A Blissful Day of Quilting

I made these Cathedral Star blocks in June at a quilting workshop in Portland with Bonnie Hunter. Then a couple weeks later we left in the camper for this journey we are on. In between I have made blocks for another quilt. I grab an hour here and there when I can spread out my sewing and get some work done. Before we left I had cut all of the triangles to finish this quilt, plus bagged up plenty of 2" strips of neutrals and colors. I stitched all of the triangles, the star points and half square triangles last week. Today I almost finished the 300 4-patches. Only the final seam on 100 are left. Here are some pictures of the camper turned quilting studio.

Sewing machine & cutting mat on dining table. 

Pressing station on kitchen counter. 

Supplies on step below bed- you can see Dan hanging out in front of the camper because there was no room for him inside. 

These are stacked and pinned in sets of 10, so I can keep track of how many I have made. 

When I finish these last few 4-patches I will start turning these 3" squares into 9" quilt blocks. I will wait until I am home to assemble the whole quilt. If you want to see what the finished quilt will be do an image search for Cathedral Star. It is a free pattern created by Bonnie Hunter of Quiltville.com

We are in the small town of Au Gres, Michigan. We are in a city campground which has really filled up for the holiday weekend. There does not seem to be much to the town. It is on the shore of Lake Huron on the lower peninsula at the top of Saginaw Bay- the bay that creates the "thumb" of Michigan. We bought some fresh beans, corn, and tomatoes at a farmer's market today. Dan washed the truck and camper. 

At the grocery we found the same flavor of ice cream that we enjoyed out on Mackinac Island. Vanilla with butter fudge swirls and chocolate fudge chunks. Good stuff!

I hope you have a great holiday weekend. 

jb

Day Trip to Mackinac Island

Yesterday after a short 20 minute boat ride with bikes along we arrived at Mackinac Island. It was like stepping into a whole new world. No cars, just horses and bicycles or feet for transportation. 

Downtown on Bicycle Steet is a very busy tourist area, one t-shirt shop or fudge shop after another. 

Very colorful. 

It was not all bustling, here are some rural pics:

We road the 8 mile paved road around the whole island. The Arch Rock is one of the scenic stops. 

As seen from above and below respectively. 

It was a nice place to get some exercise.

 One of the gems of the island is the Grand Hotel with the longest porch in the world. So they say, I'm not fact checking them. They charge $10 each just to look around the porch and lobby. So we opted for a treat instead from the ice cream parlor. 

A yummy reward for the ride up the hill. 

So another fun day was had in this "Thready" life I lead. 

We are getting a couple chores done this morning. Got the oil changed on the truck and a wash. 

Here is the camper offloaded. I am staying here writing this post and quilting while Dan does the chores. Oh, I did vacuum- that should count as a chore. 

Today we leave the UP. I wonder what our next adventure will be. 

Our time in Yooperland

Yoopers are folks who live in the UP. That is Upper Peninsula of Michigan. I know most anyone else already knows that bit of info but it was news to me. We have packed a bunch into the last couple days and I want to get a post done before we move on. When we stopped at the St Croix River visitor center near Trego the volunteers gave us a few very helpful suggestions for enjoying the UP. 

Our first night on Lake Superior was in the village of L'Anse. I was so excited to be at the Great Lakes I baked a crazy cake to celebrate. I was also pretty happy to be somewhere where it is cool enough to use the oven. The chairs hanging on the back of the bike carrier made a pretty good cooling rack.

Our next area to explore some of was the Pictured Rocks Nat'l Lakeshore. We made our base at Munising in a city operated campground. The lakeshore with a view of Grand Island is only a 100' away from the camper. We took a cruise/tour to see the lakeshore here are a few of those pictures:

The pictures don't begin to do the scenery justice. The cliffs are up to 200' high. The colors are created by minerals that seep out of the porous sandstone. We took the cruise Sunday late afternoon. 

After the cruise, we stopped for dinner at Muldoon's for a Pasty. A local meat pie, theirs was voted best in the UP plus Trip advisor gave them a good rating. Umm a tasty pastry filled with beef, potato, carrots and rutabaga. I ate it before I thought of taking a picture, so I apologize for there being no visual. 

A big thunderstorm with lots of rain came in about 3 am yesterday. It made everything very wet but also cleared out the sky so the rest of Monday was a beautiful day. We took an afternoon sea kayak trip to get up close to the shore rocks. 

Here is our guide, Haily with a young passenger. 

We were able to get right in close to the rocks and mini caves created by the wave action of the lake. 

Here is the inside view. 

This is the view from the other side. 

