Lighthouse Trip

We recently went on a camping trip to Northern Minnesota and Wisconsin. We had never been to the Lake Superior area and while fishing is usually the reason to go camping in this area we were interested in touring around the lake. We parked our camper outside of Duluth Minnesota and went on day trips from our little home base. The leaves were just starting to turn colors so we had beautiful drives but the goal was to visit the many lighthouses on Lake Superior.

The lake freighters carrying iron ore no longer depend on the light houses for lake navigation but these two still guide the way into the harbor at Duluth.

 

We found smaller light houses by harbors and marinas still in use.

 

The lighthouse at Two Harbors Minnesota is now a bed and breakfast, completely booked for the rest of the year.

Probably the most famous on Lake Superior is the Split Rock lighthouse.

It is now a state park in Minnesota but when it was built the only way to it was by boat. Three homes stand next to the lighthouse that were for the families of the lighthouse keepers.

Our travels took us to Bayfield Wisconsin and the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore. At Bayfield was a sweet little quilt shop named Orchards Edge. They are participating in the Row by Row Experience this year and had designed a batik block for the challenge. A light house! The perfect souvenir for our trip.

 

And they would not sell it to me :(

There is a two month hibernation period for the Row by Row Experience to give those who participated in the shop hops a chance to make their quilts from the different blocks collected and compete for prizes.

I tried a little gentle pressure, explained I just wanted it as a souvenir and that I was not going to make a Row by Row quilt, but they stuck to the rules. They probably thought "if we sell this block when we are not suppose to it will probably end up on a blog somewhere." :)

My souvenir arrives in November.

Happy Stitching!

Cheri

 

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Auntie Green's Garden

Auntie Green's Garden is finished. I have been trying her out on my bed, and in the guest bedroom, but most often I just like to cuddle under it on the couch.

I machine quilted her pretty simply. In the ditch around all of the appliqué, cross hatched the center,

and 3/4 inch radiating lines out from the center.

The above picture has some lines just marked with the Hera marker but not stitched yet.

I love the way she turned out but I must say that cross hatching and 3/4 inch lines are MIND NUMBING. The stops and start around the appliqué are endless. I was stitching one line and did not realize my top thread had broken. It wrapped round and round my inside fly wheel. My DH was a champ and picked threads out of the inside of that sewing machine with a tweezer. Unfortunately the timing got knocked off when I tried to turn the stuck flywheel so the machine still had to go to the Bernina shop.

In the end there were usually chocolates sitting by my sewing machine and I would reward myself with a half a chocolate for every 20 lines I quilted until I had it finished.

Ha Ha, the games we play with ourselves.

Happy Stitching,

Cheri

 

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