Tag: Political Wifery

I was not at the quilt retreat with my CQFA peeps this weekend. 🙁  I was off in the Gold Country with my darling husband. He had a Native Sons event and wanted me to come along. We arrived around 2:30 and wandered the town after checking into the National Hotel, a historic hotel with a bathroom in the bedroom! The toilet had its own space, which was good.

DH saw the above sculpture as we walked around, which reminded me of the sculpture I saw in Toronto in 2005 when I was there for work.

The main drag (think small town main street) was really, really busy on Saturday and cars kept driving by as the Natives were gathering on the stairs of the National Hotel to recreate a photo taken in the last century. It was an issue, because the photographer was set up in the middle of the street!

The main street has a lot of empty shops, which is sad, but the rest are filled with antique and vintage items. The prices are really good. I saw 4-5 really beautiful cake plates. There is a FANTASTIC candy shop on the main street. It has a lot of old fashioned types of candy, a soda fountain, a cooler with drinks I haven’t seen in years, like Bubble Up. I bought a chocolate fizzy drink in a bottle. It was yummy!

They have a small section of hobby materials as well. Most of the time, though, I spent smiling at the members and their wives and being a nice supportive wife.

As you know, I also like tile. I saw a great bit of tile at the entrance to one of the shops that would be a wonderful quilt border. I wasn’t quite tall enough to get the full repeat, but you get idea. Who will be the first one to make it into a quilt border?

I am back on the idea of doing and embroidered quilt of California land marks to raise funds for the Native Sons Cleft Palette effort. I spent some time collecting  images, not to copy, but to use as inspiration, if I ever do it.

Last week, I wrote a big long post, which you might have read, about my quilting adventures while I was off with DH attending his Native Sons event.

Some of what I wrote the other day is repeated below, but I did change and add to it as well.

On our way home, we stopped in Vacaville for a late lunch. As we exited the freeway, Jeanie, MIL’s friend, pointed out a quilt shop. I didn’t even know she was well trained. 😉 I looked at it longingly as we ate lunch and finally said I would walk over and take a look while the rest of the party finished eating. They decided to come along, so we finished our lunch and drove over. It is called A Quilted Heart. It can be found at: 878 Alamo Drive  ? Vacaville  CA  ?   95688. Store hours: Monday – Friday 10-6  ? Saturday 10-5  ?  Sunday 11-4. Phone: 707.447.9000

I liked the shop. They had the little 2″(?) Moda charm packs, the new Camille Roskelley line, a nice selection of batiks and, again, a boatload of thread. I bought one of the mini charm packs so I could look at Happy Go Lucky in person and see it in person and decide if there was yardage I wanted to buy. Last night, I thought that, perhaps, I should have bought a bunch of those mini charm packs and used them for a quilt. Then I mentally slapped myself and reminded myself that I have several projects in process and another several on the drawing board.

The shop sold machines as well and there seemed to be a guy in the back doing repairs. I don’t know what kind of machines, but I did see a large Brother (Innova? Innovis?), but it could have been a trade-in. I think they may have had Berninas. Again, I am not sure.

They had lots and lots of samples for such a small space. The samples were on the small side, but it was still fun to see so many. I am actually quite impressed with the variety of samples I have seen at shops I visited lately.

The shop was quite full for the size. I don’t know square footage, but it was smaller than the other shops I visited this week.

Aside from the fabric, they had a good selection of books. there were a number of books I didn’t recognize, though the days when I knew all of the books that were out is long past!

I thought about taking TFQ to this shop, though I am not sure I am up for the drive again this weekend. I have a project for her when she comes over today. She doesn’t know. 😉

I was away for a week in Redding, California for a Native Sons ‘Grand Parlor’. You will remember that DH and I and SIL and I made pillows for this organization over the past few years.

