Sisters Outdoor Quilt Show - Saturday

Not many groans were heard on Friday night when I announced that the coach would depart at 8.30am for a 9.30am start for the 34th Sisters Outdoor Quilt Show.

All bright-eyed and bushy tailed off we went. The tail of the traffic was only about 1.5km from Sisters. People had parked up to 1.5km away - on the roadside and were walking. Already the heat was crazy - the climate in this area is very dry and hot in summer. By Noon the temperature had risen to the 90's and I'm sure it kept moving upward from there.

This year they hung more than 1400 quilts. As you will see from the pictures they are hung everywhere. I did'nt try to capture many individual quilts, just the 'feeling' of how it is.

By 12.30 I had only been around one block - there are 9 or 10 blocks - so you kind of gave up and just wandered. A coffee and a cinnimon roll at 11am kept me going until I found the produce stand with peaches, necterines, apricots, loganberries, blueberries, strawberries, tayberries & raspberries. I purchased one pice of each of the big fruit and a punnet of loganberries. They are kind of a boysenberry crossed with something else. Yummy, but a punnet is way too much for one sole to eat, so I offered them to people in the street.

By 2.30pm it was TOO HOT to think, so a very large Strawberry Smoothie was called for. (This is turning into a food commentary, but the quilts speak for themselves). I think that there are just so many quilts and they are tucked away everywhere. It is difficult to even pick a favourite - there were lots that I liked, some that I wondered "why" and others that were "wallpaper" when you walked along. I will post as many pictures as possible.

5pm the quilts start to come do. This is when we were called to duty. I volunteered for our group to fold the quilts. So, the we are, reporting for dut at the Quilt Show Office. There is a particular 'recipe' for folding. They all have a folded paper tag (see pictures later) and that has a barcode on it. Thye scan each bar code to record them all back in and to insure that the quilts are all returned to the correct mother.

By 5.15 the first few bags (black garbage bags) were dribbling in, but by 6pm it was chaos - organised - but chaos. I'll let the pictures do the talking there too! By 6.45pm it was done.

We were exhausted and no one complained when I suggested that Sunday should be a sleep-in day and that we would head for Cascade Mall on the coach at 11.30am. Early night tonight and on the road tomorrow to the coast and Tillamook.