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"I Spy Cycle Oregon", by me.

Long story on this quilt. In 2015 I got to ride in Cycle Oregon. The route was "Hell on Wheels" because we went to Hell's Canyon among other locales. GREAT time with all of my newest 2500 best cycling buddies.
Long before the ride, I got online and started to look up quilt shops in the cities/towns that we'd either visit on the ride, or on the way to the ride. There were quite a few, I'm happy to say! Also, supportive travel companions who only whined a little when I wanted to stop to visit the local quilt shop.
As a quilter, you have your "stash". Fabric that you buy just because. I think the original plan was to do that, but then my best biking buddy, Xande and I got it into our heads that we'd each make a Cycle Oregon quilt to remind us of our travels. So, we started to look for fabrics representative of what we saw on the ride. You'll see those below.
First giggle. We arrived for day Zero in Baker City, OR. There's a quilt shop! We got there at 3:15, and they closed at 3pm that day. Sadness! Oh well, we'll be back here at the end of the ride, so will still get to visit this shop.

In addition to all the fun visual memories of the fabrics, the quilt is made up of Sawtooth Star blocks. For the first time, CO traveled into Idaho (briefly), and the Sawtooth Mountains are in Idaho! Perfect!

The quilt is quilted with a pantograph of road bikes. Perfect for this quilt!

Things that are important on bike rides in general, but Cycle Oregon in particular.

Beer. Lots of it.

Coffee. Again lots of it. There's actually a guy who rides (a portion of the ride) with a bike equipped to make coffee on the route. Impressive! Always a long line for him too.

Chip seal roads. A little rough, but when you are traveling through the wilds of Oregon, you can't expect ice smooth pavement.

The volunteers on CO are too numerous to count, but so very vital to the smooth running of the ride. One of the volunteer jobs is to drive the sag wagon. To pick up people who are broken down, or just can't continue. In addition to driving the van, this woman found a stray kitten on the way, and after checking it for tags, chips at the local vet etc, decided to keep it. I walked into a rest stop, and here's this adorable little black kitten with a piece of yellow "Caution" tape around it's neck for a leash. Lucky little cat to get to go home with that lady.

"Goat Heads". I had never heard of them, but they are this weed that grows in the desert, and leaves seed pods behind that are incredibly sharp! I picked up 2 in the sole of my shoe one day, and they hurt! Every time we stopped if you stopped on grass, you made sure to carry your bike, or you'd probably have goat heads in the tires and flats when you were ready to ride again. They are called "Goat Heads" because the seed pods look much like the head of a goat. (Yes, I had to ask) While we didn't find fabric with specific goat heads, this one above looked much like the plants that produced them.

Sunflowers. Lots and lots of fields of sunflowers!

The dead salmon in the road. Truly, we were riding along, and it appeared that some raptor had snagged a salmon out the stream and was quietly enjoying their lunch alongside the road when all these crazy people in lycra came swooping by, right through the birds table! How rude! I think this is probably a trout, but I purposefully cut it with the head half showing. That's what we saw.

Police. I love the police who rode with us. They were so supportive, and funny! Cyclists should be paying attention, but one of us wasn't. The officer gets on his PA and says something to the effect of "You in the green coat. There's a cattle truck coming. Get out of the road." Pause, the cyclist in the green coat doesn't listen. Officer says "Fine. Get run over then." We all laughed. This was the last CO ride for this officer, he was retiring after this week.

Corndogs. We didn't eat corndogs on CO, but they are pretty much a staple on summer rids with Joe and Xande. The scarier the store they come from, the better!

Lots of cowboys in boots

Cows and more cows. The cow standing in the river cooling her feet was a fun sight to see.

When we returned from CO, the fabric wholesaler had a new line of fabric called "Cycles Of Life." I had to go back and get some of this with chain rings to use as setting squares for the quilt. It was too perfect.