Redding is about 4 hours north of us and to the east a bit. DH has been a Grand Trustee for the Native Sons of the Golden West for about 5 years and decided to run for an Executive Board position. He ran unopposed, which is not a given, but still campaigned like he had an opponent. that meant that I needed to be with him. Of course, if my mom had not been available and willing to help out with the Young Man, I would have needed to stay home. Fortunately, she is a saint and was happy to stay at our house, shuttle the Y.M. to school and cook for him. I sure she did not harangue as much as I do about homework. She also hired a bassoon teacher. The work on the campaign paid off. DH is now Grand 3rd Vice President. I cannot remember shaking so many hands, being kissed by so many people or talking to so many people in one week in my life. I am sure that RUSH surpassed this number (400 or so) or was close.

To deal with the grueling schedule and constant smiling, I snuck away to write blog posts, exercise and GO TO QUILT SHOPS. I found one before I left, but while I was there, the ladies were kind enough to tell me about two more. I only visited one, though.

The first shop I visited was called Sew What Quilts. It looked exactly like the photo on Google Streetview and I saw it as we exited the freeway upon arrival. It was less than half a mile from our hotel. Perfect.

The outside looks fairly mall-ish and non-descript, but the inside is light and airy and they have a lot of interesting samples. There was some new fabric (Joel Dewberry Notting Hill), lots of batiks, several shelves of Philip Jacobs and Martha Negley, a couple of shelves of blacks and whites, Bali Pops, Kona Solids and lots more. there was room for a lot more fabric, but I didn’t ask them if they were low and nobody offered me that information.

There was a class or a class sample or something in progress. This simple nine patch looks great with these fabrics. I especially like the fussy cut flower. I am pretty sure this isn’t a Disappearing Nine Patch, but it could well be if the maker put the fussy cut flower in one of the side squares. Just a thought

The shop had these fabrics on the shelf, which was nice. I didn’t buy any, but love the fresh, ‘summer drink’ feel of the colors.

From this picture, you can see how large the store is. It has very high ceilings and plenty of floor space. They had really nice decorations and had fabric kites hanging from the ceilings, which looked very cheerful. I am not exactly sure if they have classes, though I assume they do. I haven’t looked at the website.

Sew What Quilts! had a sale going on for books. the sale was that you could buy one book and get a second book of equal or lesser value for free and I took advantage. I looked at all of them and bought the Harriet Hargrave Senior Year book and also the new Christine Barnes color book. I’ll use the former for tutorials and the later for podcast episodes with Sandy. Getting them both was less expensive than buying both on Amazon.

In the photo to the left you can see the wall (far) that is perpendicular to the entrance. In the middle of the room, you can see the looms,spinning wheels and various equipment for the yarn people. Sew What Quilts and Yarn (real name). I think that it is a good idea to have yarn and quilt fabrics together. It seems to me that a lot quilt people are also knitters. I would like to knit more, but I don’t.

There were a lot of fluorescent lights in all the places I went around Redding: the hotel, the quilt shops, restaurants. Fluorescent lights are not kind to my face and hair. I looked in various mirrors and felt quite geezerly.

At the end of the row, you can see the Kona solids and some semi solids/tone-on-tones as well.

Please click on the photo and make it larger, because the fat quarters are displayed very nicely. You can also see the buttons the shop has for sale.

The shop was getting ready for some kind of yarn trunk show and their preparations were fun to watch. I didn’t want to stay and see the trunk show so I tried to hurry and look at everything.

The shop also has a shop dog. She was nice, but barked a little when the shop women put a new shawl on display.

I also went to Sew Simple, a shop one block away from my hotel and on the way back to the hotel.

Again it was a shop in a strip mall. Again, it was HUGE. Rather than being a large open space like Sew What, this space was divided into smaller spaces with fabric, notions, Berninas (yes, they are a Bernina dealer), classroom, kitchen, classroom. I am not sure I have ever seen a larger classroom than the one at this store.

I didn’t buy a lot at the shop. The fabric wasn’t all Civil War fabric, but their fabric didn’t have the bright vibe that I like.

