Road Trip!

I belong to a state wide guild, the Land of Lincoln Quilting Association.  Because the state of Illinois is so big, it basically has members in the central Illinois region.  We meet 5 times a year, and rotate sites.  This past weekend Macomb, home of Western Illinois University, was our host site.  This is about 150 miles from where I live, and so 4 of my quilting peeps had ourselves a road trip!  We packed up our overnight gear, piled into my hubby's brand new car (<500 miles on it!) and headed west!

After picking everybody up, we headed west on US 136 (no interstate to Macomb). Our first stop was Havana. It was lunch time, so we stopped at Grandpa's for a bite to eat!

Great little restaurant on the main drag in Havana!  They had a great selection of hand dipped ice creams, including one called Cow Tipping!  Nice menu, with a variety of sandwiches and daily specials!

After lunch we walked the two blocks to our first shop, Ma's got a Notion!  Ma's motto is "We've got your back!"  She has the largest in store stock of wide backs, including batiks and flannels!  She also has a tremendous stock of Civil War fabrics.  I have never seen such a collection of just shirtings!   A must stop for those Civil War quilters!

So what is a girl to do, I had to buy some Civil War fabrics.  I will be in a row swap, and one of the ladies wants Civil War fabrics, specifically brown and blue.  So she pulled some fabrics for us to choose from!  And of course, I had to buy a fat back!  That batik was clearly calling my name!  The two kits are for pillowcases for my godson and his sister.  And the greens are for another group I am in called the Chocolate Chicks!  My theme is mint chocolate chip!

From Havana we went to Avon.  A wee village of around 800 people (animals are not counted in the census), but they do have a great quilt shop, Clothesline Quilts!  They had a great selection of bright prints, books, batiks.  They also had a Gammil long arm machine!  There was a man working on a Halloween quilt, doing free hand spider webs!  Very cool!

Yes, I stimulated the economy of Avon!  I am looking for some bright gold and yellow batiks for a quilt that is still rattling around in my head.  The back fabric was on the sale rack, and has really cool leaves on it!  It needed to find a good home!

Our last shop was in Macomb.  Piece to Peace Quilt shop was a lovely corner store with an equally lovely owner.  Though a small inventory, she had lots of interesting things.  Lots of samples made up that made you want to buy the kits!  Good Marketing!

I am really not a 30s repro gal, but she had a baby quilt made up with 30s, with blue work Sunday School Singers!  It just spoke to me, so I had to buy it!  And she had the jacket made up in a bright blue batik, and it was just my size, so I got to try it on to see if it looked good on me.  You can guess the outcome of that!  And the watch!  The hands are scissor blades, and the band, which "snaps" around your wrist, is a measing tape!  Too cute!

We always have a few vendors at our meetings.  The Macomb and Avon shops were set up there, as well as Quilts'N Etc. from Keokuk, Iowa.  I'm a pushover for fall fabrics.  And the lighted magnified seam ripper looks like it will be great when I have any extended frog sewing!






We got home Saturday evening, tired, but happy from a fun two days!  Ah, this is bliss!