Lions Gate Quilters Guild – Album of Quilts

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Yesterday, a friend and I attended the Lions Gate Quilters Guild show.

Gift from Lions Gate Quilt Show June 14, 2014-Optimized

As we entered the show, we were presented with these gifts:  A box top mug rug kit and a letter opener.

The quilts were fabulous!   The following pictures are my favorites.  Enjoy!

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The following write up explains the story behind this three-panel quilt.  You may have to click on the image to make it appear big enough to read.

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After viewing the quilts, we headed to see what the vendors had to offer.  These fabrics “followed” me home.  🙂

Fabric Purchased June 14, 2014 Fishing-Optimized

This is a fabric by Michael Miller called, Hooked.

Fabric Purchased June 14, 2014 Words-Optimized

I only purchased a fat quarter of this one.  I thought it would be perfect for the outside of a zippy pouch.

Fabrics Purchased June 14, 2014-Optimized

These four fabrics are, left to right:  1)  Acacia by Tula Pink, Butterfly Wings, 2)  Acacia by Tula Pink, Hummingbird, 3) Soho chic by Sandy Gervais for Moda, 4) From Outside In by Malka Dubrowsky for Moda

Turtle Batik Fabric Purchased June 14, 2014-OptimizedI love Sea Turtles so I couldn’t leave this green Honu print behind.

 

Girl’s Road Trip – Part Two

The last post left off in Roseburg, Oregon on the morning of Monday, May 19. After doing a bit of shopping and touring in Roseburg, we headed back north along I-5. One of today’s stops would be Yoncalla. In order to understand why Yoncalla, Oregon was one of our destination points, you will need to understand a bit of history.

This is a picture of my grandfather (my Mom’s and Aunt’s father): Clinton Clifford Clark.

“I was born Oct. 12, 1911, son of Roy and Essie Clark. I was born on the farm (in Sask.) now owned by Gerald Clark which was originally owned by my grandfather who had come from South Dakota in 1902. My mother died when I was born, so then I was raised by my grandparents who I only knew of as my Mom and Dad. So the result was that I was taken everywhere they went so I had several trips to the States. So in this way, I was always classed as their son and cousins were cousins.

My grandfather owned a farm in Oregon so he went down there every other year or so, and I was always taken along. My grandmother also had a brother Oscar that lived in Douglas County. Oscar had a son Percy who was the same age as I was so we always have been the best of friends. The last time I was to Oregon with them was the winter of 1923-24. That same winter we went on and spent the winter in Riverside, California. On that trip we stopped over at Stockton and Sacramento, California. My grandmother had an aunt living at Stockton. On the way home we stopped over at Uncle Oscar’s again. I always used to go to school with the cousins when there. I also went to school in Riverside.

Now on my grandmother’s side of the family were Mary, Erwin, Herbert, and Oscar, and another girl that died fairly young. I remember reading in a diary when we were in Oregon about a sister visiting at Newt and Mary’s quite a lot and she was always sewing.

The Clarks and Langdons must have been in Wisconsin before going to South Dakota and then some of the Langdons went to Oregon and the Clarks came to Canada in 1901 and 02. The Langdons now living at Yoncalla, Oregon are all Oscar Langdon’s family.”

(Taken from handwritten notes that my grandfather sent to me many years ago when he was still alive.)

My mother had been to Yoncalla when her father, my grandfather was still alive. My aunt and I had never been to Yoncalla. So with a map of sorts and handwritten directions from one of Percy’s daughters, Ginger, we headed out to see if we could find Percy’s home in the hills above Yoncalla. (Note: Percy has also passed away.)

This is “Main Street” Yoncalla. We drove through Yoncalla and I thought it looked a lot like “Small Town, Saskatchewan”. The road to the immediate right in the picture above is the road we took to head into the hills in search of Percy’s house. This was the beginning of “back roads R us, Oregon” in the words of Pam.

Of course, we had to take advantage of a couple of photo opportunities. this is me, holding up the Yoncalla sign.

What is good for one, is good for the other. This is my mother standing beside the Yoncalla sign. It would appear that my training of the sign provided for a well-behaved sign and my mother did not need to hold it in place as I had. LOL

We drove in the hills above Yoncalla for miles. At one point we went under the freeway. We passed one fork in the road where I would have turned had I been travelling by myself, but my mom was doing the driving and we headed on.

