Sydney SCQuilters: ONLINE SCQUILTERS PUB GATHERING AT THE PENNO PUB. (It's been 12 Weeks since we've been able to meet in person... TWELVE weeks!)

18 April 2020

ONLINE SCQUILTERS PUB GATHERING AT THE PENNO PUB. (It's been 12 Weeks since we've been able to meet in person... TWELVE weeks!)

Some History of our twice monthly Sydney Pub Gatherings.

I'm not sure of the exact date of our first SCQuilty Pub Saturday's but I do remember meeting up with and enjoying a bit of fabric shopping, a chat and a lunch with a few SCQer friends when we needed to visit a Quilt Fabric Shop, sometimes at 'Patchwork Products' in Rydalmere and sometimes at 'Craft Depot' at Pennant Hills. (Both have closed down now 😢 )

It was Liuxin who asked if I could organize a gathering of SCQuilters who would like to meet some visiting American Quilters, this would have been in the very early 2000's.

So I put it out there on our SCQ Yahoo Group inviting SCQuilters to meet up at the Hotel Pennant Hills, which is right next door to a railway station and has a large car park plus there was a Patchwork shop in the car park. Boy oh Boy did a lot of us turn up, SCQuilters drove from all over Sydney, north from Canberra, south from Newcastle and west from the Blue Mountains, a truly wonderful round up.

The American visitors were bowled over by all these Aussie Quilters and even more amazed to see our wonderful handwork! I remember thinking at the time that they weren't really expecting to see so many beautiful Quilts.

I can find no photos of this occasion so I decided to dig out some other old SCQuilty photos starting with the trip we made from our Sydney SCQers Retreat to 'Patchwork Products' in 2005.

David, my husband brought along our old 1947 Albion Double Decker Bus for this outing and as you can see this delighted our SCQuilter friends.

Outside the now closed 'Patchwork Products' it looks like some, or should I say... a LOT of shopping has been enjoyed.

Back at our Accommodation, loaded down with fabrics.

Bus Driver David on far right, Conductor and our youngest son Gwilym in middle and Michelle's son Jed on left, my how these young lads have grown since this time.

Ruth from WA and Stephanie from NSW.

Lovely happy trip with SCQuilters from all over Australia and New Zealand.

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Hotel Pennant Hills - February 2006.

Hotel Pennant Hills - April 2006.

Hotel Pennant Hills - November 2006.

Hotel Pennant Hills - December 2006.

Stickers, have you got one of these??

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October 2007.

We moved to the Blue Gum Hotel.

Our beautiful room at the Hotel Pennant Hills had been turned into a Smoking area, laws were changed making places such as Pubs allocate one area for smokers, smoking was all through hotels and restaurants before this, as our favourite well lit room had open windows etc it became the 'Smoking Area'.

Of course we didn't want to be in this room any more but all the Penno Pub could offer was closed in darkened rooms which of course just wasn't going to be good for all the handwork we wanted to do!

So... we moved to the Blue Gum Hotel in Waitara, no Patchwork shop nearby unfortunately but it does have a good car park and a well lit room a bit out of the way from the rest of the Pub.

Who remembers these??? They are called A.T.C.'s and this bundle belongs to Maggie.

We started a 'Challenge', the first one was to make a mat to place your Pub meal vibrator on so when your lunch was ready and it started making vibrating noise it did it without making everyone in the room jump in fright, here are some below