Sew South - my experience

I thought I'd post about my experience with the Sew South Retreat.  If you follow me on Instagram, you know that I wasn't able to make it.  I was so, so sad.

When Jennifer announced Sew South, I was delighted.  It sounded exactly like what I'd enjoy, and plus I was dying to meet Jennifer of course!  I bought my ticket the day they went on sale.  I signed up to participate in swaps with the other ladies.  I relished in preparing my materials and supplies for the trip.  I even bought a brand new mini sewing machine (Janome Sew Mini) to take with me.

Then, a week or so before the trip, my husband was sent out of town for work.  And when I say out of town, I mean offshore on an oil rig.  He's a project engineer in the oil & gas industry, and he had to be present on the rig for the installation of some sort of thingamajig.  Long story short, I was supposed to fly out on a Wednesday, and he didn't come home until the following Saturday afternoon.  Bad news since we have a toddler and no one available to care for him with two parents out of town.  I'm gonna be honest here and say there were lots of tears.  I am grateful for my husband's fantastic job that allows me to stay home with our son and still have an expensive hobby, let alone fund a retreat trip for said hobby.  SUPER GRATEFUL.  But yeah, I cried about it.

Moving on.  When I still thought I was attending, I had signed up for swaps.  When I found out I couldn't go, it was way too close to assign my swap spots to someone else.  Plus, I was excited about the swaps.  I wanted to give my swap stuff to my partners!  Luckily, arrangements were made, and I shipped my items to Jennifer (thanks Jennifer!) who made sure they got distributed to their rightful owners.

Dana arranged for my secret sister to ship my items to me, and she did!  So, so nice.  It turned out to be Heather from Quilts in the Queue!!  I squealed with delight when I opened my package.  Wouldn't you?!  Look at all this wonderful loot!  Heather really picked things for me that were spot on and so personalized.  The star of the show here is the wonderful cover for my new mini sewing machine.  The Texas applique on linen combined with straight line quilting, all in my favorite colors?!  So beautiful.  The fabric bucket is adorable and the K applique is just icing on the cake.  Embroidery goodies from Sublime Stitching and even some Cinderella washi tape!  Gosh, everything is just so perfect.  SO. PERFECT.  Thanks so much Heather, you're the best!  You can read about Heather's side of the swap here.

And look at the charms I received back from the charm swap!  Amy (dotdotgoose on Flickr) was an absolute dear and offered to collect my set of swapped charms to send to me.  I haven't had a chance to look through the charms yet, but at a glance they're so wonderful!  Thanks ladies!

And Amy outdid herself with these extra goodies she sent.  So sweet!  It's like she knew I needed more notecards.  They'll be put to good use, Amy, thank you!

So there you have it, my experience with Sew South.  I may not have been there in person, but I still felt all the love.  If you're following along with the other Sew South review posts, one common thing that sticks out in all of them is about the PEOPLE.  I'm so sad I wasn't able to meet everyone in person, but I did get a little taste of how wonderful it must have been to be in a room with so many other kind, generous ladies.  Jennifer, I'll be anxiously waiting news about next year!  You know I'm going to do whatever I can to attend the next time around.