On Thursday I drove to Swindon ready for my sampler retreat. At the original registration for this event we were offered a choice of 2 out of 4 free classes that take place on the Thursday and Friday morning ahead of the official retreat start time. I chose a Huswif from Jane Greenoff and a Castle box from Cissy Bailey Smith. I was a late entrant to the retreat so was able to get the pre-stitching done for Jane’s class but not the Castle.
Both classes focuses on the finishing techniques and were very well planned. On the Thursday the vendors were all open as well and of course there was a huge array of beauties to feast my eyes on. I would like to say that I had great will power and bought nothing but that would be far from the truth. I bought linens from Swan Bay, Tabby Cat and Fox and Rabbit plus beautiful silk packs of 100/3 silk thread. I had also pre ordered a floor lamp and magnifier with UK fittings for when I am over here.
I was already happy with the sign in process for this retreat, there was no queue to register, just a table with your name badge on that you could just collect at anytime. On the Friday morning the main room was closed to allow the organizers to set it up ready for the retreat. The doors opened at 3.30 and we filed in and found a table to sit at. The tables sat 9 people and each table had your gifts sitting at your place and also each table was named after a Victorian school. We were on Rugby, which is in the midlands of UK.
The gifts were amazing but I was totally blown away by the main one, it was a Winterbury traveling stitching case in a beautiful raspberry pink color. Nicola says that this color was picked especially for our retreat and not available for general purchase, what a treasure! There were many other delightful items including a fat 1/8th of 36 count linen for our projects on Saturday.
I sat on a table with some lovely ladies and sat next to my friend Dottie (stitching Scottie on flosstube) we had 2 very interesting presentations that evening and also a break for dinner, the food was really good, 3 course and multiple choices to cater for all needs.
Back to the room at 8.30 on Saturday morning and we were presented with more gifts, today’s project, a stitching sampler that would have been done by the young girls as their first exercise as well as a lovely book to attach this and other samples of our work to. There was also a great tin with candies in it, they were all boiled sweets as that was authentic to the Victorian era including one of my favorites, rhubarb and custard.
Lunch was afternoon tea style, sandwiches, scones strawberry jam and clotted cream plus other cakes yum! More presentations and then dinner, after dinner we had a fun speaker. He was the official photographer on the Royal Yacht and had some great images and stories to share with us. He rounded out the presentation with a song that we all sang along with him.
Sunday morning was our final project, a representative of Victorian paper craft for us to assemble and fill with either the provided ephemera or stitching pieces.
We had a lovely Sunday roast for lunch, choice of meats ( or not for me) with all the trimmings. I have to say the standard of food was excellent. After lunch we had a presentation from Red Barn Samplers and we were also gifted a pattern and a beautiful reel of painters thread. What a great trip and I left late afternoon to go and visit my daughter again and await Rob’s arrival
