I’ve done so many shop hops,
nine to be exact, that I have a casual attitude about them. My shop hopping
technique matches my quilting technique: make this up as you go. Extreme
flexibility is key. No time to plan because I just figured out that this is
shop hop week! Yikes!
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| Poster of the quilt made from shop hop blocks. |
Thursday, June 21: Last night I still wasn’t sure which shops I was
going to. Sarah has to go to the airport on Friday, and I have a bridal shower
to go to on Saturday, so I’d have to stay within a 20 mile radius on those two days.
I wanted to go to a shop on Vashon Island, which involves a ferry ride that
starts in Tacoma. I’d save that leg of shop hopping for Sunday and see if John
wanted to join me.
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| Interstate 5, Western Washington. |
So, my “big” solo trip day would
be today. I could head north to the Canadian border or south to the Oregon
border. I ate my breakfast and mulled it over as I drank a cup of tea. I love
the shops up north in Lynden, and the shops up there are conveniently clustered
together, more so than the southern shops. If I went up there, even though it
was a long drive, I’d be able to hit a lot of shops, more bang for my tankful of
gas.
I made a brown bag lunch, threw
a banana, a bag of peanut M&M’s, and a bottle of Maroon 5 Snapple into a
Kaffe Fassett shopping bag, along with maps and Googled driving instructions
from two years ago. The weather was supposed to be sunny and warm, so shorts
and a comfortable pair of shoes would do.
After filling up with $3.54/gallon
gas, I jumped on Hwy. 512, up Hwy. 167, west on Hwy. 516, and then merged onto I-5
north. There’s nothing like a road trip
to clear the cobwebs out. My plan was to drive as far north as I could until
2:00 and then start hitting the quilt shops on the way back down toward home.
Traffic was light since I’d left at 9:30 until it bottlenecked to a crawl in Seattle.
Of course, this was when it became obvious that maybe the two or was it three
(?) cups of tea I’d sipped wasn’t such a great idea.
So
when I saw Northgate Mall, I took the exit. When I came out of the restroom in
Penney’s, I noticed some icy silver Nike running shoes for a good price. I could
use some new Zumba shoes, the support in my current pair was shot.
The
clearance rack was next to the cash register. There was a pair of off-white,
peep-toe pumps that might just work for Sarah. She’d been looking high and low
for a pair of nude pumps to wear to a wedding this weekend. They were $15, and
if she didn’t want them, she had very considerately grown to wear the same size
shoes that I wear!
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| My new Nike's and Sarah's peep toe shoes. |
I walked out of the store with
two pairs of shoes, and an additional four pairs of flip flops (near the
checkout) for a grand total of $72. I was set for summer! JC Penney was not
listed as one of the 54 independent quilt shops on the 14th Annual
Western Washington Quilt Shop Hop, but it was my first stop and 20 minutes
later I came out with my arms full and a smile on my face.
Onward up Interstate 5 through Everett, and
Marysville where the speed limit increases to 70 mph! I zoomed through Mt.
Vernon and Bellingham, and in Lynden pulled into a shopping mall parking lot to
eat my sack lunch at 1:30. I’d made it before my 2:00 deadline.
My
first official quilt shop stop was Calico
Country, and I’d navigated the 150 miles without needing “no stinkin’ map!”
This is one of my favorite shops. Whenever I walk in, it feels like I’m home.
The gals working there are friendly, but they know when to leave you alone to shop.
I headed toward the back room to get the official pamphlet listing all the
participating shops with their ads which usually include driving instructions.
I also needed to pick up my passport and get it stamped, and of course I needed
to get their free quilt block.
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| Calico Country quilt shop, Lynden, WA. |
On my
way to the back of the shop, my eyes had picked out a bolt of fabric with
chocolates on it. Once I’d taken care of the passport issues, I went back to
look at that fabric. There were two coordinating fabrics with cupcakes on them
that were cute too. I lugged the bolts over to the cutting table.
The
lady there was wearing an adorable apron with ruffles. I complimented her on it
and she did a little twirl. It was suddenly obvious that the fabrics I had up
on the cutting table would be perfect to sew into that apron. I needed a gift
for Saturday’s bridal shower. An apron would be perfect! I added two more
coordinating fabrics with polka dots on them and she started cutting. She knew
the yardage amounts by heart.
In the meantime, a line had
formed behind me. I let two people with just a few items go ahead of me. The
quilt shop lady and I were both getting a little flustered with all these
people waiting. She’d called for backup. I practiced my three times tables while
planning to make three aprons (for the bride, Sarah, and me) out of these
fabrics.
While cutting fabric, the lady told
me they’d really been slammed yesterday—the first day of the shop hop. Dang! I
thought today was the first day! She also said they had already sold out of
several of the official shop hop fabrics on the bolt. I bought a pre-cut bundle
of them.
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| Lynden, Washington |
I left the store and drove
through a tree-lined tunnel to get to the next store, stopping to take a
picture of a big windmill at the entrance to downtown Lynden. They are so nice
up there. A truck actually stopped and blocked traffic for me because the
driver saw that I was taking a picture of one of the town’s windmills.
