QuiltQuest: Round Up Week 28: 0 Southern California Quilt Shop Run Pre-Event and March 2020 Quilt Shop Run and Quilt Show

The last outing I went on before the Covid shut down was a March 2020 Quilt Shop Run.

These are great marketing events where the shops get together and set aside certain weekends to show off their stores. At the first store you get a passport. Then at each store you have it stamped and receive a lovely fat quarter and pattern!

Last time shortly after we returned our son asked us to stay in the house as Covid was ramping up, so we stayed home.

I realize now in the stress of being shut-in, I did not share a post about that weekend. I will briefly write about it here now...

About March 2020 (Our Second) Quilt Shop Run: It was our second time doing a a quilt shop run - and very nice as there were fewer shops and we were able to visit them all with just one night stay over. While we were in stores we overheard people talk about how Costco had run out of toilet paper and other cleaning supplies. We stayed over in Palm Springs for one night and went to a quilt show there the next day.

Beautiful quilts. My photos do not do them justice. I'm so glad we were able to visit this in combination with the Quilt Shop Run!

We overheard more talk of stores shelves being empty. So on our way back we stopped as a Costco that was by the freeway, and sure enough the supplies were very low. We bought some Kleenex and 'flushable' wipes (that it turns out is not good to flush as it wrecks the plumbing), before finishing the Quilt Run and coming home.

“Flushable” Wipes — and Almost Everything Else — Are Not Flushable. Here is a simple truth. Sewer systems were designed to handle two things — human waste and toilet paper. ... Flushing wipes increases the chances that your own pipes will get blocked, and causes serious problems for the sewer system in general.Apr 13, 2020

I do not understand why when looking for this photo on blogger - it says it is grabbing it from Google photos
- there is no way to search by date or image. Probably took me 30 minutes to get this image of the fabrics.... : (
Anyway, beautiful fabric!

I used these fabrics in masks and in a little an EBHQ class Wavy Strip Quilt top that is still waiting for me to finish it up! I bought a few fat quarters and my first quilt kit from one of the shops (makes a baby bunny quilt!

EBHQ Wavy Quilt WIP

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Okay, so the March 2020 quilt run was the top of the Covid sandwich, and this most recent multiple day quilt shop run - instead of being the bottom is the center of a club sandwich of Covid.... : (

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For the 2021 July Quilt Shop Run, my husband and I went to to Orange County so we could get a good start with the run without needing to get up early! We live between Shops 14 and 13 in the map below. (This story starts out negatively, but does end up to be a nice event again....)

It took about 2 hours to get there, not many cars on the road going toward Orange County,
but the other side of the freeway was packed.

We have always had good luck with Best Western Hotels so picked one from the web to stay in one the first night. It was a little scary to check in. It was our first time seeing the screens between the registration people and the people checking in. There were signs all over about how we needed to wear masks and how the pool was closed, the elevators were not to be shared by different families, the water faucet was closed, the public restroom in the lobby was closed, and breakfast would not be served. All, I thought, because it was so unsafe for them to offer those services.

We put our things in the room, sprayed it all with Lysol and bravely went to a restaurant for dinner. We picked a local, non-chain BBQ place... We had planned to eat outside, but the patio was more full of people there than inside so we optioned to eat inside...

We were served drinks right away and told several times that menus would be coming. When the waiter came by to check-in asking if we needed anything, we said the menus. He then pointed to a QR code on the edge of the table that he said was the menu. But (since he assumed we were too old to figure things out) he would get menus to us. Before we got the physical menus we had the phone version up and running. Apparently this QR code thing is something many restaurants are doing now - but we didn't know and hadn't noticed the QR code. Nothing like feeling totalling out things...

Enlarge to see the bullseye!

In the parking lot, could see this beautiful moon on the way to eat.

Fireworks from Disneyland as we were leaving.

When we returned to the hotel we could see it was awful - and not because of Covid. It was just an old, not very well maintained place. The carpeting and furniture in the bedrooms was old and ratty looking. It wasn't very clean - there were old water bottles under the bed! They made show of having people return their keys to a tub of alcohol in the lobby. But the bathroom tub and toilet weren't completely fresh either. Pre-Covid I think we would have refused the room, but instead I just sprayed Lysol everywhere again. We thought it was better to stay put rather than expose ourselves to more germs somewhere else.