Canter's Cave Wrap-Up - Part 4

I have been able to stretch the fun of quilt retreat out over 4 days! It's as if I can't bear to leave it and move on. Today's focus is on all the extras, and we had plenty. From shopping at Guhl's in Jackson (a discount store with a huge fabric section), and food and goodie bags, we were certainly pampered in one way or another.

The first night of retreat we ate a popular local restaurant called Arch and Eddie's. It is what I would consider a bit upscale, but still quite reasonably priced and extremely varied in its menu. On Tuesdays the special is $2 off on all burgers. So that top picture is my dinner, cheeseburger and sweet potato fries. Yum-o!

The strawberry pie was Susan's contribution to the food we had on hand at the lodge. Her mother is a world-class pie baker, and we frequently get to be the recipients of her fantastic creations. This was as mouth-watering as it looks.

The bottom picture is a typical in-house meal. We put out a variety of sandwich fixings, snacks and desserts and make whatever we are in the mood for. There was fruit salad, black bean salsa, pimiento cheese spread, ham salad, all manner of chips and munchies. We certainly did not go hungry.

Last week you saw the tower of little fabric baskets I made for each retreat participant. I hadn't yet shown the goodies I included in my little baskets, so the picture above is a representation of my stash. I used a variety of bite-size Easter candy, along with a single-serving of Nutella and crackers, and a pack of sticky notes. Not much, but enough. 

Above are the goodies presented by Laura and Terry. Laura wrapped the cloth labels in the ribbon on the starch bottle and gave one to each of us. Clever! And Terry had a little box of sewing band-aids and a package of sewing tissues.

And the over-achiever of the group, Jan, presented each of us with this treasure trove. She works off of themes (a retired elementary school teacher) - can you guess? The theme was chevrons. So we had a large chevron re-usable bag, and inside were all these items! A chevron goodie bag of one-serving packages of popcorn, cookies and crackers. A bag of goldfish in rainbow colors. A jar of jelly beans arranged by color and topped with a piece of chevron fabric. A quilting coloring book. A zipper bag that she made and in it are colored pencils (among other things) for the coloring book. And, finally, drum-roll please, over on the far right is a zip-lock bag of a quilt kit ready to sew - solids for a chevron quilt! Jan is over-the-top when it comes to themes and goodies. I have been on the receiving end of much of her generosity. What a sweetheart she is!

And now for the shopping. A store in Jackson - Guhl's Country Store - is an outlet for all manner of household items, some food, and decorative items. The link above is to their Facebook page; they don't have a website. Can you imagine fabric shopping when the price is $3.99/yard? And we are talking about some really nice fabrics - not all, but quite a lot is just overage yardage that fabric companies needed to unload to make room for new stuff. Here are my purchases, and you can be sure that most of the others had equally impressive purchases, too.

These prints all look like they will be useful with plans I have in my mind for a great-granny square quilt. the possible exception is the red and black shirting on the bottom, which might instead get matched up to some red quilts I have swirling around in my mind.

The prints above are my inspiration for an EPP quilt. I will show the exact plans later, and I certainly have way, way more yardage here than my quilt will require (good stash builders, though!). It is supposed to evoke a look of water or cool waterfalls. Eh? Maybe? Well, I will be revisiting this soon, so bear with me.

Finally, I bought a small amount of black, white and OU green for a wall hanging that DD2 has been wanting. I have a pattern (thanks to Pinterest!) and it isn't large, so I should be able to get right on this ASAP.

That totally wraps up our 2017 version of Canter's Cave Quilt Camp. It was a wonderful 3-day get-away, and I am already looking forward to next year!

Happy Quilting, Friends!