This shop had an unbelievably large selection of thread. There was a lot of specialty thread. I assume that a lot of it was suitable for machine embroidery. The shop had the largest supply of Mettler I have seen in a while.

I was also impressed with their notions. They had several types of Sewline pencils, all sizes of rotary blades and lots of Paper Pieces paper piecing patterns. I am not sure I have ever seen these patterns in a store.

I have to say that shops in the Bay Area are smaller than these stores because of property costs.

As I said, the space was divided into several areas. At some point the space was probably multiple storefronts.

While there weren’t really what I would consider bright fabrics, the shop did have fabrics tending towards bright – some dots, stripes. The colors just weren’t….bright enough for me. The reds weren’t pinky reds or even scarlet, they were tending towards blood red, but weren’t quite there.

Sew Simple did still have some of the Circa 1934 fabrics that I liked. They had a couple of blots of the number fabrics. Call them if you need some for a project. I know they had the cream numbers on a red background and I think they had red numbers on a cream background.

The brights I did see were in the baby room and were flannels. They had a quilt made from Fizz fabric by P&B Textiles. You can see the quilt in the upper left hand corner of the photo. I would have bought more of it, but they only had the quilt. They didn’t seem to have the fabric.

The crib was filled with bolts of fabric. It was a little hard to access, but filled completely and cute. In every room, there were tons of quilts on the walls. There was a cohesive look in the whole store – creamy, not quite country, not really bright. Hard to describe.

I keep running into this Amish Block of the Month quilt. I saw it on the City Quilter site a few months ago and I saw it again this past week. I have always loved Amish style quilts and this one keeps following me around. My first quilt, The Sampler, was inspired by Amish quilts, but definitely not Amish style.

I have enough projects! I have enough fabric! My country house isn’t ready yet for quilts. But I really like it. I like the way the log cabins form the legs of Sawtooth Star. I like the shading. I like the pieced border.

I am not sure why I bought the magazines, except that I was looking for projects that I will make for the NSGW wives/ladies that help me with the events I need to organize during DH’s next few years. I know I want to design a little purse or carrier that can hold their cards, pencil and note pad. A number of ladies play cards while waiting around for their husbands to finish meetings and they didn’t have anything cuter to carry the supplies in than a ziploc bag. Of course, they may want to keep them dray,thus the ziploc, so I will have to think about that. Laminated cotton?

On our way home, we stopped in Vacaville for a late lunch. As we exited the freeway, Jeanie, MIL’s friend, pointed out a quilt shop. I didn’t even know she was well trained. 😉 I looked at it longingly as we ate lunch and finally said I would walk over and take a look while the rest of the party finished eating. They decided to come along, so we finished eating and drove over. It is called a Quilted Heart.

I liked it. They had the little 2″ Moda charm packs, the new Camille Roskelley line, a nice selection of batiks and, again, a boatload of thread. I bought one of the mini charm packs so I could look at Happy Go Lucky in person and see if there was yardage I wanted to buy. They sold machines as well and there seemed to be a guy in the back doing repairs. I promised I would only stay for 10 minutes, so I didn’t take many photos.

They had lots and lots of samples for such a small space. I am actually quite impressed with the variety of samples I have seen at shops lately.

 

My DH is on the board of an organization that supports California history. Their charitable foundation supports efforts to repair of craniofacial deformities (such as Cleft Palette- click to find the donation form, even $5 helps a kid). Mostly he goes off to different places around the state and looks official, kisses babies and shakes hands while I stay home and deal with the Young Man or laundry or sew. [Not so much baby kissing really goes on. I am trying to be funny, but you get the idea. 😉  ] When I do attend, the events can be challenging for me, because I don’t attend many and have to work hard to remember people’s names, smile and be sparkling.

