One Week, Two Small Finishes

There was time during the afternoon yesterday to finish off the little truck camper quilt. It started with the addition of a campfire to the little campsite, and then I got to work on the top-stitching. The batting was added first so that the top-stitching would also serve as quilting. Also, I like the little bit of puff it gives the applique when I top-stitch through the batting.

It didn't take long before it was all finished. Only then...facepalm! I realized I'd totally forgotten to add borders. Oh my. What to do? Several ideas went through my head at that point...you'll notice I didn't say "brain." You see, most people have a brain between their ears. If you look inside my head, you'll only see a few moths flying around.

The quilt back hadn't been added yet. Fortunately, I'd given myself enough excess batting around the edges to add some narrow borders. Since I was trying to keep the width down to 16 inches, it all worked out. First, I folded the batting back, and then trimmed the fabric to the width I wanted.

I very nearly trimmed too close to the top part of the camper there, but when the flange was added, it could be fudged just a little. From there, I added the border fabric. 

Phew! And that was where I left it for the day. This morning I added the binding. It's the same fabric I used for the "Welcome." Now, it's all stitched down and the little quilt is finished. 

The top-stitching already served to hold the batting in place, but I always like to add a little bit of quilting when the back is added as well. In this case, I stitched a straight line border around "Welcome" and also stitched along the edges of some of the roads in the map background fabric. 

I'm calling this little quilt "Welcome Wagon." It finishes up at 16 x 18 inches. Here's how it looks from the back. 

So I might have finished the whole thing yesterday except that we went out for our After Valentines Day dinner. We went to the Joel Palmer House in Dayton, Oregon. Joel Palmer House has an interesting history. As it turns out, Joel Palmer was one of the original Oregon pioneers. You can read about him and his restaurant on a previous blog right here.  It was raining, and the front door looked very inviting in the darkness.

The last time we had dinner at the Joel Palmer House, we were celebrating 400 days until retirement. This time...71 days.

Mike has a four-day weekend for our camping trip. Monday is a holiday, and he's taking tomorrow off. That means that when he goes back to work on Tuesday, it will be 66 days until retirement. Not that we're counting or anything, but I knew you'd want to know.

Today I have a fun afternoon planned. You might remember my friend Lenelda. We were friends in high school, and we also swam on the city swim team together when we were kids. Then a couple of summers ago, we attended the Outdoor Quilt Show in Sisters, Oregon, together.

Lenelda lives in Texas, but her mother lives just south of me in Salem. She's here visiting her mother, but we're planning to meet up for lunch in McMinnville, followed by a trip to my current favorite quilt shop, Boersma's. Should be fun, no?

This weekend Mike and I are taking off on our "shakedown" cruise with the new camper, and we take the "shaking" part very seriously. The new camper is our fourth RV, and in our experience, there are always a few little bugaboos to take care of with a new rig. We've had plumbing and hot water problems in the past, and so we're hoping for the best, but expecting that something will go wrong for this first time out. That's a good reason to keep the trip short. Also, we're not taking the kitties this time around. They're okay at home for a couple of days, and we don't have their catio window ready yet.

With this post, I might be signing off until Sunday or Monday, but I honestly don't know if I'll blog over the weekend or not. Blogging is important for my sanity, and so I miss it when I don't write these letters to friends. Nevertheless, it could be a rather slow weekend. The weather is pretty iffy on the Oregon coast in February. Here's the forecast for the next few days.

It's raining today, but forecast cloudy tomorrow. Of course, we won't get there until fairly late in the day, so Friday is kind of irrelevant. Saturday's forecast is for "scattered showers" and so there's a good chance we'll be able to get outside for some hiking. And all of that to say that I'm taking along the laptop and I'll blog if I have something to talk about other than sitting inside and staying dry.