A Road Trip to "Road to California"

Three friends and I took a road trip up the I-15 on Saturday to the Road to California Quilt Showcase in Ontario. Barbra S. was kind enough to drive the other three of us--Barbara L., Anna L. and I. It was a little bittersweet, as another friend was supposed to be in the 4th seat, but came down with a nasty bug and couldn't go, so I was able to take her place. Sorry Patty. Hope you're feeling better.

It was a gorgeous day and we arrived around 10:45 and went our separate ways to visit vendors and see all the gorgeous quilts. Pictures I took of the quilts can be viewed here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/karensphotos2011/. You can visit the show vicariously if you weren't able to attend. Click on the thumbnails on the right side to view the various groupings I organized. Here are a few pix to entice you. If you click on each photo, it will enlarge. The parrot was one of our favorites. It looked like you would feel real feathers if you touched it. Don't miss the pictures because they were fabulous. One group of pictures was an exhibit from the Rogue River Art Quilters in Oregon. They each took a section of the Rogue River to depict in a small quilt and all the quilts were displayed so the river ran through from one quilt to the next. I think there were more than 15 quilts. Be sure to look at those.

We met again for lunch and played photographer with another group of sister quilters from Fallbrook. We took their picture and they took ours. Here's the result.

The quality of the quilting seems to just get better and better every year. There were so many gorgeous examples of exquisite quilting. I didn't take pictures of every quilt, but tried to take as many as I could. Really enjoyed perusing the vendors. Cozy's was there. Here's a picture of Maureen. They were pretty busy.

I bought some really nice landscape fabrics at Cynthia England's booth. Some mountain, rock, tree bark, night sky and some other trees. Also bought a product called Retro Clean, which is supposed to remove staining and yellowing from old quilts and linens. And a handy storage box for buttons, beads or bobbins. It has individual little containers inside a larger box. Here's a couple of pix.

We left to come home around 5 and had a lovely ride chatting about the show, and how the world has changed since we all raised our kids 30-40 years ago. If you've never been to Rd to CA, you should really go next year. There are usually a couple of buses that take people who don't want to drive.