About two weeks ago, DH asked me if I wanted to go with him to an event and I said no. Give up a whole day of sewing? Forget it. He said we could go to quilt shops, which was unusual and caught my attention. I thought about it for a few days and decided to go. We have been running past each other for several weeks, kissing each other while one of us is on the way out the door to work or another meeting or to drive the Young Man somewhere. I thought it would be nice to spend some time with him and maybe catch up on discussing stuff about the house, life etc. Also, this time of year is gorgeous in the Gold Country.

I decided to go, so Friday night (after mind-prepping all week), I prepared some of the border pieces for the Flowering Snowball. I only have the border left to make to complete this quilt and, since I am a terrible, nervous passenger while riding in the car, it is a good time to hand piece. I cut boatloads of patches, but only finished this one block. Unfortunately, the ride back was too dark to piece. It doesn’t matter. One block is great and as soon as I finish the Stars for San Bruno #3 binding, I will have a lot of hand work I can do while watching TV when the boys are out.

As an added bonus, the hand piecing enabled me to chalk up my 15 minutes of sewing in for Scientific Quilter‘s 15 Minutes a Day Challenge (#mal15 on Twitter). As another added bonus, I got back in the groove to finish this project in the not too distant future.

As expected, the drive was beautiful and not too long on the way up (on the way back, we were both tired, it was too dark to sew and neither of us could gather the energy to talk much, though I tried since DH was driving and sleeping while driving isn’t very successful, usually). Auburn is about 2 hours away from us. My normally quiet and mild mannered, easy going DH becomes a speed demon on the road, which is entertaining when I think about it objectively. We all need to let loose sometimes.

We participated in an event at noon and then went to lunch with some of the other board members and their wives. I always get the question about why I don’t show up more so I give my standard “In order for my DH to attend the events that he does, I need to stay home and manage the Young Man.” Of course, this line is delivered with a sparkling sorority smile and the right amount of humbleness and apology. 😉 This time one of the other wives who has taken a shine to me, said it for me. I was thrilled. She has, apparently, taken a shine to me and actually remembers what it was like to have kids at home. In terms of age, the organization skews older. Many of the men are retired. I know they forget what it was like to have to work and drive kids around to soccer, Scouts, tennis, Quiz Bowl, to hang out with friends, etc.

After the lunch, we walked around to try and find a quilt store (DH was quite insistent), but it turned out that they had gone out of business. I wasn’t very enthusiastic, but he insisted that I look for another one. I found one called Howell’s Sew and Vac.Their quilt shop quality fabric is on $5.99 a yard! They don’t have much, but the woman at the counter said that she was trying to slowly ad more. They had an interesting selection of rulers. I bought a half diamond ruler. Aside from the fact that I am a ruler sucker, this ruler would have been really handy for FOTY 2010 and the Renewed Jelly Roll Race. I wasn’t planning on making another diamond quilt, but if I do, I will be ready. I wasn’t really in the mood to buy fabric. Shocking, I know, but there you have it.

It looks like Howell’s is trying to make up the void left by the other quilt shop. I hope they succeed. The shop looks like a normal Sew and Vac type shop, but there is plenty of parking and I think they could really create a community there.

We also looked at a few antique stores, but didn’t see anything of interest. i lookf or Desert Rose china for my aunt and SIL. I look for my silver pattern and interesting sewing machines and implements. I don’t want to collect sewing machines, but you never know. There was a pink Necchi for sale at one, which made me think of Darla the Scientific Quilter and her recent Necchi adventures.

The flowering trees were wonderful. In case you hadn’t noticed, I love flowering trees. It is a profound disappointment to me that the flowering quince in my front yard has never flowered. I am not a gardener, but I do try and treat it nicely.

In general, I like to look for interesting patterns and shapes when I am out of my normal habitat. Because of the beautiful sun coupled with the clouds, there was a lot of opportunity for good pictures that will, with any luck, find a way to inspire me in future quiltmaking project.

All in all, it was a nice day. I enjoyed having some time with DH and checking out the great views. I could do without Daylight Savings Time today, but nobody asked me.