A Quilty Outing

It was a dark and stormy day...and how could I resist starting that way? Actually, it was dark and stormy, but it wasn't as foreboding as my intro there. We had a lovely day traveling out to Hood River, Oregon, to see this exhibit:

This article came across my Google Alerts feed, and you know I'm always up for a good quilt exhibit. According to the article, this was an exhibit by the Columbia Gorge Quilters Guild of their 2016 challenge quilts. Guild members were challenged to make quilts 14 inches wide by 42 inches long, with a vertical orientation in representational or abstract design, conveying he concept "Building" either as a noun or a verb. That sounded like fun to me, and so I sweet-talked the Resident Engineer into going with me.

We barely ate anything for breakfast before taking off, and so the first order of business was to get some lunch. We stopped in at the Full Sail Brewery, which was great fun.

We were seated at a table on their partially enclosed patio with a view of the Columbia River...not a great view, but a view nonetheless.

Mike ordered a beer. I'm not a beer drinker and so I ordered one of their hard ciders. It looked pretty in its glass.

We each ordered one of their sandwiches, and neither of us could finish ours. They were huge sandwiches served up with a smile.

Hood River is a small and vibrant community. The library building was just up the hill from the brew pub. It's a modern structure

that is an add-on to the original building. If you look, you can see that the year above the "County Library" sign reads that it was built in 1913.

The quilt exhibit was small, but very enjoyable. As always, if you pin these images, please give attribution to the quiltmaker.

Fun button and ribbon details on this next one.

This next one was Mike's favorite. The buildings look as if they are lit from within. I'd be hard-pressed to choose a favorite.

I've stood at this place in the Portland Rose Garden. It's amazing how this quiltmaker was able to capture it given the size constraints of the challenge.

The shading in the roses was done with thread.

That was a quick stop, and then I was on the hunt for the quilt shop. Hood River is built on the side of a cliff with steep hills wherever you go. When we came out of the library, without thinking, I started walking down the hill. I knew the quilt shop was just a few doors away.

Across the street was this old church. The banner over the door says "Catch the Spirit in the Wind." The wind is everything in Hood River, as I'll show you very soon.

After walking a block, I realized I was going in the wrong direction. When I turned around, I saw this sign at a children's clothing store. Good advice.

As it turns out the quilt shop was right next door to the library if only I'd gone in the right direction.

It was located in a portion of the historic "Smith Residence' and shared the building with a wine tasting room.

If you're having difficulty reading the sign, remember that you can always click on the image to make it larger.

Standing at the front of the store, it looked like this. It's a small store, but the employee/owner was very friendly. She'd just dismissed a class and was getting ready to relax for the remainder of the day.

They had a little of everything...lots of patterns and notions for all kinds of needle work. Plenty of rulers and templates. It was impressive that a small store could cover such a breadth of needle arts...not just quilting. Most of the fabric was located down the right wall of the store.

And I always love a store that has a good sale section. These fabrics were marked 75% off and there was another wall with some that were marked 25% off.

Also, this remnant basket with some great buys.

After I took that picture, I rooted around in the basket and found this bundle of some powder blue "Fairy Frost". I love this fabric for snow, ice, fog, or sky. It's pretty, but also very useful in landscapes.

There was a yard and an eighth there for $7.75 and I snatched it up.

So, I really liked this shop and would go back again. Definitely don't miss it if you find yourself in Hood River. I give it five out of five rotary cutters!*

That pretty much covered our reason for heading out to Hood River, but Mike wanted to go down by the river and watch the windsurfers and kite boarders for a while. It was cold, windy, and threatening, but these passionate boarders weren't bothered one bit. Here they are at the staging area. The edges of the kites are blown up with a tire pump to give them some rigidity.

And off they go!

We watched for a few minutes, and then it started to rain. Within a minute or two, it was pouring, and it rained all the way home. The wind was fierce, and there were white caps and swells on the river.

It wasn't a good day for kitties to be outside, and we found Smitty sound asleep.

Dinner was in the crockpot. I tried a recipe for Pulled Chicken with Cherry-Chile Barbecue Sauce. The sauce recipe attracted me. It was made with fresh cherries, shallots, jalapeno pepper and chipotle pepper. It sounded so interesting. 

(image source)

I made the sauce the day before and it was flavorful and delicious. It would be good just as it was. Making the sauce ahead made it a quick process to get things going in the morning. We enjoyed it, but I'd make a couple of changes. For one thing, using chicken thighs meant that the sauce in the crockpot got kind of soupy. I ended up taking the meat from the crockpot and putting it in a separate container with some of the leftover sauce from the blender. (It makes about five cups, but only a cup and a half goes into the crockpot.) That worked fine, but I'd like to try making this with chicken breasts. I think they would produce less of their own liquid.

Also yesterday afternoon, I finished the rest of the applique for the latest camper block. It still needs top-stitching. I added an extra window on the left. The background fabric shows through the white side of the trailer, and I'm thinking it will be less noticeable once the top-stitching is finished.

You can see that I'll be stitching in frames for the windows and pull cords for the shades. Also, the handle for the barbecue will have some brackets stitched in connecting it to the top of the barbecue. The cat is there front and center: "Did someone say barbecued chicken?"

This morning I made more progress on the Hocuspocusville block.

I couldn't quite fit the last of the design inside my hoop, but it's very close.

This being Sunday, I'll be linking up to Slow Sunday Stitching.

Today I'll work on the top-stitching for the Camper, and I'm hoping I'll have time to do one more block project before I start quilting the Yard Art quilt tomorrow.

**Disclaimer:  Cat Patches accepts no advertising, nor any sponsorships.  The opinions expressed on this blog are based on the personal impressions and perceptions of the author. They are formed  on the basis of one short visit, on one day, and may or may not reflect the experience of others visiting on a different day.  They are no more descriptive than a single snapshot image can be, and nothing written in a review of a quilt shop should be construed as objective fact.  The reviews are strictly the author's subjective opinion and should not be interpreted as anything more.