We headed up and down hills, around corners that would break the back of snake, sometimes coming upon the most beautiful, expansive homes and at other times coming upon the smallest, oldest, barely held together homes that were still occupied. Such stark contrast. At one point we ran out of pavement and I remember my mother saying that she never ever remembered running out of pavement when she was here before. I was nervous at this point because I thought she might turn back. We were driving in her perfectly clean white van that DOES NOT DRIVE ON GRAVEL! My mom kept driving and my aunt and I kept track of the house numbers (if they were present at all) on the mailboxes. Finally, I announced that we must have gone past it as the numbers were larger than Percy’s address. My aunt had seen a woman in her yard on the previous property so we turned back and my mom got out to ask directions. It turns out that we had passed the property–just two farms back. We headed back and located the house.

The woman had warned us that it was a little unkempt as it had not been lived in for a while. The property is still owned by family members, but no one currently lives in that house.
So this was Percy’s property. This property had belonged to my grandfather’s cousin and in his words, also his best friend.
Percy and his family were very musical. When my parents were visiting here one time, they told of Percy’s family getting out the fiddles and starting to play. Pretty soon, neighbours started to arrive with their instruments in hand and an impromptu band was formed. They just walked over the hills, through the fields as they heard the music start. No need to phone anyone!
This was a very peaceful and serene location. I can understand why my grandfather had so many fond memories of this location.

I was grateful for beautiful weather and a mother that sacrificed her clean van to persevere to this location. We then headed back down the windy road to Yoncalla. The woman who had provided directions was also familiar with where Percy’s son now lives and she was able to give us very specific directions so that we could locate his home on our way back to Yoncalla.

We headed back out to I-5 and on to Portland.

I had heard about Fabric Depot in the past, and when Pam mentioned it during our visit in Roseburg, I knew I HAD to get there. We took I-205 which is the truck route around Portland. If you take Exit #20 and head down Washington St., you can’t miss it. If you are in the Portland area, it is a must see/must stop! Once we found Fabric Depot and got through the doors, I was speechless! According to their website: https://www.fabricdepot.com/, they are the largest, most complete fabric store in the west at over 73,000 square feet and boasting 8,000 bolts of quilting fabric! If you are a quilter, this place will put your senses into overload for sure!


This is the only quilt store that I have used a shopping cart to purchase my fabrics! As I looked around, there wasn’t a shopper in the place that didn’t have an overflowing cart of fabric.

These two pictures are of the fabrics that I bought. I was on the hunt for bright oranges, greens, yellows, etc. to use for a planned Halloween quilt. The fabrics needed to read as solids as they will be used as borders around colourful Halloween fabrics. Some of the other prints were just too cute to resist and they jumped into my basket. LOL

My aunt even found some irresistible fabrics. She wants me to make her a cat themed table topper.

After the shopping at Fabric Depot, we stopped at a mall next to I-5 in Portland and my Mom and I found the most wonderful shoe store that was having a sale! After purchasing souvenirs there, we stopped at Olive Garden for lunch–a first for my Mom and Aunt. Then we headed back onto I-5. We were now in hunt of an outlet mall we had seen on the way south at Woodburn. We ended up staying at the Super 8 in Woodburn.
This motel was mid-way in price between the previous two we had stayed in. Nice and clean and a continental breakfast was included. As you can see in the pictures, that beautiful blue sky had disappeared and yes, that is wet pavement. It rained off and on all the way home from here.

We spent the next day travelling as far north as Bellingham. This is only about 1 1/2 hours from home. It was hard to find a vacant room–there were golf tournaments going on and most rooms were taken. We ended up staying at the Rodeway Inn. Of all the motels we stayed in on this trip–this one gets the worst rating. This motel is in need of a serious makeover! I would not recommend this motel to anyone! Rodeway Inn is a chain, but we are wondering how this particular motel is keeping its franchise–no one from Rodeway Inn head office could be taking a look, believe me!

The next day was Wednesday and we planned on one more look at another Kohl’s. I have been looking at Fiestaware dishes for some time and took the opportunity to purchase 6 scarlet coloured fruit nappies on sale at Kohl’s. I want to see how these dishes stand up to everyday use before I invest too much into replacing my current dishes. I also wanted to see if my husband was going to object to the colour. *VBG* Take a look: http://www.hlchina.com/fiestaretail.htm I also learned that if I am going to do much shopping at Kohl’s, I need to shop on Tuesdays with my Mom in tow. Not only were my dishes on sale, but I received a further Seniors discount when my Mom paid for my dishes! In fact, speaking of Seniors discounts, we got smart part way through our trip and started asking for the Seniors discount on the motel rooms too! We are learning!

