Quilting Road Trip

On Saturday, I went with 3 of my sisters on quilter's road trip to 7 quilt shops in Ohio.  It was a bus trip sponsored by one of the shops, and we traveled all over northwestern Ohio. This was almost the scene I saw when arriving at the departure point.

The bus left Toledo at 7:30 am, and I arrived there just in time -- the last person to get on the bus!!  I was hearing about our "late start" ALL DAY!  We arrived at our first shop just a few minutes late, and began our day of shopping.  This shop is in the middle of an old-time country village [Sauder Village, in Archbold, OH], and it's really cute.  I'd love to come back sometime and check out all the other little shops.  The must have been having a firetruck show, because we saw this in the parking lot.

As we traveled around the Ohio countryside, we saw lots of beautiful fall colors.  It was a gorgeous day!  Here are my sisters -- Diane, Deby and Tina -- in front of the entrance to Sauder Village.

The bus was full -- 56 women, and Marion, our bus driver

He was quite a character!  He was full of jokes and funny stories, and the ride was quite an adventure, to say the least!!  At one point, Laura (his 900# GPS voice) directed him to make a wrong turn, and he was trying to get turned around on this 10-ft. wide country lane -- not happening!  After much screaming and unsolicited advice from the ladies on the bus, he decided the best route was to just continue forward and find a cross road that would get us back to the main road.  This was the view out the windshield!

Much to everyone's relief, we did find our way back to the main road, and were on to the next quilt shop.  This next stop was a favorite of many on the bus, including my sisters and I.

Doesn't look like much on the outside, but inside they have bolts of fabric stacked to the ceiling!  We were only supposed to have 45 minutes per shop (for 56 women - yeah, right!), but at this stop they stretched it to an hour!  We finished our shopping, and then headed back out to the bus to pick up our box lunches.  Diane and Tina are ready to hit the road!

Everyone had their choice of ham or turkey on a croissant, chips and an apple or banana.  We enjoyed our lunches on the uneventful trip to the next quilt shop.  This next shop was really nice, but woefully unprepared for a busload of shoppers -- even though they knew we were coming!  They only had one cash register, and with at least three-quarters of us in line with purchases, it was a SLOW process.  At all of the other shops, they had a person with a cash box and a calculator who could handle the cash purchases, but that apparently didn't occur to these guys -- they had one person running the register, and two other employees standing there with nothing to do!  We finally got out of there, and had time for a couple of pictures while the others were still in line!

This stop put us about an hour behind on our schedule, which only got worse when "Laura" gave us  some more bad directions!  Kindof re-thinking the whole GPS purchase . . . LOL!  When they planned out this trip, they did not factor in any room for errors (which we had plenty of), and apparently planned on faster speeds than Marion was accustomed to driving! LOL!  After the next stop we pretty much threw our schedule out the window -- we were ready to go, the last two shops were ones we'd never been to!

Luckily, the people at those last two shops were willing to wait around for us -- since we were arriving after their closing times!  They were really nice shops, but took us almost to Cleveland!  We finished up around 8pm, and settled in for the long drive back to Toledo, arriving back to our cars at 9:45pm!  The original plan had us getting back at 7pm . . . so much for that!  We didn't mind, though, we had a great time and made some great purchases!

Project #1 -- a fall wall hanging

Project #2 -- a Christmas wall hanging

Project #3 -- the background fabric for the "I Spy" squares that will be in my mailbox soon

Project #4 -- a table runner for the RV

And a couple of things that I just liked, no particular plan for them yet!

That's it -- I spent the least of the 4 of us, but I am still very happy with my purchases, and have my work cut out for me for awhile!