Centre Diamond - Cannon Beach Oregon

The first quilt shop I visited in Oregon was The Centre Diamond in Cannon Beach. I really liked this quilt shop -- so much so that I went back a second time.

It was on the main street in Cannon Beach but not in the main shopping district and we drove right by it a couple of times before we found it - although we should have found it easily.

The shop owner loves bright, Amy Butler, Joel Dewbury etc type fabric and there are lots of batiks, Japanese fabric and even African fabric. A great selection of fabric and patterns. I bought Anri (Andrew's girlfriend) two books of bag patterns from Cindy Taylor Oates -- The Slouchy Bag and another book from Cindy Taylor Oates with a bunch of different bags. I know Anri likes to make bags and she loved the books.

As this was the first shop I went into - Jim came along with me instead of sitting in the car. Jim is very social and was chatting away with the ladies in the store - very difficult for me to concentrate on what I was doing - I finally had to banish him to the car for the rest of the trip. I bought him a copy of the book "Help, I'm Married to a Quilter" so he wouldn't be too bored in the car. I think that is the reason for the second trip to the Centre Diamond. And it was good I went back because I missed a lot the first time around. When I went back the second time we were staying in Cannon Beach so I left Jim at the room enjoying a beer and the baseball game.

If you go to the Centre Diamond's website you will see a workshop offered at the quilt shop by a quilter -- Barbara Shapel . Barbara Shapel had a beautiful machine quilted Salmon Quilt at the APNQ show in Seattle in 2006. There is a small piece of the salmon quilt on the shop's website, it is just a stunning quilt! She teaches classes quite often at the Centre Diamond, she has great designs and does a mystery quilt workshop there. Boy, would I love to take a workshop there. When I mentioned this, Jim announce that he wouldn't be too happy to go on holiday for 4 days to Cannon Beach and have me away in a workshop the entire time. I'm surprised he thought I would have invited him along --LOL!!

I am not showing all the items I bought because some have been given away already.


I have been coveting the pattern for this Atkinson Design so I bought the pattern and I bought this lovely little print on fabric a painting of Haystack Rock on Cannon Beach. This was my first trip.



I spent a lot more time in the shop on my second trip there. The shop owner was there that day and she was very nice and helpful we talked alot about the workshops and fabric. I found a fat quarter bundle of 12 different African fabrics, I was really thrilled with that find. The shop has a huge selection of Japanese fabric, even bits and pieces of actual Japanese kimono fabrics bundled in bags. It was really had to not buy everything in there. I resisted the Japanese fabric because I have a lot that I haven't really used yet.

I highly recommend a stop at the Centre Diamond in Cannon Beach for anyone who goes to the Oregon Coast.

I also highly recommend the Pizza a' Feta in Cannon Beach as well. We ordered take out pizza from Pizza a' Feta the first night we were there and Jim drove into town to get it - he got a little lost and forgot the name of the place so when he got back the pizza wasn't really hot - but it was warm and it was the best pizza I have ever eaten!! Such a soft and perfectly cooked crust and great fresh ingredients. We had pepperoni, mushroom, feta and roasted garlic -- the pizza was just covered in whole cloves of roasted garlic!! Fabulous! I bet people from all over the Oregon Coast area drive into Cannon Beach for pizza.

I will post more about my quilt shop trip soon.

Pheasant fabric

Jim has gone away for the weekend and taken the camera. I was planning to take pictures of my Oregon Coast quilt shop "hop" but I will have to wait until he gets back tomorrow. He has gone to Hamilton Ontario to a WW2 reunion of his Uncle Doug's Battery - or something like that.

I have been quite busy quilting - and doing quilt related things while he has been gone. I have been working on my Secret Santa gift and it is getting close to being completed. And today I spent the morning cleaning my Featherweight. I had ordered a tune up kit and a few other pieces from the www.221parts.com store and they came in while we were away.

I joined a Featherweight Yahoo group - which is a wealth of knowledge. I printed off a 6 pages of "Cleaning your Featherweight" and followed it step by step this morning. After it was all cleaned - new lubricant and oil, fresh drip pad and felt thread pad - it runs like a top!! I am quite happy with how well it works. I am planning to take it to my retreat in November. I have a couple of quilts I plan on making and I would like to piece them on the Featherweight.

The weather here has been "rain, heavy at times" all day and with Jim away it has been me out in the pouring rain, soaked, even with the umbrella -- to take the dog out for a walk. Today was the worst day of the weekend. The last walk I put on my rubber gum boots - there are rivers running down the streets!!

Since I don't have the camera I thought I would post a picture that I forgot to post when I got the fabric. And I hate to have a post without a picture.