And this is the "bird's eye" from land later in the day. To be on the safe side we took our older iPhone 3 out in the kayak. 

I am not sure how I got this shot, but it is an interesting one!  After the kayaking in and out it Miner's Beach we decided it would be our best opportunity for a Superior dip. 

We both got in, but I stayed in a little longer than Dan. It was COLD but refreshing. 

We enjoyed a great sunset last night. 

While we were kayaking, our guide asked several of us "If you could go on an adventure anywhere in the world, what would it be?"  Dan's answer was that he is on it. How would you answer?

I will see you down the road...jb

Quick update for my non-FB readers

Just before we left Iowa I bought corn from a young woman who was selling it from her pick-up truck bed. I fixed it for lunch same day.  

Three reasons I know I am not in Oregon plus 1

Water tower painted like a corn cob (Waseca MN)

Camp ground bathroom is also a storm shelter. 

Fireflies!

There really aren't any in picture, but it was a pretty evening & I did see lots of fireflies. 

Screen shot from my phone shows 96% humidity- which does happen in Oregon but not when it is  72 degrees. 

We stopped for lunch near this beautiful church. It is the Holy Trinity Cathedral in New Ulm, MN

Today we will take a scenic drive along the Mississippi then cross to Wisconsin. 

What are you doing this weekend?

jb

My Other Nebraska Story

One of the pleasant routines of our life in a camper is morning coffee for me and tea for Dan. Almost always Dan is up first and he soon delivers a fresh pressed cup of coffee to me. All I drink is that one cup but I do really like that one cup. The morning we were in central Nebraska, at the Bessey campground, the glass part of my press broke. Uh oh... So began the challenge of finding a new press or a new way to make coffee. The first town we came to was Alliance, just south of the Carhenge. 

 The town had a cute downtown with a nice hardware store. We went there first. I prefer to support local businesses--the only press they had was really big. It's volume was over a liter, I bought it anyway. We continued to look in the only other local possibilities--Kmart & Shopko. They had the same size I had already bought but at a higher price. 

For the next couple days we made my coffee in the new big press, both a waste of space and a waste of coffee. When we got to Grand Island I did some more shopping. We checked several department stores as well as Bed Bath Beyond and Starbucks. All the stores had large presses, but nobody had a nice small just right size one. So our travels took us on to Lincoln, the big press worked but was not convenient. In Lincoln there are lots of retail options. We decided to give press shopping another shot and we were successful. 

Left one too big, middle broken, right- just right. 

I know this is an odd little side post. I think I am writing it because having to shop in unfamiliar places for a necessity as opposed to a souvenir is, at least for me, not much fun. 

This morning looks kind of stormy here in Iowa- I think we will be in Minnisota by nightfall. 

See you up the road. 

PS--we were pleased to find a Trader Joe's in Lincoln-I see chocolate croissants in my future. 

;-)

Something to Check Off of My Bucket List

Today I visited the International Quilt Museum in Lincoln. They house a collection of over 4000 quilts. On a typical visit you see only about 40. They regularly rotate shows. The three galleries I saw were: log cabin variations; quilts from kits 1915-1950; and new aquisitions. Here are a few of the ones that particularly impressed me. 

Court house quilt, a log cabin variation. 

Pineapple log cabin variation. 

This is a recent acquisition from Uzbekistan. 

This was my favorite. Here are some close ups fingers are for scale, they are 3"blocks. 

(I didn't touch, btw)

The quilt is an original design. It was the makers first quilt and it won 1st prize at Nebraska state fair in 2000. WOW

After Quilt House we visited the Nebraska capital. It dwarfs Oregon's that is for sure. We took an informative tour but I kept seeing potential quilt blocks where ever we went. 

Here are floor shots from the Saunders County Courthouse 

We spent time in the courthouse looking at records from Dan's great-grandfather's land purchases back in the 1880's. 

His name was Thompson Bissell, and he sounds like quite a guy. After we left the courthouse we drove to find some of the area or at least vicinity of where he lived. 

The land beyond the lower left corner of the sign was part of his ranch south of Ithaca. Later we went to the Homestead Monument south of Lincoln and saw a digital image of Thompson's sister-in-law, Sarah A Bissell's land claim. It is available online through a program called "Fold3.com". I did not realize homesteads were available as recently as 1987. 

We crossed the Missouri today. 

So now we are in Iowa. We are staying in county fair ground park in the town of Missouri Valley. We are trying to decide what route to take to New England. We prefer to avoid major metropolitan areas and freeways. We are very open to suggestions. 

Where is your next journey going to take you?