After more looking and shopping in the mall in Bellingham, we headed north to Lynden where we did some grocery shopping and then having done our fair share of stimulating the Amercian economy, we headed for the border. Because it was during the week and no holiday, the lineup was minimal and we were through in no time.

This was a great road trip and the Travelling Trio is talking about doing this again somewhere next year!!! Watch out, the Travelling Trio could be coming through your community soon!

Girl’s Road Trip & FABs Meet for First Time in Person

My mother and I have been tossing around the idea of a road trip to Oregon for some time now. We have always talked about it, but we never put the plan into action. One night in April while visiting over coffee, we once again started talking about going to Oregon. “We should just head down there sometime,” one of us said. I pulled out the calendar and said we should just plan it, book it on the calendar, and do it! My aunt (my Mom’s sister) was due out for a visit from May 13 to 28. I suggested we wait until she was here to make the trip. That way she could be included. The Canadian long weekend was during the middle of the time my aunt was going to be here and that would work into my work plans since I would be off work for the long weekend anyway. The planning started. We would leave Saturday morning (the 17th) and plan to be away for 5 days. I only needed an extra two days off work to make this plan happen. My Dad quickly asked if he had to go along. He hasn’t been feeling 100% health wise and travel far from home was not likely a good idea for him so we said he didn’t have to come along. My husband quickly chimed in with his request for an exemption from this excursion. Granted! This would be a”Girl’s Only” road trip!

The three of us (my Mom, my Aunt, and myself) left home early Saturday morning. We expected some heavy traffic crossing the border as Saturday was the kick off to the Victoria long weekend here in Canada. We thought if we left as early as 6:30 am, we would beat the long line ups at the border. However, that same weekend, the news was carrying stories of construction at the Peace Arch crossing. The news reporter was recommending that folks consider alternate crossings to avoid the heavy construction delays. I think all those people headed to the Sumas crossing where we were, because when we arrived at the crossing at about 7:15, the line up was long. We waited in line for approximately 1 hour before crossing the border into Sumas, Washington. That was only the first delay we experienced. Just north of Bellingham we encountered an ongoing road widening project where traffic slowed. As slow as that traffic seemed to move, it was nothing like what we experienced trying to get onto I-5 at Bellingham. We had to go under the freeway overpass and as we looked up onto the freeway, we could see that the traffic was just parked–not moving at all. Because we were stopped and waiting our turn to enter the freeway, we had time to check out the licence plates of nearby vehicles. You would have sworn that we were still in Canada–not an American plate to be seen! I think all our neighbours had decided to head south with us. At this point, I thought maybe heading south this weekend was not such a great plan. We had places to go and things to see. We didn’t want to spend our weekend in heavy traffic! After about a 1/2 hour delay, we were finally moving at a decent speed. The Canadian plates continued to travel with us to Seattle making for heavy traffic, but as the day progressed, we saw more and more American plates and our Canadian licence plate became the minority.

We did pretty good with directions (can’t go wrong heading south on I-5) until we got into Seattle. Somehow we ended up in the commuter lane and we ended up on an off ramp taking us off the freeway. After some panicked conversation between my Mother and I and my frantic map reading trying to figure out exactly where we were, we realized that we were on another highway that actually runs parallel to I-5. We proceeded along until we reached a point where we could merge back to I-5. Whew! The whole time, my mother was relaying horror stories of a prior trip when she was last lost in Seattle and she got into a section of Seattle that looked a little less than friendly. The last thing we needed was three women lost in Seattle–ending up in a part of town that we shouldn’t be in!

Because the I-5 corridor that we were travelling to Oregon on would pass directly through one of the communities where one of the FABs lived, we had made prior plans to stop and meet for coffee.

We stopped and met Cher: http://cherzoe.blogspot.com/ in Portland at the cutest little neighbourhood cafe, Marco’s. If you are ever in Portland, this is definitely worth a stop. Check out their web page at: http://www.marcoscafe.com/ Marco’s is located in the most charming little community called, Multnomah Village, “The village in the heart of Portland”. Check out some of the wonderful shops available: http://www.multnomahvillage.org/joomla/.

This is a picture of Cher (on the right) and I. You can see that we are thrilled to finally meet in person. Obviously something is striking my funny bone! LOL

Cher brought along the quilt that I quilted for her so that I could see how it looked bound and ready for use.

Cher also gave me this wonderful little package. Any package wrapped in fabric–especially green fabric has to be wonderful.


Inside was a kit to make cards complete with hand dyed buttons and colourful fabric. Cher had the privilege of working during Quilt Market in Portland and was able to attend the portion of Market where you can make purchases from the vendors. She had picked up these cute little kits at Market for each FAB member. How considerate of her!

