Visit to Ft Meyers-SW Fla Quilters’ Guild

• I had a most wonderful  and magical visit to the Southwest Florida Quilter’s Guild in Ft. Meyers last week. It was quite the eventful week. Read on.

Yup, it started with an uneventful flight save a few noisy young passengers but all the while Southwest was plotting to divert my luggage. Actually it was the luggage for all through passengers from Chicago Midway to Philidelphia to Ft. Meyers. As a result, there was a line of unfortunate passengers. According to my observation, it takes 15 minutes to process one claim–there were about 10 0f us. It was a wait made much more pleasant by Vickie, the Program Chair, who was  a delight.

My hotel was right on the Caloosahatchee River and gave me this fabulous view. Wind seemed to be ever present.

The hibiscus were prolific and in full and perfect bloom!

I envisioned digging my toes in the sand but it’s more about shells there.

I had the morning off before an evening lecture, so I got up early the next day and scheduled a walking tour…except walking tours only happen on the weekend-oops. So here is downtown at 10AM. Obviously this is not a get-up-early kind of town! There was no one out! I took my own walking tour and felt very conspicuous as the sole walker!

Things did start to happen around noon so I grabbed some fish tacos-oh they are good there! And some ceviche as an appetizer. I’m not ashamed to confess that I had fish tacos for dinner too. When in Rome…

A couple of interesting sights around town: note the door handles. Both Thomas Edison and later, Henry Ford, were early residents and had a major influence on the town.

These fellows were playing dominoes. This is just one of 23 statues by Edgardo Carmona that grace the town.

Statue of Ford, Edison and Firestone camping.  Not only were Edison, Ford and Firestone three of Fort Myers earliest and most famous winter residents, they made Fort Myers a destination point for recreational travel.

This is the first Banyan tree I’ve seen in person and it was magnificent and intriguing with all its intertwined vines. It was brought to Ft Meyers by Harvey Firestone and planted by Edison in 1925.

And more beauty-this gorgeous flowering yellow tree which I think is a Tabebuia tree.

I had time to visit the Davis Art Center where “Ethos”, an exhibit of silver gelatin prints and colloidan photography by London Amara was showing. Amara wrote “I value the unknown and the inexplicable because these are crucial and missing elements in our cultural understanding of ‘reality.’ ” It was provocative exhibit:

Forgive the glare-it was impossible to avoid.

Two days of workshops followed and I only took one photo the first day for Yes You CAN Free Motion Quilt!, but remembered to take photos of Start With a Square.

These ladies were enthusiastic and I had a full class of 20 students both days which was so encouraging to me.

The Start With a Square class is based on the concept of starting with a small piece of a large scale print placed on a quilt square of say, 18″. You start by completing the cut-off motifs, then add motifs in the surrounding space and finish with fills of your choosing. We learned 13 new fills during class and they were eager for more. It’s a newer class for me to teach and I love it! It is easy to accommodate widely varying experience levels, and in this case, I think every single student loved the class. Some of their work follows:

I am incredibly proud of the work done by this group and grateful that they allowed me to share. There were some brand new quilters and one very experienced award-winning quilter. It was a dream class for me as everyone was positive and supportive. We did a Show ‘n Tell at the end and I was just bursting with joy over the outcome. You can click on individual photos to see a better image.

And this is the crew that made the magic happen: Vickie, Jane and Lynn. It is a gift to have a crew of talent like this.

It was a beautiful sunset and I was on to another hotel for my 6AM departure. Thankfully I made it home on time! I’ll be linking up with Nina-Marie’s Off the Wall Friday where there is always good art and quilting.