A Sunday Outing to Aurora

Every October, I wait for the quilt show in Aurora at the Aurora Colony Museum. This year was a special show called "Celebrating Our Golden Memories" as it was the 50th anniversary of the museum and the 150th anniversary of the colony's beginnings.

Another beautiful fall day in Oregon! It's always a nice country drive along 99E. Love to drive when you get off the freeway and out in the country.

The museum is the perfect setting for hanging all these beautiful vintage quilts. This year, all the quilts had a connection with the families of the colony. Usually, the show is open to anyone who wishes to exhibit their quilt or an old quilt that you might own.

Each quilt was numbered and the brochure told the history of each quilt. As is often the case, we will never know some of the quilt makers. That's why we encourage quilter's to put their name and date on their quilt when it is finished.

I have seen some of these quilts in the past. The one with the birds is a favorite of mine. The wool birds shapes were traced with a cookie cutter.

I liked the small prairie points on this log cabin quilt.

Jim is watching some of the volunteers doing hand quilting. We met an interesting lady who was visiting. She grew up in Saskatchewan Canada and was 94 years old. She is writing her life story and said she was only at her high school years, so she had to live a little longer to so she could finish.

She was telling Jim about her family and working on the farm when she was growing up.

I always enjoy the little doll beds upstairs. They added little doll quilts to them for the show.

Of course, I always love the dollhouse in the children's room.

Don't you think the boarder on this quilt is interesting? So nicely done.

This is the quilt that was made for the annual raffle quilt. It would be great to win this one! These are the winning blocks. Anyone can submit a block and they usually make 2-3 quilts from all the blocks turned in. They use all of them.

I liked this little block!

While we were there, I had to pop in and see my friend Karen, the owner of Time After Time. Her shop is lovely and I enjoy chatting with her.

I just cracked up when I read the names on the headstones outside her shoppe! If you're a Downton Abbey fan, you will appreciate  these. She told me her friends made these for her. We had to talk about
poor Matthew and how upset everyone is that he will no longer be on the show...sigh.

There's a new tea shoppe and little restaurant in town! On Sunday, they serve a little English Pot Roast dinner. Jimmy and the owner have this funny little thing going from last week. Jimmy went in to check it out while I was in another shoppe. He told the lovely English lady who owns the place that he was the Queen's boyfriend. Well, she is a riot and the two of them just were having so much fun. She said his name was Earl Grey from Aurora and she had called to Queen during the week to verify his story.She said it was true. Oh my, oh my, oh my! She kept saying he was a naughty boy with her English accent.

Her shop is named after a street in London called Pudding Lane. The really fun thing is that the little river that runs by Aurora and floods ofter, is called the Pudding River, so it all works together.

Th lovely owners who work very hard and do a great job!

When you order a dinner, you may have soup or dessert! Who can pass up all of this yummy assortment?

She asked him if he wanted a mug for his tea? My Jimmy? No way! He's an old tea drinker who knows how to enjoy a cuppa in a bone china teacup! It was fun.

We were on our way out of town when we spotted a new shop. Isn't it decorated for the season? I thought it was so cute, we had to stop and go in. It's owned by a young couple and it's only been open a few months.

Always a treat to visit one of our very favorite places! We are in for a whole week of dry weather! Yeah! How's the weather in your part of the world?

Quilt Show in Aurora!

Friday was the first day of the Quilt Show our at one of our favorite places...the Aurora Colony Museum. This is an event that I wait for each year, but I was especially excited about this year's theme-
"Seeing Red". I like this show because they feature a lot of vintage quilts, most of which are hand quilted. As a quilter, I think it's wonderful that quilts can be quilted by long arms. If we had to hand quilt our quilts, most of us would probably give it up or be able to complete one quilt in our life. In my humble opinion, nothing can compare to a hand quilted quilt. I love the look and respect the hours of workmanship. Each year, the colony puts out a request for quilt blocks to go into a quilt with a particular theme. Someday....Anyway, the 12 best blocks are chosen, hand quilted by the volunteers and then raffled off. Here is this year's quilt.

Most of the quilts on display this year were red and white. I took lots of pictures so I hope you will enjoy looking at them.

My favorite author Jane Kirkpatrick, has written three novels about the Aurora Colony and Emma Wagner Giesy who was a member of the colony. Jane writes wonderful historical fiction and it helped me to really understand the life that the colony members lived in Aurora.  Jane also wrote a non fiction book after the series called Aurora.

When I read the book, I found some photos of a delightful red work quilt. I found out that It was made by one of the volunteers at Aurora, Janus Childs. Her embroidery work is fabulous and I have been bugging them for years to put out some patterns. She does her work with a single strand of floss, so it's very fine and detailed. Her quilt was on display with the red and white quilts.

You can see how detailed her work is in these photos. She also had one on display in the children's room of Raggedy Ann and Andy.

About a year ago, I talked with some of the volunteers and sent them some examples of how embroidery patterns were sold. They got together a packet of 4 patterns to start off and give it a try.
They were having some trouble with the packaging, but I got to go upstairs to see the patterns and  was able to buy one! I was soooo excited. Here's the patterns...ready for work now.

After viewing the quilts, Jim and I went over to the little log cabin where they have a little shoppe and refreshment. The rain was falling and the fire was going, so it felt good to be inside the cozy little building.

Of course, I had to buy a few fat quarters to support the colony, right? We also had a nice visit with some ladies from an herb  group that tend an herb garden at the colony. They had published a little book on herbs, so we bought one to enjoy and to learn a bit more.

This summer, Jim bought a chair in Oregon City as a garage sale for $5. He thought it looked like an Aurora chair, so he asked the curator Patrick about it. He went and got a chair for Jim to look at and it is like his $5 special! Pretty exciting. Jim also spotted a small table and Patrick explained the design of it and what defined an Aurora piece. We were thinking about buying a table at one of the shoppe to keep be the home for our laptop. After seeing the little table we decided to purchase the one we had seen, especially since the shoppe owner had offered us a discount.
We stopped at an estate sale on the way home and then had dinner at Tad's on the Sandy River. A had a wonderful day!