To-Do Tuesday June 9, 2016 | Northwest bound

This Tuesday marks day 18 days of travel for the Mister and I. We have spent only 4 of the 18 days not on the road, so we are ready to be in Mister’s hometown of Salem, Oregon and settled down for the rest of our summer. Mister is tired, having driven over 3300 miles as of Monday afternoon, with about 400 more to go to get us to Salem.

All of the work on the motorhome went well in Iowa, and we left there earlier than expected. We’ve been Northwest bound since leaving the shop there. After leaving Iowa, and headed towards Sturgis, we spent one night in Mitchell, SD. There is a cute shop there called The Pin Cushion. I found some fantastic Timeless Treasures retro fabric depicting newspaper print with hysterical sewing/quilting headlines and articles. That is destined to become a bag! I also purchased a half yard print from Bari J’s Petal and Plume line. Somehow a FQ bundle of Crackle by Kathy Schmitz for Moda also made it into my bag. Strange how that happened. I’d never seen that fabric before, but I loved the colors and the printed texture on the fabric is fantastic. It was destined to be mine! I also bought a yard of a print called Wordplay by Michele D’Amore. I found this at another nearby fabric shop, but didn’t snap a picture of the shop so I have forgotten the name. I do, however, remember another customer who glared at me the entire time I was shopping there. She even purposely blocked my path in an aisle and stared me down. I have no idea what that was about, but I politely said excuse me and stared back at her until she moved so I could pass by. I guess I didn’t look quilter-ish enough for her, and I refused to turn and go another way because I certainly wasn’t going to accept her bad behavior!

We spent one of those four non-travel days in Sturgis, South Dakota. It is a beautiful town, and they are super busy getting ready for their 75th anniversary. It’s going to be a big year for them, and they expect over a million people this year! Mister lived in Sturgis for a couple years, doing the snowbird thing to Arizona. We’ve talked a lot about moving back there to do the snowbird thing ourselves once my kids have grown up and left the nest. I love the area, but it does put us a bit far away from family. Most likely we’ll end up snowbirding from Salem, OR, where I’ll be close to his family (I’ve claimed them as mine now… they can’t escape me!). While visiting Sturgis, I did find one quilt shop. They had lots of great fabrics, including a quilt kit with Sturgis motorcycle fabric. I snatched that baby up! When Mister saw it he asked, with some trepidation, if the quilt was going elsewhere. I told him NO WAY!! This one is ours. He’s been greatly pleased about that ever since. I think he’s anxious for this quilt to be finished quickly so he can claim it as his own!

Along with visiting the quilt shop in Sturgis, I spent the day catching up on laundry and making three more of my 2014 Sugar Block Club blocks. I was rather upset, because my paper piece patterns for August weren’t printed correctly. The first thing I check before printing paper piece patterns is to make sure it prints at 100% with no scaling, but some setting must have been off because when I got the four pieces of the block ready to assemble, they were 6.25” instead of 6.5”. Rather than redoing them, I set my machine for a very small stitch length and used a 1/8” seam allowance. I will have to remember to adust that block for another 1/8” seam allowance when I assemble all the blocks. I don’t like doing that, but I didn’t have an option to print more pattern pieces at the time, and I didn’t want to waste the fabric. I have one block left that is paper pieced (November), but when I checked my printed pattern I noticed it wasn’t printed properly either. Ugh! I did manage to mess up one of the other blocks too (October). The windmill center of the block was actually supposed to be four spools. But when I put the HST’s together I sewed the two different prints together, rather than the same print. So when I cut them in half, each side of the spool was a different color. ACK!! I decided to just keep it as it was, and made a pinwheel with the grey fabrics and had the red triangles as accents. I think it was a happy mistake! No F Word blocks this week. After the paper piecing fiasco, and messing up my blocks, I was just done with sewing this week.

We are currently in Liberty Lake, WA where the motorhome is getting a lube/oil/filter servicing. I’m hoping to visit a few of the quilt shops here, and then we are headed for Oregon and our “home away from home”. We are excited to see our family! I’m not sure if any sewing will get done this week, but if so I may try and finish my Sugar Block Club blocks and get two F Word blocks done.

I hope you are all having a great summer… I am also anxious to get back to WiFi so I can catch up with all of your blogs. I’m draining my data pretty fast, so I am attempting to conserve as much as possible to get me through the month. Have a great week, everyone!!

This week’s To-Do list:

• Print Sugar Block paper piecing NOT TO SCALE!!
• Finish SBC blocks
• Two F Word blocks

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