"My Time" Quilting Retreat

Last weekend I held my first retreat at the McCloud Mercantile and Hotel in McCloud, California. I hostessed my first two retreats in Chico last year but had difficulties with the facility. The minute I set foot in this beautiful building I knew I had found a permanent home for my retreats each year. Visit their website at mccloudmercantile.com to get more information and enjoy the story of the renovation.

The Great Room is 3,000 square feet and housed my retreaters. There were two large windows which gave us ample light and a beautiful view of the mountains and countryside. We had enough room for each quilter to have her own 6' table without sharing! Scott and Aubrey from the McCloud River Lodge (mccloudlodge.com) catered all of our meals in the sewing room and the food was amazing...the only complaints were that there was too much of it! My youngest daughter, Emily Zimmerman, is a fantastic pastry chef and she provided our yummy, over-the-top desserts Friday and Saturday nights. Thank you Miss Em! (A picture of her demonstrating for a visiting class is included above).

The Mercantile has 10 exquisitely renovated hotel rooms and each was a work of art unto itself. We all had to run around and check out each others rooms. There are also numerous other beautiful small hotels and B&B's that housed a good number of the quilters too.

The retreats are designed for nothing but RRQing...rest, relaxation and quilting! Each person brought whatever projects they wanted to work on and they could quilt 24/7 if they wished. Franci Lamb, our amazing masseuse, provided private massages all weekend long and we celebrated birthday's too...Nancy Selby is showing off her birthday crown!

My daughter, Jenny Skibo, deserves a big round of applause as my amazing webmaster and photographer. The pictures on this blog are mine (except for the groupie picture at the top). Jenny's pictures will be updated as a slide show on the "Retreat" section within the next couple days. Jenny is a professional photographer, webmaster to many quilters' and quilt guilds' websites and of course I highly recommend her! If you want to get a feel for her work, and see my amazing granddaughters too, visit her website at http://passionforlifephotography.blogspot.com.

Soooo, if you are ever in need of a wonderful get away, I highly recommend the small town of McCloud...whether you come to my retreat or not. The town welcomed us with open arms and they were excited that we plan on coming back for years to come!