Superior School of Threadology - Day 1

Meet and greet. There are 60 of us, and we hail from England, Canada and the U.S. Temple-Michelle, the School Co-ordinator, greets us all with huge goody bags of threads and a comprehensive booklet titled "Superior School of Threadology".

Temple-Michelle is on the left. My friends Jean Boyd and Anita Zobens are in the foreground.

Heather Purcell (aka Mother Superior)

Heather told me the following story about the beautiful quilt hanging at the front of the room: the quilt top was designed and sewn together in TWO days by Blanche Young (in her '80s at the time). This quilt was one of about 60 quilts made by Blanche that year. She uses orange fabrics in her quilts because she was told early in her career never to use orange in a quilt. Heather had the top machine quilted by another friend, and it is one of her most treasured quilts.

Bob Purcell lead the morning with his Thread Therapy seminar. Bob is a thread expert, and despite the fact that I've been in the business for 20 years, almost everything he discussed was new information to me. His talk was outstanding.

Lunch was fun; meeting new friends such as Margaret Illions from Las Vegas. Margaret kindly answered many questions from us Canadians about what it was like to live in her city. Her company is called Quilt Art & Beyond.

Margaret Illions on the left and Anita Zobens on the right.

Cindy Needham, Superior Teacher

Cindy was our afternoon instructor. Her class is called Open Thread Bar. Cindy specializes in using antique linens in her quilts, which are heirloom quilted and beaded with fresh water pearls. They are exquisite. We played with many different kinds of Superior threads and tried different techniques of machine quilting.

Tomorrow I'll post about the Show and Tell we had the first evening.

Visit to Scrap Apple Quilts

I traveled to St. George, Utah today with my friends Jean Boyd (Patterns by Jean Boyd) and Anita Zobens (Cotton Mill Threadworks). We are registered in the Superior School of Threadology for the next few days.

We flew into Las Vegas , then took the St. George Shuttle through spectacular desert country (does anyone know what a talus cone is?). We arrived at our hotel, dropped the luggage, and took Bob Purcell's (owner of Superior Threads) offer of a ride to a wonderful quilt shop - Scrap Apple Quilts!

Our shopping spree begins!

We found the staff were cheerful, warm and welcoming to us tired travellers. The selection of batiks was outstanding. Scrap Apple is celebrating it's birthday, and had a huge sale on. My favorite find was rick rack! And yes, I bought lots.

After a happy 1 1/2 hours in the store, the owner Shirley Baptist offered to drive the 3 of us back to our hotel. Talk about Utah hospitality! We really appreciated her kindness.

Tomorrow we begin the School of Threadology, and my next post will tell all...