Travel, Tablet, Thunderstorms and Tiny Pieces!

I am HOME!

Last week's travel stats:

7 Days

7 States

2122 Miles 

The trip went pretty much like the red line...more or less.

It was a whirlwind trip, lots and lots of driving...even by my standards. 

There will be a recap of the quilt show, shots of my purchases, and some new quilt projects in upcoming posts. For now, some highlights.

1. Tablet. I have discovered I love my Fire HD8 tablet - for reading, surfing the interwebs, reading email, maps & navigation, etc. 

 What I don't like it for is typing. Typing email & blog posts are not fun on the tablet. I can do it but I don't like it. May need to check out a 

2. Travel. Everything went well, only a few small hiccups. The truck ran great, gas prices were lower than around here, the hotels I booked were great with the exception of the Travelodge I stayed at near Paducah,which was far less than ideal. Not going to stay there ever again. 'nuf said. 

This was taken on Wednesday morning headed to Memphis.

3. Thunderstorms!  The bad weather that stretched from Texas to Ohio was riding a ridge right across southern Missouri, northern Arkansas, southern Illinois, northwestern and north Kentucky, and southern Indiana. The front was stalled out, with heavy rains in areas, flooding and some tornadoes (unfortunately, they were deadly in Texas). Watching the Weather Channel prompted me to cut my time in Paducah short and head back north early Saturday morning. On Friday night, I repacked the car with my suitcase, keeping the bare necessities in my room in a duffle bag and slept with my cell phone right next to me in case of emergency.  Thankfully, no alerts came in during the night.  Within the first 3 hours of driving in the morning, my cell phone went off twice with flash flood warnings! While I missed out on parts of the quilt show, it was the right decision. 

I did not, however, cut my trip short - just re-routed it to spend the last 24 hours at the Michigan House. Peace & Quiet and an opportunity to work with some 

4. Tiny Pieces.

I'm feeling a little protective of this project. It's for the Cherrywood Van Gogh challenge. Not quite ready to show the progress pics but I can say it's a fusible project & I'm trying some new things with it. I drew the full size cartoon on paper, made a tracing of it for cutting apart for pattern pieces and then I did another tracing - on a flour sack towel which became the base that I was fusing onto. The flour sack towel is lightweight, 100% cotton and it accepts the fusible perfectly!  

You can see the towel peeking out under the backing I pulled out of the stash.