I bought this pheasant fabric in August. It was just a few sample pieces from the "by the pound" sale at Quiltopia. I thought the fabric was great and I hope to make a little something in memory of Phinneaus.



For three years we had a pheasant that lived in the neighbourhood and he came to our yard on a regular basis. We fed him cracked corn and some of the left over bird seed.

Here is a picture of Phinneaus, a very handsome bird.

Seven True things about Jim

Suze has tagged me to write seven true things about myself. I did this meme once quite awhile ago so I thought - after a week in Oregon with Jim I would do it about Jim. Hopefully that is okay - and Jim will not see this post anyway - LOL

1. When Jim walks he kind of lists off to the right, so when I walk with him I always have to walk on his left or he bumps into me as we walk.

2. When ever we go to MacDonald's Jim orders a Double Quarter Pounder with Cheese - no fries and no drink. Because he doesn't eat fries or need a drink - then he eats half my fries and half my drink. So now I super size my fries and just put half of them in his hamburger box. It has taken me 10 years to figure that one out.

3. When we travel by car he announces the price of the diesel at each gas station we pass by. I know the cost of diesel from B.C all the way to Arizona!

4. Every morning for breakfast Jim has an apple and 2 pieces of cheese. For the first 13 years of our marriage he had Shredded wheat and bran and then he decided he needed protein and switched to the apple and cheese. When we travel we buy apples and cheese and take them along for breakfast. We take a package of coffee filters (for the small hotel coffee pots) and coffee beans and our coffee grinder and Jim makes coffee before I get up each morning.

5. When we travel we usually pack a small lunch to eat along the road but if we are not able to do that we will go to MacDonald's. Once we went to Jack in the Box - because I really wanted to try it. But we never go to Wendy's or Arby's or Taco Time/Bell, KFC, or anywhere else but MacDonald's -- and we all know what Jim orders at MacDonald's.

6. When Jim is driving the car he will point up at the sky at some bird -- "Looks there is a blue winged sap sucker - see you can tell that's what it is because of the red dot under the left eye" I never see birds flying when I drive the car --- when I drive I look at the road!!

7. Jim loves fossils and good beer. In Oregon we were able to find a great beach full of fossils -- Moolack Beach near Newport. We have 143 pictures just to prove it - LOL. And the best IPA he's had in Oregon -- Pelican Brewpub near Cape Kiwanda.

Rockaway Beach, Oregon

A post today from the Oregon Coast. Today we are at Cannon Beach - this is our third night here.

The first place we stayed did not have Internet access and we haven't spent much time on the computer this past week.

We are having a great time. We have found some great quilt shops, one great brew pub and a couple hours shopping at an outlet mall.

Our first two nights were spent at a hotel at Rockaway Beach. The hotel is right on the beach. The beach at Rockaway is miles and miles of sand. It is a great walking beach -- or dog running beach!!

A few random pictures.


Jenny is a big fan of chasing seagulls.




Here are my DJ supplies that I set up in the room. I managed to do a fair bit on this block in Rockaway Beach. As you can see as I get older I need to bring my own light and my reading glasses and a needle threader.



The hotel is older and it was an alright room but it was right on the beach which was wonderful. There isn't too much else in Rockaway Beach but there are a bunch of fabulous quilt shops in the area. There is a nice little quilt shop in Wheeler called Creative Fabric. I think I will blog about the quilt shops when I get home and I can go through my fabric and take photos of my purchases and talk about each shop. All together I have been in 7 shops - from Astoria to Newport!!!

It has certainly been a fun trip as far as shopping has gone. We also bought a few items at the outlet centre in Lincoln. I bought 12 pair of Hanes socks for $15.00!! Jim bought two pair of Rockport shoes for 101.00. I also got 6 pair of Jockey underwear for $18.00! Two weeks ago I got 6 pair of Jockey underwear at the Sears in Canada for 35.00 - so you can imagine my exictement!



Here is a picture of the sunset at Rockaway Beach.

We have been extremely lucky and have had some beautiful weather. The day we arrived at Rockaway Beach it was very windy and wet but the next day (Wednesday) the sun came out and it has been warm and sunny every day. The weekend was amazing - so sunny and warm - no jackets needed for walking on the beach.

I discovered what a beautiful state Oregon is about 2 years ago. I think it is such a wonderful place and if you have never been to Oregon you really must go there one day.

Stay tuned - More to come.

Road Trip!!

We are up early to head down to Oregon. The dog has not been fed and has been given the Gravol in preparation. I just needed to pay my Visa bill before I left --- gotta be prepared - LOL

I have been working 12 shifts the past two days and then packed last night when I got home - maybe I'm not prepared - LOL!! So I wasn't able to get on the computer for long and I will try to send out some emails and update my blog along the road. Thanks for all your well wishes with the trip and I hope everyone in Canada had a nice turkey dinner.

