A day of quilting Up North

On Friday morning I drove to Cornucopia, Wisconsin to meet friends Mary & Sharon at a quilting class offered through Wisconsin Indianhead Technical College.  

I've taken a couple of quilting classes through WITC at Cornucopia, 

always a fun group students (I was going to say sewers, but that didn't read well).

My route to Cornucopia and then to Washburn for fishfry and finally Mason.

This class subject was to make a quilt from scraps, the instructions were to bring your bucket of fabric scraps and then the students were to sew strata of scraps, then cut squares out of the strata, and eventually assemble a square.  

The instructions included a photo of an example scrap quilt.

Well, I haven't been quilting long enough to have a 'bucket of scraps', in fact I don't have any scraps as I have not been keeping any of the little extras when I finish a project.

So, to have something to sew, I bought a 'jelly roll' of fabric, 2" strips in a variety of colors.

The fabric I purchased was a cotton material with the look of burlap.

I set to work sewing and was getting much done since I didn't have the step of sewing together all the scraps, most of the scraps had to be ironed first too, so this was slow going for most in the class.

Once I had my squares ready to make the 9 square block, I looked at the sample hanging on the wall right in front of my station, lined up my squares and started sewing.

After I had assembled enough for 9 blocks, I saw that I had made a mistake and my strips were not alternating like the sample, in fact they were not really alternating at all.

So, while I did make a nice lap quilt, it doesn't look anything like the sample, nor did it look anything like any of the other quilts that were created in the class.

So, I will call this 'not a scrappy quilt'.

 Cat approved obviously.

It was a fun day, lots of sewing and learning and visiting.

The pot luck lunch ended up being a wonderful selection of salads, no two the same.

After the sewing, Mary and I met her husband, my second cousin once removed, for a cold beer and delicious fish fry at Patsy's Bar in Washburn.  I love this history from their webpage 

"The bar opened in the late 1800's.  It was the place to be and be seen.  The locals will remind you that at one time there was a brothel on the second floor. A fire put an end to that.  Today, Patsy's is the heart of 

Washburn's social scene."

I stayed overnight at Rick and Mary's.

It was good to catch up with Mary (we were close friends in high school and after) again, as they were in AZ for most of the winter and we had not seen each other for a bit.

Lexie on Squirrel duty

We sat out in the yard for a bit Friday evening, it was a little warm but very still.
Lexie and Ripley loved being outside with us.  Rip laid down under a lawn chair whiel Lexie was on duty the entire time she was outside.

Mary made poached fresh farm eggs from her chickens for breakfast, along with fresh strawberry jam that she put up last week for breakfast the next morning.

On Saturday morning, Rick and Mary were headed out for a busy day maintaining the North Country Trail, and I was headed towards home with a quick stop at The Sandcastle to drop off some clean laundry and check the cabin.
It was a fun trip North and a great visit with Mary & Rick.

Mason to Gordon, the letter B marks the Sandcastle

Well, I did stop at the cabin, all was well there as you can see from this photo.

 Inside we had another mouse in a trap and outside the wasps were trying to build a nest in the lid of the propane tank again, ugh!

But then I did not head straight home.

I'll document 'the rest of the story' in future posts, but spoiler alert it was a fabulous road trip home.