2011 Mexican Riviera

We are SEW sorry you missed this exciting cruise that featured classes with Joyce Becker, Janet Bottroff, Eva Holen, Heidi Lund, Lisa Moore, Dodi Poulsen, and Jackie Wolff as well as lectures with Earlene Fowler, Joyce Becker, Janet Bottroff, Jackie Wolff, and Kathy Scott; Ports of Call included San Diego, California; Puerto Vallarta, Mexico (overnight); and Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. The weather was gorgeous - warm and sunny - the break many of us needed after a very long rainy or snowy winter we were anxious to escape! Check out our group photo (taken in Cabo San Lucas as we sailed off into the sunset) and notice how many of us were wearing sunglasses - and almost 40 in the group completely forgot to attend the photo session because they were having so much fun participating in the cruise line activities!

Ken’s Sewing Center located in Muscle Shoals, Alabama was our JANOME sewing machine vendor and provided the new Horizon 7700 for all of our machine piecing classes!! Bluebird Quilts and Gallery in Grand Terrace, California provided an incredible onboard Quilt Shop and most of us went home with a lot more fabric, patterns, and kits because of the selection of cruise themed items selected by the shop owner, Janet Bottroff, to take on the cruise. Debra Gabel of Zebra Patterns worked with Janet to create an incredible fabric panel for the cruise. Over $17,000.00 in gifts and door prizes were distributed or awarded during this exciting cruise including two $600.00 gift certificates and four $200.00 gift certificates for future travel, a Janome sewing machine (won by Lori Spring), a Sulky thread collection (won by Susan Trzcinski, the cruise memory quilt (won by Fara Wilson), a Baby GO! cutter set (won by Vada Besch), to name just a few with so many prizes that EVERY quilter on the cruise won at least ONE prize in addition to the opportunity to win prizes during lectures, classes, and Earlene's presentations!! Several of the "non-quilting" guests sailing in our group were big prize winners as well!!

During the cruise, Earlene read excerpts from her soon to be published book Spider Web - amusing many who discovered our quilting/cruise coordinator and the onboard quilt shop owner were featured as characters in the book! Joyce Becker and Janet Bottroff amazed everyone with the trunk shows of their spectacular quilts while Jackie Wolff's lecture on friendship quilts gave everyone fabulous ideas for creating lasting mementoes of the cruise as well as quilts for friends and family members. Almost everyone completed at least one quilt project in time for the show and tell event on our last day at sea - some finished ALL of their projects. Although all of the class kits were complete and ready to work on at the start of classes, Heidi Lund's kit literally "knocked everyone's socks off"!! Jackie Wolff and Dodi Poulsen added extra "yummy treats" to their kits for the quilters in their classes (another reason some of us went home with a few extra pounds on our frames - although the fresh baked cookies every day and the ever present box of candy at the Quilt Camp at Sea reception desk didn't help either!!).

There were a lot of tears shed at the farewell show and tell - and at the pier when we started departing the ship at the end of the cruise - but knowing that many of us will be together again in less than a year on either the 2012 Mexican Riviera or Hawaii cruise (or BOTH cruises in the case of quite a few of us!!) seemed to help make the farewells less of a heartache. There is nothing in the world more rewarding than sharing a cruise with a group of quilters!!

We will add additional photos to the photo gallery of this cruise shortly - we would like to thank Janet Bottroff for sharing the photos she took during the Benni Harper Block of the Month Show and Tell events. These quilts were created by quilters sailing on the cruise - as you can see, we had a VERY creative group of quilters on this cruise!