Thanksgiving Weekend

Happy Thanksgiving to all us Canadians this weekend!!

I got together with my Friday stitch group yesterday. This is the first Friday that we have been all together (there are only 5 of us) since before the summer. So I came away with gifts from all the summer travelling of my stitch group.


It it not a great picture -- I got a piece of fabric from Dorothy from Prince Edward Island - which is actually purple not blue. Trudy brought us each a little "I love Quilting" broach from Arizona and the little Petruska dolls broach is from Russia, from Barbara - and from Dianne a Mouse pad Calendar. It was nice to finally get all together again. I have been not able to make many Fridays since I started this new job. And at the stitching group I started a DJ block.

Here are two more examples of what I did in the Curved Piecing workshop. I really like the curved log cabin blocks. They really make a nice looking quilt when it is all together.


This one is just a small four inch curved seam block. These blocks are actually much more tricky to put together than the long curves. These are done with freezer paper templates and adding a 1/4 inch seam allowance. Judy Morningstar gave us a great tip on how to cut the curved seams with a rotary cutter.


I am working tomorrow and Monday so there is no Turkey dinner in our house this weekend. I could have cooked a dinner tonight but that would have left Jim with all the clean up Sunday morning and then we are leaving to the Oregon coast on Tuesday morning. So I promised Eric (middle son who loves turkey dinners) that I would cook him a turkey when we got back from Oregon.

To everyone else --- A Happy Thanksgiving and enjoy the holiday weekend.

An interesting boat appeared today

This morning I looked out and this strange boat was sitting (or floating) just out front of our house. I just asked Jim -- apparently it is a Canada Coast Guard Boat. Makes sense - see the Maple Leaf on the side. It was there for most of the day today. Sometimes we get cruise ships that come up the inside on there way to Alaska. Boy are they impressive to see, and they are just the small ships.



I stayed home today and worked on getting some DJ blocks prepped and ready to take on the trip to Oregon. I also worked on this project, but it is a secret --- so that is all I can say about it.


And the bear continues to wreak havoc in the neighbourhood. Apparently there are TWO bears. The bear I have seen is a small male that is not causing too much of a problem but there is a very large bear that is running around the neighbourhood tearing apart building and turning over large freezers and the like. I saw the damage that the bear did to the neighbours small shed. The shed was a very solid shed with siding that matched the house and it pulled off large pieces of siding like they were paper. There has been a bear trap up the street for over a week now - but with no success. So not sure what the next step is with this bear, but I'm starting to get a bit nervous when I take the dog out for a walk. Although I think bears mostly wander around at night - and the Jenny certainly has been barking in the middle of the night on a regular basis. Hopefully they catch the bear soon, real soon!!

Fall Seminar

Friday I had my workshop with Becky Goldsmith "Little Bitty Ensy Teensy" It was a very good workshop. Lots of little tidbits of information that were very helpful with improving my applique stitch. My stitch was much longer than it should be. I found that I can get a smaller stitch with an Applique needle instead of a Straw needle. Becky was a wonderful teacher, enthusiastic and fun. I like the "Piece O' Cake" method with making the templates with photocopies and laminate and needle turn applique. Very accurate and easy to do. I think it will be very helpful for the applique on my DJ quilt.


This was the result of the one day class ( I also did a very tiny bit of a branch but it was not good - LOL)

The next day I had a class with Judy Morningstar - a Canadian teacher from Manitoba. "Creative Curves" She was also a very good teacher. Great sense of humor. It was a great class.


This is Judy with her curvy log cabin quilt. I just love this quilt. And the interesting thing here is that all the fabric she used was solid black fabric. Some of the fabric had been put in bleach and each black fabric came out slightly different colours from the bleach -- orange, green, purples etc. That is so amazing. She had tons of samples of what could be done just by sewing curvy fabric. And it was quite easy to sew the curves - after a little practice.


A bunch of sample blocks.

I made a few samples myself.

This is one of my samples just to show that I was able to master sewing curves. I also made a log cabin curvy block and a curvy four patch.

Jim and I have decided to take a little road trip next week to the Oregon Coast. We were thinking of staying around Lincoln City -- taking the dog --- and I am looking for ideas of good quilt shops in Oregon - along the coast. I have a few on my list so far. There seems to be a number of quilt shops in the area but if anyone out there has a favourite quilt shop on the Oregon Coast - I would love to know. I am quite excited about it - because we will be gone for over 7 days. I can bring back up to $750.00 duty free, Oregon does not have sales tax -- and the Canadian dollar is at par or close!!! How much shopping can I do......look out American Express!! Can you feel the excitement????