Road Trip - Quilter Style

Last Friday my Mom and I packed up the rental and hit the I-5 for a 36 hour quilting road trip! We started with a stop in Blaine, WA at the postal service I use for U.S. purchases. For a change there was only one fabric package awaiting pick up and two other items for the men in my family (B's birthday gift of a hydraulic seat post for his mountain bike and a neon sign transformer for T - more on that later!).

From there we continued to the gorgeous town of La Conner, WA where their incredible quilt museum was hosting a Quilt Festival. Quilts and wearables on display at 3 locations in town! Sadly, photography was not allowed, but Mom and I along with members of my Gathered Threads stitch group enjoyed the quilts very much. It was a treat to see so many gorgeous hand-appliqued quilts. I'll never make a Baltimore Album, but I do love, respect and appreciate beautiful hand work. After a delicious lunch at the Calico Cupboard (featuring tons of gluten-free baking!), the two of us set off for Seattle.

Pioneer Square, late afternoon

After checking into our hotel at Pioneer Square, we hopped back in the car to catch the ferry over to Vashon Island. Check out this gorgeous setting sun from the ferry!

This entire trip was prompted by the opening night of Krista Withers Longarm Quilting show ev.o.lu.tion at Island Quilter. Krista is affectionately known in these parts as K2: I am K1 due to my advanced age and Krista Fleckenstein is K3 due to the fact that she's still a kid.  This all started when K2 came to stay and attend one of my retreats and my husband couldn't handle having two Krista's in the house simultaneously answering all questions directed to "Krista". As in "Krista, would you like another glass of wine". "YES please!" in harmony.

K3 and I had conspired on a congratulatory bouquet. K2 had worked tirelessly for the past two months preparing work for the show and we are so proud of her!

If you're on Instagram you may have watched this Frankenquilt grow from a pile of hexagons into this masterpiece over the past 6 weeks. Incredible! It really drew in the passersby attending the first Friday gallery night on Vashon's main drag.

Krista's paintings from her life before quilting - I think she's going to do some more painting soon. Lucky us!

Here she is explaining how a longarm machine works to a very interested couple. It's great to see people truly fascinated by the art and process of quilting!

 

The front and equally awesome back of Krista's free-pieced bee quilt

This is K3's corner! Both of these beautiful quilts were pieced by K3 and quilted by K2.

Here's Lynne's pretty block all quilted by Krista in another bee quilt.

And finally another shot of Krista (her husband Mike on the left) and some friends enjoying the show! Can I just add how awesome Mike is? He even complimented my camera bag with a "Did you make that bag? Nice Echino!" Melt.

It was now 9:00 p.m. and we'd still not eaten dinner, so Mom and I joined Sandie and Keli at The Hardware Store for a delicious meal served up lickity split so that we could catch the 9:50 p.m. ferry back to west Seattle.

The fun continued the next morning...but that's another post. If you find yourself in Seattle sometime during October, please make the gorgeous trip to Vashon to see Krista's exhibit and shop with Anya at Island Quilter. You won't be sorry! Almost all of her quilting cottons are only $10/yd and her selection is incredible, including all Westminster prints, shots and a ton of modern designer fabric and home-dec weight.

There are more photos from Krista's show in my flickr stream. Just click on any of the pictures here to take you there!