QUILTOPIA!!!

Wow…what a fun day!  (Sunny, bright…bike ride.)  Then Sharon and I headed off to the Quiltopia Cottage Tour, organized by Greenbaum’s Quilted Forest…our local Salem quilt shop.  First stop was Melanie and Michael Freeman’s house…old friends, former neighbors on Court Street, Melanie started quilting after her daughter took a quilt camp in 5th grade and came home with a quilt…Melanie thought, well if Ellie can do this, I can too!!!  Can she ever!  Her quilts are beautiful and looked wonderful arrayed around their gorgeous house.

I really loved this one…the appliqued circles with the dotty fabric…beautiful …

AND…on the way to Melanie’s studio, Michael made me coffee (I SERIOUSLY want this machine…hint to Santa)…

Well we hated to leave…(they had an extra room for us…) but we moved on to the Flick home where we saw an AMAZING stash and a long arm quilter on view…

(Sharon and I both hand quilt so this was an alien being…but an interesting one…)

and then on to the Willamette Heritage Center for the quilt show.  I’ve never put a quilt in a show as I know I make things outside the box, but Leslie told me a few weeks ago I should consider it because I could represent my constituency, (so of course I convinced Sharon to put a couple of quilts in too…)

and really, it was fun to see all the quilts and have ours in the mix…Leslie was right!

We both hand quilt…two of maybe 7 in the whole show who are hand-quilting…

and finally we got them back and came home…it LOOKS like I won a ribbon, but in true egalitarian style, ALL participants got a ribbon…all were winners!