Moser Good Eats and Good Times: Quilting Inspiration

Lauren and her spoiled kitty, Chloe

For the past eight years we’ve spent the last weekend in September in Portland attending the Northwest Quilting Expo. It never fails to impress. And inspire. This year’s quilt show was no exception. A portion of the event was dedicated to antique quilts. Not my favorite, however, I do have a close connection to one antique quilt in particular. It was pieced by my Grandma Wier (my father’s mother), whom I never met. In 2014 my niece, Leanne, was diagnosed with Stage 4 breast cancer and later liver cancer. She died in November of that year. After her diagnosis she sent me the quilt blocks and asked if I’d finish it for her young daughter, Emma. I still remember opening the package of musty-smelling, yellowed blocks and wondering what I was going to do with them. I discussed the project with a local expert on antique quilts and took her advice to finish the blocks with sashings and cornerstones. Conveniently, I had a collection of 1930’s fabrics which coordinated beautifully with the original fabric. To make a long story short (and it is a long story documented in my other blog, StixChix (August and September, 2014), I finished the quilt knowing much more about my grandmother and feeling a closeness I’d never experienced in life. Verne and I traveled to Missouri in September 2014 to deliver the quilt and say our goodbyes to my beautiful niece. Below is a picture of Emma with the quilt.

Emma

A popular theme from past shows and included in this year’s event were several quilts featuring bridges. You only have to visit Portland to understand the obsession with bridges as there are 14 with 12 crossing the Willamette River and two road bridges crossing the Columbia River. The quilts that held the most appeal for me, though, were not those representational of one of the 14 bridges, but several abstract works influenced by the concept of the word bridge (means of connection or transition), such as The Great Emotional Divide.

The Great Emotional Divide

Our favorite quilt was called Reflections of Capetown created from a photograph of a fishing village. It took the artist a year to make and has about 8,400 individual pieces. Breathtaking!

Reflections of Capetown

Beyond attending the quilt show, we had no other plans for the weekend. We awoke Sunday to light rain and decided to take a drive. For the past few years Lauren has been working on us to move closer. One place in particular keeps coming up in conversation…Sandy, Oregon. So, that seemed to be the perfect destination for our Sunday outing. Sandy is about 25 miles from Portland and according to their motto, the “Gateway to Mt. Hood.” Both its population of around 10,000 and average summer temperature of 71 degrees are appealing. The Sandy Historical Society Museum is central to downtown and seemed a good place to start our tour. That experience alone made me want to move to Sandy and volunteer to work in the museum. As we were about to leave the museum we met a group of enthusiastic women who were working on a fundraiser quilt. Another volunteer opportunity for me? A drive down main street and around the outskirts of town and we knew Sandy was a definite possibility for our future home.

Face Cutout at Sandy Historical Society Museum (Verne and Lauren can't resist!)

The name “Boring” kept popping up in the museum (Bob Boring made most of the beautifully crafted displays). During our drive about town I noted the following inscription on one of the buildings, “Boring, Oregon Sister City of Dull, Scotland.” Curiouser and curiouser, I googled Boring, Oregon and learned that it was the contiguous town directly west of Sandy. We’d driven through it earlier that morning without noticing its name or anything else about the town…Boring. According to Google, Boring and Dull are “two small communities united by unexciting names.” They became sister communities in 2012. If that weren’t funny enough, Bland, Austrailia joined to form an international alliance in 2017. They have formed a club called the League of Extraordinary Communities and in looking for potential members have found two additional towns in America that qualify, Ordinary and Dreary. It just keeps getting funnier and funnier!

A few other beautiful quilts...