New Home for Sewcations

Holiday Inn Express & Suites, Sturbridge MA New Home of Sewcations

The best part of being the owner of Sturbridge Quilting and Sewing Center was hosting Sewcations. An original concept, Sewcations are Sewing Vacations! For many years sewcations have been the place where stitchers can spend time with others that share their interest in all things fabric and fun. Sewcations are retreats where you can stitch for days but still sleep in your own bed. But some of my stitching friends live in New York and Connecticut so they stay at one of Sturbridge’s many hotels. Meals and lodging are on your own making sewcations a great value.

With the shop closed sewcation fans would not let it go. We did a test sewcation in July 2019. I hoped that I would get at least 15 attendees to meet expenses. After a few days of selling spots to my first sewcation at Holiday Inn Sturbridge I started to get nervous when my notifications from my website shop were blowing up my phone!  How exciting! I had to close registration at 30 attendees. Some were left out and others had so much fun they told their friends all about the fun. When I opened registration for January 2020 a made sure I reserved the whole Gateway Ballroom - just over 3,000 square feet! Again, I had to close registration after 45 stitchers made reservations. The hotel gives us a really great group rate on rooms so lots of the attendees stay at the hotel and make it a fantastic retreat. The picture above shows most of the sewing room setup for 49 stitching stations. Lots of elbow room, cutting and ironing stations and space to enjoy sewing away the weekend.

My schedule for Sewcations this year are posted on my website were you can purchase your seat and join in on the fun. Maybe I’ll see you there!

Here are a few more pictures from January 2020 Sewcation.

Reflecting Back on 2019 and Dreams for 2020

My Name is Abby

It’s hard to believe that in a week or so it will be 6 months that I’ve been doing the hardest job with the best benefits, Nanny-Granny.  After 10 years as the stay-at-home parent my son is back at school pursing his degrees. I closed my retail store with plans of continuing my online wool business and spending more time with my live-in grand babies but....I still get to do those things but I am also running a household of 5 kids, 3 adults, one dog (very cute dog) and doing all the shopping, cooking, cleaning and driving the kiddos where they need to be. In my parents day the job was called “Chief Cook and Bottle Washer”! My dad was Navy. Well I’m not washing bottles but I am washing about 12-15 loads of laundry a week. Hubby and I used to find it difficult to cook for two after having a large family. Now I shop at BJ’s where the carts are almost double to size of the regular grocery stores and the food bill is way up there! Hubby was the cook for many years when it was just the two of us but now I’m back at the stove and let me just say this....I don’t cook well after such a long break. It was an adjustment but I’m proud to say that today I’m making chicken pot pie with crust from scratch.  And it’s good! After a very bad pie crust experience when baking my son’s birthday pie in October (a funny story for another time) I’m proud to say “I’m good at pie crust”! My banana cream pie is amazing!

So why am I sharing my non-stitching story on my Stitching With Gina blog? Because like all stitchers I am many things. We all have so many other responsibilities in life but we are all still stitchers.  We just can’t stop finding small amounts of time during the day, week or sometimes month to stitch something. Days do pass with out even a thought of stitching. I have times when I just sit at my sewing machine and smile. Dreaming up projects and planning quilts gives my a sense of joy to carry me through the day to day chores. My best me is grandma and I’m still a stitcher with days of fabric joy. Balance. Right?

For the new year so many of us make plans for the year to come. Some stitchers promise to finish up UFO’s and some say they will reduce their stash while others plan to find more time to sew. For me this year I said that I will “live” more. More in the moment without life feeling like work. Slow down and find the joy. That’s a new year promise I won’t have a problem achieving. I stitch slower and enjoy the journey not pushing to finish. And I’ve taken up Line Dancing. Yup, dancing, moving and laughing at my missteps. Lots of fun.

Last year I started a scrap challenge to make 12 scrap quilts in one year. They didn’t need to be quilted, just tops measuring at least 60” x 70”. I posted some of them in this blog and almost finished 12 tops but I lost steam around August/September coincidently when my new role of Nanny-Granny started! I planned my 2020 challenge to be to quilt them. I have my longarm and it’s ready for me to get back to quilting and without a computer...I do miss having my Pro-Stitcher :( I used to do well with custom quilting but wow! If you don’t use it you do get really rusty.  Really! But I’m looking forward to getting back to machine quilting soon. I’m good with free-hand designs so I’ll prioritize my 50 or so tops and reduce the stack a little. Maybe over the summer I’ll give custom quilting a go. If not then, maybe when the youngest starts all-day kindergarten in September. Woohoo! I’ll have 6 full hours a day to find time to quilt more.I’ll missing seeing Frozen 4 times a day followed by Trolls and Trolls II a few dozen times but I’ll push through.

Whatever you plan for your new year, do it with joy and live in the moment. Sometimes we need a reminder of that.

I’ll try to post my scrap quilts soon. I have a few more tops that I haven’t shown you.
G