Road Trip Quilt Along - Let's Get started!

 Time for Day One of the Road Trip Quilt Along!  I'm getting a quicker start than we did on our trip!  It seems like there was so much to do that we didn't leave town until after noon that day! Do we look a little excited?  It was quite a moment!

It was such a moment to start driving, knowing how long we were going to be gone!  We had motels reserved for our whole trip and had planned out most of the journey pretty well.  Our original plan was to visit Crater Lake that afternoon, but since we got a late start we decided to do that the next morning instead.  The weather was nice and warm as we started, and we were both looking forward to enjoying some nice summer weather as the Oregon coast can be rather chilly and windy this time of year.

We spent our first night in Medford, it was an easy drive, and it was nice to relax and not exhaust ourselves.  We decided to get some hamburgers at In & Out for dinner, we knew we wouldn't see another one till we were almost home again!  

We enjoyed it immensely, got checked into the motel and got a good night's sleep in preparation for our first full day on the road!

Now it's time to get our Quilt Along underway!  Complete patterns are available here, so download one and let's get started!  You can work on all your blocks at once, or do one a day.  I like to do all my cutting for the week at one time, then just relax and sew up the blocks.

I chose the Summer Winds block to represent our first day traveling, knowing that we would be leaving the coastal winds behind for a while!  

This isn't too difficult a block, just half square triangles and flying geese, the small pieces for the 3 inch block feel a little tricky because they are small, but if you take your time it goes together well.  Be sure you press the seams toward the dark square for the corner units, and away from the flying geese when you add the background rectangle!  

You'll notice the instructions are a little different for the different sizes.  For the 3 inch blocks, I've chosen to give instructions for the sew and flip technique for making half square triangles.  For the six and nine inch blocks, you'll make them in a more traditional manner, but I've rounded up the size so they can be trimmed down for a perfect measurement. 

Off we go - it's going to be a fun trip!