October 2018 – Bathurst bus trip

Saturday morning found nine Cherrybrook quilters bouncing out of bed bright and early and assembling at the McDonald’s overflow car park in Thornleigh before most truckers were awake.  Annie had a full program organised and we were determined to get on our way by 7am as planned.

Everyone chatted merrily as we motored up the mountains and before we knew it we had arrived at the Stitching Post in Katoomba.

We received a hearty welcome as we pulled up with the kettle freshly boiled ready for our arrival.  The Christmas room attracted several quilters while others explored the more traditional fabrics and patterns.  We packed our purchases into the bus and headed west towards Bathurst.

Sue ensured the trip went quickly as she passed out a questionnaire to be completed for use on the return trip.  There were many giggles as we tried our best to honestly answer the questions.  More about that later…. And we played a game of Quilters bingo!  There was much laughter as we were asked who had made their bed that morning – with our husbands still asleep in the bed! Kim & Elsa were the winners of this game.

All too quickly we arrived in Bathurst at our first destination of the day – Bathurst Fabric &  Trims.  This shop was a veritable Aladdin’s Cave of fabrics, threads & just about anything else you could possibly imagine.  Dawn hit the jackpot with her find of beautiful variegated embroidery floss.

Then to lunch at the  local RSL club where much they were awaiting our arrival with a table reserved especially.  With lunch completed we were eager to visit our final shopping destination.

 

Annie (Downs) was there to welcome the group at The Home Patch and she and her husband were happy to assist with colour selection, finding extra patterns & extra kits, and taking orders to make up and post even more kits as requested. No one was disappointed as we all made significant purchases from this shop.

All too soon it was tie to head homeward bound.  Sue had collated the answers to our questionnaires and then written down our answers and asked us to match the quilter to the answer.  This produced much laughter.  It was enlightening to see how we all described ourselves as quilters compared to how how families described us.  With answers like “old school”, “obsessive”, “messy” and “stitching bitch” it was a difficult task.  And as for our favourite part of quilting we had answers varying from the fabric selection to the ironing (yes, ironing) and presentation of the quilt.

All too soon we arrived back in Thornleigh and headed home to start stitching our new projects.