After enjoying an early supper, we visited a wonderful little bakery around the corner of Marco’s. We loaded back into the van and with Cher leading the way back to the freeway, we were back on our way south down I-5. Thanks so much for the lead back out of Portland, Cher. Without you leading the way, we might still be driving around Portland looking for our way out! LOL

We proceeded down the highway to Salem. We were now hot and tired and looking for a room. We found out after stopping at a couple of motels that there was a horse show in town and most of the available rooms were taken. We ended up getting a room at the Comfort Inn. The room cost was a little pricey but it ended up being the best room we had on the whole trip. The pillows and bed were so comfy! The room was clean and spacious.

Once settled, we headed out to find somewhere to eat and of course do a little shopping. We quickly established the tradition of shopping in Wal Mart in the evenings on our trip. The gal in the motel told us there was a Wal Mart on just about every corner in Salem, and I think she was right. I think this was an easy statement for her to make because I think I saw a Wal Mart in almost every community in Washington and Oregon that we passed through–irregardless of community size!

The next day we didn’t have too far to go to get to our destination in Roseburg, so we stopped for some tax free shopping in Springfield. I have decided that my favorite store in the U.S. is Kohl’s! We found clothing and purses at excellent prices in Kohl’s–http://www.kohls.com/kohlsStore/homepage.jsp. I also found the most wonderful watch with lots of bling in the mall there. Every trip deserves a souvenir watch purchase, don’t you think?

After shopping in Springfield, we headed further south to Roseburg. We stayed at the Motel 6 in Roseburg. This motel is fairly new and very clean. The room was smaller than what we had the previous night, but less than half the price of that room too! Once we settled in, I phoned, Pam: http://mycreativemind.pamgwillim.com/ . Pam was shopping nearby and came and met us at the motel.

Look at that gorgeous blue sky! The weather was wonderful on the first part of our trip–warm (the thermometer in the vehicle had a reading of 36 C outside)and sunny!
Pam is the second member of the FABs that I have now met in person. Pam doesn’t live in Roseburg. She lives an hour drive away but agreed to meet us in Roseburg.

Of course, we posed for pictures. I am not sure if Pam is giving my mother (the photographer) directions–“Just one minute!” or what is happening. Perhaps this is the point where Pam has explained that we can take a picture together and then another picture with a space between us so that we can insert the missing FAB. See Pam’s post to see exactly what she was up to:
http://mycreativemind.pamgwillim.com/?p=1135 The fourth FAB was missing from this trip, but if you read Pam’s post, you will see that LindaJ made a surprise visit! Visit LindaJ’s page at: http://catsnqlts2.blogspot.com/
Here we are looking so serious – Pam on the left and me on the right. Believe me, we are not really this serious in person! LOL

Pam came bearing gifts–wine from the local winery, Sea Mist Winery in Bandon, a thimble bearing a picture of Mt. Hood (I loved the story about that one, Pam!), and the most wonderful packet of purple fabrics. After all, I was in danger of loosing my membership in the FABs without purple fabric in my stash. Thanks for looking after my membership status, Pam!

Pam took us all to JoAnn’s where I found all these wonderful fabrics. My mother even purchased some cute watermelon and lilac fabrics with coordinates so that I can make table toppers for the three of us. The fabrics purchased above were my purchases. The pansies were from a Debbie Mumm line of fabric that I fell in love with and the purple purchases were to further enhance my newly acquired purple stash. The red and white fabric is left over from Valentine’s Day. (We can’t get fabric for Valentine’s Day in Canada. Pam had sent me a package of Valentine and Easter fabrics earlier this year. I plan on making something for both those occasions for next year.) Pam must think we are fabric starved in Canada. I was ecstatic at the selection of fabrics at JoAnn’s. This was when, Pam told me that I HAD to go to Fabric Depot in Portland. If I thought the fabric at JoAnn’s was wonderful, I HAD BETTER STOP in Portland on the way home. Of course I can take direction very well, so we stop at Fabric Depot, but more about that later in the next post.

We also visited Michael’s. Although all three of us scrapbook, my Aunt holds the crown. My Aunt’s scrapbooks are not years behind in completion like mine!


This is a picture of my Mom and Aunt in Roseburg the following morning (Monday). (My mom on the left and my aunt on the right). As you can see, we are well rested and ready to shop! We stopped at the local mall in Roseburg where we found the most wonderful Hallmark shop. All three of us came out of there with packages! This is where I found my Laurel Burch purse and earrings.