Last week Saturday, started out like every other Saturday. My daughter went off to work for 6:00 am, I got up for the dog, my husband drove our daughter to work and comes home with a newspaper.
We generally take it easy, easing into our day with our tea, some reading, him his paper, me on my tablet. This day was no different. Until......
My daughter gets home from work with a tea for her and a tea for me. We sit in my quilting room, together with our tea, talking about this and that. Again not much different from any other Saturday, but.....all of a sudden she brings up the topic of missing our various small traveling trips. It didn't take me two seconds, to pick up the queue and suggest we get up and go. I was desperately missing them myself too.
I told her I needed to go to Woodstock, an hour and a half away, to deliver my Great Grandmother's treadle to be fixed up at a sewing machine repair shop and the wood worker. We now had our excuse for the excursion. A destination that didn't require much thought or planning, and just like that, we are up and running.
Everyone knows that when you go for a road trip, you have to make the best of it and take advantage of the free time. Take in the sights, travel down some deserted gravel roads on our way to the next destination. You better believe, that I cased out all the places we could go, on my GPS for along our way.
After the repair shop our first stop was Country Patchworks, also located in Woodstock. That is where I picked up a few shop hop passports, for the shop hop happening in July. You have the full month of July to visit all 15 participating quilt shops. You get your passport stamped and get entered into the various draws for prizes. It's actually entertaining when you go with a group of people. It's a chance to get out with like minded people, have some fun, and some lunch, while sharing some comradery.
While at the Country Patchworks shop, I picked up a few pieces of Canada fabrics for my Canadian Northwind quilt. I also picked up a cute little package containing the supplies to make a pincushion.
As we left the shop, my daughter and I decided to make a surprise visit to my Mom's place. We were already heading that way, making our way home, so why not.
Along the way, next stop was The Quilt Place, in Shakespeare. This shop was currently part of a weekend shop hop with three other shops in the area. At this shop I picked up four fat quarters of fabric with sewing related themes. One was different coloured spools of thread, another was different coloured soft sewing measuring tapes and so forth. As the store was having a shop hop, their gift to each customer was a fat quarter.
We had time for just one more stop before the stores closed for the day and reaching my Mom's place. Unfortunately, the store we went to visit was closed, but not only for the day, they were closed for business completely. Another quilt shop did not make it. So sad.
On a more cheerful note... Something to look forward to in July. The July shop hop, also runs at the same time, as the whole summer long Row by row shop event. This event takes place all across the USA and Canada. Each store will come up with a pattern that will make up a row of a quilt. You collect as many as you want, and make a quilt using all the different row patterns you collected.
Each store also has specially printed swatches of fabric designed as a license plate, with a play on words, related to the quilting theme. Below are a couple of examples. While I was at the fist shop I also picked up a meter of the license plate fabric, show in the picture below. It is cute. Enlarge the picture and check out what some of the license plates say. As I said, cute.
This weekend will be sparse for quilting. I am heading to my sister's to help her lay some interlocking brick patios. But I may get a chance in the mornings before going, to share some of the things I have been working on during the past week.
No comments:
Post a Comment