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| Lynden, Washington |
At Tangled Threads, I moved my Calico
Country bag from the back seat of the car into the trunk. That’s when it
dawned on me that the quilt store lady and I had been so distracted by the
crowd of shop hoppers, I didn’t buy the apron pattern. In fact, I hadn’t even
seen the pattern, so it wasn’t like I could look for it in another store.
I got stamped at Tangled Threads, then doubled back to Calico Country. When I told my aproned friend
that I was back for the forgotten pattern, she apologized and we both laughed.
Then she gave me instructions to get to the third shop in Lynden, Folktales.
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| Cupcake fabrics and the illusive apron pattern. |
Folktales specializes in quilts with hand embroidered blocks. While I
got stamped there, I overheard one of the ladies working there ask if she could
leave to make a phone call. The owner told her that it would have to be a quick
phone call because she had to leave to milk the cows . . .only in a small town
like Lynden would you hear that.
The lady at Folktales gave me a map of the Tri-County quilt shops to help me
find my way to the Bellingham shops and all the other shops down to Everett. With
three stamps on my passport, I went to Fabrics-Etc.
in Bellingham for a fourth stamp.
Even with the map, I circled the
block a few times to find Fourth Corner
Quilts. While I was there, I got a text from my friend Carol. She had to work
during the shop hop, so all she could squeeze in were a few shops in and around
Puyallup. She said they’d run out of the focus fabric and the red fabric, and
asked me to pick some up for her if I found them. No luck in Fourth Corner Quilts.
From there it was just a few
blocks to Two Thimbles Quilt Shop.
When I got there, there weren’t any cars in the parking lot! Maybe they’d have
Carol’s fabrics. Nope, they didn’t, because they weren’t participating in the
shop hop this year. I, Ms. Casual Flexibility, hadn’t bothered looking closely
at my passport. Oh well!
Leaving Bellingham, I
appreciated this perfect weather day, sunny and in the low 70s. I could see
snow capped Mt. Baker peeking up above the Cascades in the east as I drove
south. It was the kind of day that I wish I could bottle up and save to uncork
on a dark, dreary winter day. Yesterday was the longest day of the year, the summer
solstice. Around here, that means that the sun doesn’t set until after 9:00 pm.
However, it was still getting late. I wanted to hit Seattle late enough to miss
rush hour, but I also didn’t want to get home too late.
The two shops in Anacortes are
good ones, but they are almost 20 miles from I-5. I wanted to stay close to
that I-5 corridor, so I skipped them and made a beeline to Calico Creations in Mt. Vernon. I got stamped there, and they had
the focus fabric for Carol. I was relieved. If I couldn’t find the red, that
wouldn’t be too big of a deal, it would be easy to find a substitute, but the
focus fabric, with its detailed birds was the whole point of the quilt. This
shop was sold out of the light blue fabric with berries on it. I’d be on the
lookout for some of that too.
Cotton Pickins in Stanwood was my next stop. The owner of this shop
always has a fun way to give you her block. She makes you build the ingredients
in an assembly line. One year everything fit together in a cup with a little
umbrella and straw so it looked like a tropical drink.
Next stop: The Quiltmakers’ Shoppe in Arlington. I made the mistake of thinking
this shop was closer to I-5 than it was, but it was a beautiful drive, and the
shop is worth it, especially since I found the red fabric there. It was almost
6:00 when I texted the good news to Carol.
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| This year's shop hop fabrics from In the Beginning fabrics. |
The last stop of the day was Aunt Mary’s Quilt Shop in Smokey Point. This
shop wins my award for best driving directions. I navigate mostly by landmarks.
Whenever someone says north/south/east/west to me, I have to physically turn my
body around to figure it out, which is hard to do in a car with your seatbelt
on.
Aunt Mary’s instructions say:
“Take exit 206 from I-5. Go east (toward the mountains) take a right . . .”
While she cut some brightly colored Kaffe Fasset fabric for me, I thanked her
and explained that I’m from Hawaii where two of the directions are makai
(toward the ocean), and mauka (toward the mountains). She told me that she grew
up in a port town, and they always aligned themselves using the water too.
I accelerated back onto I-5
southbound toward Puyallup. The only “excitement” on the return trip happened
between Everett and Seattle. I was in the left lane, doing the speed limit, and
snacking on a banana for dinner when a state trooper appeared in my side view
mirror. I checked my speed and guiltily tossed the peel onto the passenger seat
trying to look like I wasn’t up to any monkey business, not wanting to get a
ticket for driving under the influence of a banana.
He pulled up alongside me and
turned his lights on. What??! Seriously, is eating while driving against the
law? I wasn’t swerving or speeding. Well, it turned out that the lights were
because he was pulling over a car slightly ahead of me in the carpool lane.
There was only a driver in the car, no passengers. Whew!
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| Mt. Rainier, back home in Puyallup, WA. |
Nine quilt shops, 300 miles, two
pairs of shoes, 4 pairs of flip flops, 3 potential aprons, and a whole lot
of yards of fabric. It was a good first day of the 2012 shop hop!
Laura Keolanui Stark
is shop hopping somewhere in western Washington. She can be reached at
stark.laura.k@gmail.com.
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