliding down the river. We saw fantastic countryside and lots of eagles. We did manage to see three black bears on our trip. I took my sewing machine all the way to Alaska as a learning experience to carrying a machine on aircraft. The machine travelled well. I carried it as hand luggage and had no problems with Australian, Cadanian or US customs. The machine travelled in the overhead locker with out any problem.After the cruise we bused our way back to Vancouver for a couple of days before returning home. We sayed in a BnB which was in a central position to the main part of Vancouver. We walked to English Bay and met a local quilter sitting in the park by the bay hand quilting. She said that she often came there to quilt. Now that we are home I am concentrating on organising a UFO Quilting Retreat at Russellee on the 21st - 23rd October and our Australian Quilting Cruise next February. If you would like some information on either of these please contact me by email - russeldr@bigpond.com

Russellee is also having our second Scrapbooking Retreat for the year next weekend. This retreat filled very quickly and I have 12 ladies staying and three coming from Tumut each day. i will give a report on this after the weekend.

Until next time happy quilting and scrapping.

Dorothy