Quilting Across the Miles

When my in-laws were still living, we had a family joke. They once tried to purchased a birthday card for one of their kids and could only find birthday wishes for "across the miles." From then on, most any card one received for any occasion was from "across the miles." And so as I was considering a title for this post, it seemed the perfect choice.

For the next several days, I'm going to take you over many years and many miles traveled in pursuit of regional fabrics for this Shop Hop quilt. It didn't start out that way, and some of the fabrics in the quilt were purchased just because I liked them. When y'all started making Quilty 365 quilts, I got the idea to make up a quilt from all the quilt shops I'd visited in our travels. We hadn't yet started our USA Perimeter tour in 2018, and so it was a good idea for all the quilt shops I would visit on that trip.

So here's the Shop Hop quilt top. It's one of the largest quilts I've ever made at 78 x 78 inches. There are fabrics from 62 quilt shops included.

I wanted to keep the quilting pretty simple, since this quilt is all about the fabrics. The thread I'm using was gifted to me by my quilting fairy godmother, Ila. Thank you, Ila. I'll be using this 30 weight Premium Sulky thread on top.

Since I already had a bobbin wound with this thread below, I decided to use it again. This is a 50 weight Aurifil thread. I worried a little about the differences in weight, but when I tested the tension on a practice piece, it was perfect. That's good enough for me.

Just as I was getting ready to open the quilt up and lay it on my table, the help showed up. There were only two of them, but it seemed like more. Smitty was set to begin barking, er, meowing out orders.

When it looked as if things were about to get under way, he removed himself so I could lay out the quilt.

Sadie paused long enough for the quilt to be laid out, but then got right in the middle of things. She's an excellent helper.

And this seems like a pretty good gig to her. She snuggled down in the folds of the quilt and made herself comfortable. Ergonomics are everything.

Somehow this seems a little hazardous. Quite possibly this is an OSHA violation.

She wasn't bothered by it in the least.

And, actually, I'm keeping the quilting pretty simple...not too much movement as I go along, and so I let her stay there. Within about ten minutes, she was bored and left. So much for the help.

Okay, so I'm doing a little swirly-curly-cue thing in the embroidered "name plate" for each fabric. (Technical quilting terms. Try to keep up.) And then I'm using one of my curved templates to make a sort of frame around each block.

I'll be running a straight line on each side of all the sashings, both vertical and horizontal.

This actually turned out to take much longer than anticipated. For one thing, I'm kind of klutzy with the curved template. By the time I finished for the day, I was having an easier time holding it in place as I stitched. Practice really does make perfect. And then I was painfully reminded that I can't sit and quilt all day long. My wrists can't take it. And many of you have offered up remedies for this, but the best remedy I've found is simply not to overdo it. It's just part of getting older, and I'd rather get older than, um...well, you know. So being realistic, I think I can quilt one row of blocks per day, and so I'm working my way across the rows horizontally. Yesterday, I did the quilt shop you see above, and then these you see below.

We were actually staying in Fredericksburg, Texas, when we drove over to Kerrville to see Kerrville Creations. Of all the shops I visited on our USA perimeter trip, this was the one y'all urged me to visit the most. We also saw the Texas longhorns for the first time at the RV park in Fredericksburg, and so it was an easy choice when I looked for a regional fabric.

We were stuck in Albuquerque, NM, while Mike made some repairs to the old RV when I visited this next shop. We ended up staying almost a whole week in the area while he waited for a part to arrive via FedEx. We made good use of the time, visiting the nearby Petroglyphs National Monument, and then taking a drive to Santa Fe on a subsequent day.

This next one was just one of the quilt shops I visited when I toured Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, with my friend Robin. I fell in love with the fabric below, so representative of the area. The quilt is set 8 x 8 blocks, but I was two short, and so I held out two different fabrics to span two blocks right in the middle of the quilt. This was one. For the quilting, I did it just as I would have if there were two quilt blocks here, quilting the two curves in the center of the block to intersect top and bottom.

This next one was yet another delay in our travels while we had all four tires changed out on the old RV. We were traveling the Montana High Line on our way to the Great Lakes region. We'd been plagued by inadequate tires for the weight of our load, and we'd had a couple of tread separations. We decided to be safe, rather than sorry, and so replaced all four tires in the town of Glendive. Prior to getting the tires changed, we'd been staying in the town of Havre, Montana. The place was all about trains passing through. When I bought this fabric it was because I thought it would make a good backing for Mulligan Stew. Even though I wasn't thinking about making this quilt at the time, it turned out to be the perfect regional piece for this part of our trip.

This next one was a fun little shop where we stopped on a visit to The Palouse in northeastern Washington. The quilt shop was a co-op to serve the quilters in this little town. Their small out-of-the-way town couldn't support a quilt shop, and so the quilters got together and created this quilt shop cooperative to keep themselves supplied in fabric. They were the friendliest group of ladies. I just liked this next fabric, and it was another I selected before I had the idea to make the quilt.

Finally, this one. We were just passing through Cody, although we might have stayed the night there. This was a great little shop, and I just liked the fabric. It was another I purchased before deciding to make the quilt.

So I'll do another row today, and if there's time left in the day, I'm thinking of sandwiching some of the smaller quilts on the quilts-to-be-sandwiched pile. I realized that many of them are small quilts I can do on my domestic machine, and so I might just quilt two birds with one stone...or something like that. Actually, that metaphor doesn't work at all, but you can probably figure out what I mean.

Oh, and I wanted to update you on Mike's jury duty experience yesterday. As it turns out, only criminal trials are going forward in our county. Every person charged with a crime has a "right to a speedy trial," and so they must be tried within 180 days of being arrested. Mike spent pretty much the whole day sitting, doing nothing. He was bored silly, although he did have a good book to read. It was a wasted day, and he was dismissed at the end of it all, having done nothing. His commitment is for the full month of May, but he won't go back unless he's contacted again. Hopefully, that won't happen and he can live out the rest of the month in peace.