The Amish Intercourse Experience

Well we flew in to Philadelphia four days ago and picked up our hire car and set off for Intercourse, Pennsylvania. The snow was coming down and traffic got slower, so the trip took  little longer than scheduled, but we made it safe & sound to our hotel - Best Western at Intercourse.

After a warm welcome we were given a free upgrade to a larger, newly decorated room too.

The Village of Intercourse is situated east of Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

We spent the next four days exploring the village and the surrounding area which has a large Amish & Mennonite community.

We learnt from the lovely hotel staff that the real difference between the Amish & the Mennonite are that the Mennonites have power and telephones. Their dress is more floral or patterned & they have different prayer hats - more circular. The Amish wear plain solid colours with black aprons and their white prayer hats are almost heart shaped. They do not have power or telephones and most have a horse & buggy.

This shows the Mennonite prayer cap

and here is the Amish prayer cap

The men have simple haircuts - like pudding basins and most have beards. They wear straw boaters, generally dark /black trousers, plain coloured shirt & braces.

Here are a couple of them with their Amish Scooter type Bikes

For formal occasions the white prayer caps & straw boaters are replaced with black hats.

Here are some of their beautiful horses & buggies

The countryside around is really stunning and the farms are large & well kept. Amish washing is always out drying in all weather.

Another great experience was lunch at Dienners at Ronks. All you can eat buffet for $10.25. Amazing value & such great food. Salad Bar, choice of soup, then beef, chicken, ham, vegetables, rice, potatoes, noodles, mac cheese, etc. For dessert there was choice of many different fruit pies, sponges, carrot cake, eclair cake (which was delicious) & so many more.

The Amish are great quilters too and we have visited so many different fabric and quilt shops around the area.

In this store alone the wonderful quilts were well priced but still cheap - ranging between $1,200 and $2,000!

and here are my purchases so far

In one of the shops we found this amazing sewing machine which has a throat of around three feet.  It is used to make & repair spray guards on the buggies.

There are many shops selling beautiful hand crafted Amish furniture and we really loved the mailboxes.

Today we headed a bit further back in to civilisation with a retail therapy trip to JoAnns.  I am trying to be careful though as I need to save some of my luggage allowance for longarm rulers which I am going to pick up at Birds of a Feather next week.

Tomorrow we are moving south to Washington DC.

Three Fabulous Days with Jennie Rayment at The Royal Bridlington

This week saw our third retreat here are The Royal Bridlington with the infamous Jennie Rayment. Three back to back days of twiddling & tweaking.

Day One we chose to do 'Does it Need a Button?'  Here is Jennies example

Here are a few pics of the students efforts

These are the border pieces or  they could be used to make another item as pictured here

The pictures are items which have been made by students either at home or started in previous retreats & workshops

This is a super heavy duty quilters bag made by Janet

Last Year we did a waistcoat course with Jennie and a couple of the ladies brought their finished items to show this year.

After a dinner each day the ladies enjoyed an fabulous evening of free sewing time & socialising.

Day Two - Tucked up & Embellished Circles

Here is one of Jennies masterpieces -

And here are some of the students efforts

On Day three we made 'Bags Galore'

In the morning we made three different shopping bags and then in the afternoon we had a choice of either scrip bag, hexagon bag or the sling bag.

We had a fantastic three day with Jennie and I am very happy to report that Jennie will be teaching here at The Royal Bridlington again next January 26th/27th & 28th 2016. Details will be announced shortly by email prior to the details going live on www.quiltsandwich.co.uk.