Epic Trip to New Zealand!

I’m just back from an epic three week trip to New Zealand, teaching for the first time at the Quilt Symposium in Christchurch, and traveling in a country I had never visited before.

I had the privilege of giving the opening lecture at the Symposium on the day before classes began. It was a nearly full house! Many thanks to my fellow teacher David Owen Hastings for the photo.

And I taught Fabulous Freehand Curves for three days, and Artful Improv Medallion for two days. Both classes were full of amazing students who dove right in to creating without a pattern or template and ended up with original quilt tops.

 

It’s always fun to see how differently students interpret the same instructions and techniques to arrive at their own unique compositions.

And it was great fun to hang out with some of the other teachers while I was there.

This is a really big event and there were teachers there from the US, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand. I was honored to have been invited. Everyone was so welcoming, it was a wonderful experience.

My husband Phil came over with me and we did some traveling both before and after the event.

First stop was Wellington on the North Island. There’s a beautiful bay there and it’s windy a lot, so there are a lot of sailboats on the water. We took a tram ride up to the top of the town.

Our hotel was downtown, near a wharf area with restaurants and other activities. Phil took this photo of the lights early one morning and it’s one of my favorites of the whole trip.

We flew to Christchurch a couple of days before the Symposium started and stayed downtown. One thing that really impressed me about New Zealand was the lovely parks and open spaces, both in the cities and in the countryside. Below is a collage of images from Christchurch and Queenstown parks.

We saw a group of people participating in a model yacht regatta at one park in Christchurch on a Wednesday.

A beautiful shot of an arch into a park in Christchurch.

After the Symposium ended, Phil and I rented a car and drove around the South Island exploring–Phil did all the driving on the “wrong” side of the road, while I navigated. First stop was Aoraki/Mt. Cook National Park. We did a 7 mile hike there called the Hooker Valley Track. There were three large suspension bridges to cross!

Next we traveled to Wanaka Lake-one of the prettiest places we stayed. The lake was formed many years ago by glaciers and the contrast of the water and the snowcapped mountains in the distance was stunning. Lots of outdoor activities go on here–sailing, rowing, skiing and hiking.

 

One day we took a guided water taxi trip to one of the islands formed by the glaciers in the lake. The image below is of a lake within the lake on this uninhabited island.

Our final stop was Queenstown, a bustling city on the west side of the island. We saw the prettiest sunset of the trip over the harbor there on our next to last night.

We took an excursion to Milford Sound via bus and cruise that was one of the highlights of the trip. The landscape in the fjords of the Sound were almost otherworldly.

Much of the Lord of the Rings movies were shot in New Zealand, and the image below is of Eglinton Valley, which played a role in the opening scenes of the first movie.

 

We didn’t see a lot of wildlife on the trip, except sheep. It’s said that there are more sheep than people in New Zealand!

But we did have the opportunity to encounter a Kea–a parrot found in New Zealand that is endlessly curious and not afraid of people–so much so they call them “cheeky keas.”

Thank you for reading this long post to the end. I am grateful to the organizers of the New Zealand Quilt Symposium for inviting me to teach at their event and for their many kindnesses, as well as to my students, who came to class with energy and enthusiasm! I hope our paths will cross again.

I have so many inspirations and ideas spinning around in my head from this trip–I hope there will be some quilts in the not too distant future!