Fabric Shopping in Washington and Oregon

I am back from my trip as a delegate to our church’s annual denominational meeting for our region. It included a surprising amount of fabric shopping.

I left Wednesday morning and powered through to Seattle, arriving around 3 pm. I was aware that there was a soccer game scheduled at noon. Pacific Fabrics is only a short distance from the stadium. DD#2 had suggested I avoid the area altogether, but I thought the game would be over by then and I could sneak in. Unfortunately, I was behind some idiot on I-90 who thought it was a good idea to STOP in the middle of the highway in an attempt to merge into a line of traffic heading south on I-5. I was worried someone would come around the curve and smash into my car, so I had to make a quick detour to a different exit, which put me right next to the stadium just as the game was letting out. 😩 That required me to take a slightly circuitous route to Pacific Fabrics, but I did get there, eventually, at about 3:20.

DD#2 said she’d probably be home by 4:30 and I said I had no doubt I could poke around Pacific Fabrics for an hour. I didn’t buy much, but I did score a two-yard remnant of some 100% linen in black and three yards of a print from Marcia Derse’s new line called Plaid. That will become a Vernon Shirt one of these days.

I had dinner with DD#2 and got to see her new apartment. I waited until the worst of rush hour was over, then headed down to Puyallup to my hotel, not far from the fairgrounds where Sew Expo is held. I spend so much time in Washington that I almost don’t need GPS any longer.

On Thursday morning, I popped over to Tacoma and picked up my friends Mike and Kathy, who came to the conference with me. Mike was scheduled to give a presentation on Saturday evening on his work with the Tacoma Refugee Choir. The three of us drove down I-5 to Albany, Oregon, and arrived around 11 am. We had lunch, then I left them at the hotel and went to the church for the pastor’s retreat. I am not a pastor—nor do I play one on TV—but a third of the congregations in our conference are lay-led or currently without a pastor, including our congregation, so representatives from those congregations were invited to the pastor retreat. I enjoyed the session even though I felt a bit like an odd duck.

After dinner on Thursday, we had a hymn sing. Mennonites will sing, in four parts, at the drop of a hat. I know this, but it still blows me away. And because I did not have to play the piano at all this weekend, I got to sing. What a rare treat.

I was up early on Friday morning with an hour to kill before we had to be at the church, so I went to the nearby Walmart Supercenter to see if they had a remnant rack. Did they ever! It was huge. I got some sweater knit for a Harper Cardigan—I know, it’s a bunch of weird colors but I like it—some black rayon/spandex because one can never have enough of that, and the turquoise-and-black knit, which I suspect is an ITY knit. (ITY = Interlock Twist Yarn.)

I ducked out of the Friday afternoon session so I could meet JC Briar in Albany. JC was the tech editor for my books and patterns and we don’t get to see each other very often. (We are going to try to fix that.) I met her at Brigitte’s Place, which is a phenomenal little fabric store specializing in apparel fabrics. Brigitte is a lovely woman who knows her stuff when it comes to fabric and sewing. I indulged myself and came out of there with some black fabric for a pair of Style Arc Linda Pants, some royal blue cotton eyelet fabric, a bit of cotton/spandex knit for a T-shirt, and a couple of yards of a cotton Japanese fabric in a gorgeous gingham print.

After we left Brigitte’s, we went a few doors down to The Quilt Loft. I did not buy anything there as I have plenty of quilting fabric. We did pet the resident dogs, however.

Wonder of wonders, Black Sheep Gathering was happening at the fairgrounds, so we went over to check out the market. BSG used to be held further south, in Eugene, and I actually taught there back in the early 2000s. We walked around the market and visited. I don’t spin anymore but it was fun to see all the beautiful fibers available for sale.

We ended our visit with dinner at The Barn, which is a collection of food trucks. It is a very clever setup and I saw a few other people from the conference there as well.

I spent all day Saturday in delegate sessions and seminars and Mike gave his presentation Saturday evening. We left Albany on Sunday morning and headed back to Tacoma. Oh, the traffic! We didn’t get back to Tacoma until 3 pm and I still had to drive to Spokane (four hours) to spend the night. Thank goodness it stays light until about 10 pm. And it was light again at 5 am, so I hit the road early Monday morning and was home before lunch.

Now it’s back to reality. July isn’t supposed to be nearly as busy as June was, but our church is hosting the bike tour at the end of the month and there will be a good bit of prep for that. I’m not trying to rush time, but I will be glad when September gets here.

We got a lot of rain over the weekend—East Glacier flooded yesterday and the hotels and campground had to be evacuated. I need to go look at the garden this morning to see how it looks.