Last Thursday morning my SIL and I headed off to the Kansas City metro area.  The occasion?  The start of Hunter Quilt Marts Customer Appreciation sale where everything in the store is 25% off. (I’m not sure is that is true for sewing machines and longarms).  I was in need of quilt batting.  I’m down to about 9 yards on my king roll and maybe 9 yards on my queen roll.

After 12 hours switching off the driving every few hours we arrived at my brother’s just outside of Ottawa (KS).  We visited that evening and Friday morning. We then headed toward the city where I visited with a friend from my previous guild for a few minutes — she was holding some quilt books for me (will do a post on those books) and we did another small task that I cannot do here in Mississippi. Then we kept driving north to St Joseph (MO) where we visited with my sister who had quilts I had purchased from a guild members estate via proxy. We spent the night, heading to bed early so we could get to Hunters Quilt Mart in Centerview (MO).

The goal was to get there by 10:15 or so because we wanted to leave by Noon so we could get to another shop before they closed.  We got there at 10:45.  Oops.

We both had lists.  Ruby started with her notions and notions she remembered from my list.  I headed to the thread.

All of these are Glide 40wt thread which stitches beautifully with no tension issues.  Cool Gray 7, Mercury, Biscotti, Magic Mint, Grape, Salmon, Strawberry Blonde, and Yellow Whisper. All of these are replacement cones except for Salmon and Yellow Whisper.

As for the notions, I picked up needles for the longarm, an 8″ rotating mat, a Hot Ruler, a tube of bobbins, 2 backlash springs for my bobbin case, a new ruler and small snips.  The small snips were not on my list.  They did not have the Brother bobbins for my sewing machine in stock, but now I know exactly what I’m looking for.

That just left backings – not that any of these quilts are finished (or started in some cases).  At the top left is the backing for my Quartered Squared quilt which I haven’t started. In the middle is the backing for Cascade which clearly hasn’t been started.  At the top right is the backing for my Rivanna which is my current leader/ender project. I have just over half of the HST made for it.   That’s the left over FQs sitting on top of it.  At the bottom is the backing for Star Studded, a BOM I started in 2019.  It turns out I only have to made the center star and assemble it.

Although the batiks were calling to me, I remained strong and stopped shopping.  We checked out, stopped by the batting and told them what we bought and headed to the car to unload it so we could load the batting.  A Honda CRV has more cargo room than my Nissan Cube.  The same amount of batting was brought home, but I had plenty of leg room this year and there were 2 us in the car!

Where we went next later this week.