Hard to tell, but the fabric in the top border is of maps. Gotta have cue sheets and Dan Henry's (the arrows that tell you where to go on the ride) The bottom border is green to represent the fields of alfalfa that we rode past quite a bit. I always thought of our dad and how he'd say "Aren't you glad we don't have to unload that?" every time we passed trucks loaded with alfalfa. Yes, I'm still glad to be riding and not bucking hay.

We dropped the quilts off at the Cycle Oregon headquarters today, and Chris and Allison seemed quite pleased with them Either that or they are great actors. We suggested that they could be raffled off as a fund raiser, but that's up to them. I hope that they raise lots of money for CO, and that someone gets to enjoy them as much as I did making them.

Katie's t-shirts

Katie contacted me about helping her finish a quilt that she had started, but then became overwhelmed by the idea of finishing. Katie says that she's a knitter, not a quilter. I saw a little bit of her knitting work in the head band she was wearing when she dropped this off. Lovely work.

This top was a bit on the friendly side, but I hope I was able to successfully wave my magic quilting wand and got it finished to her satisfaction.

As always, I have a favorite block. This is the on for this quilt. She knitted and then felted the dinos in this block.

Snowday, by me.

I really think that this is the last of "those blocks". The ones that I keep saying I think this is the last of them. But really and truly, I think this is it!

I called it "Snowday" because I got up on Sunday morning ready to ride my bike, but looked out the window and it's freaking snowing! (I live in Portland. Snow is a rare instance around here.) Since I'm not riding, I guess I'll quilt! Actually, I did ride 0.29 miles that day.

Anyway, threw this one on my girl and swirled it out for the police. Such a thrill to get rid of them all finally.

When I first started cutting fabric, this was to be king sized quilt, but I didn't like how it was turning out, so I made it into a multitude of charity quilts. Will now have to go back and see just how many quilts were generated by that. I just went back and counted 4 quilts to the police from this collection. A much better use of the fabric than the original plan!

"I Spy" by me

I shudder to think how long ago some online friends suggested a fabric swap to make I spy quilts. I finally got mine put together, and then it sat waiting to be quilted for a long time. I'm glad to finally have it done and now off to the police.

Just a sampling of the fabrics. We each cut 5" squares of 5 different fabrics, mailed them to a central person who then sorted them out and mailed out bundles back to us. There are so many great ideas out there for I spy quilts, but I just sewed mine into rows. They'd been sitting there so long that I forgot which fabrics I had sent in. I think I finally remembered them all. The snowmen on the left, 2nd row down is one of mine.

Movie Stars by Xande

We've all got them, those panels that we don't quite know what to do with. Xande had a brilliant idea. If they are movie stars, make star blocks out of them! Specifically, friendship stars. I, for one, am particularly impressed with her math skills. I don't do math, so figuring out how large to cut the triangles is beyond me. The two largest stars are 54" on the diagonal!

So, in no particular order, here are the screen credits.

The Wizard of Oz.

The Simpsons (really Xande? Not my favorite, but it's your quilt.)

Roy Rogers and Dale Evans. What, no Trigger?

Marilyn and several of her movie roles

Gone With The Wind

Darth Vader gets his own (Death) star! (Did you notice my pun? Xande is terrible/wonderful at puns!)

Yet Luke and Han and Chewbacca have to all share a star of their own.

Kermit the Frog, here. (You have to read it in Kermit's voice)

Superwomen! Just like Xande.

A little fuzzy, but Disney princesses

Audrey Hepburn

Dracula!

Superman

Star Trek, original and later years.

Charlie Chaplin

Laurel and Hardy

Alfred Hitchcock

(sing it with me!) na na na na na Batman!

Xande says that Tom's favorite star is this one on the back. Tinkerbell.

"Monkey Wrench" by Lee Ann

This is a new pattern to me. Looks familiar, but I don't recognize the name.

Lee Ann handpieced the blocks in this quilt. She told me that she used to work night shift at a care facility of some sort, so this would be her project to work on when things were slow. I LOVE handwork.

She did add the borders by machine, but everything else is all hand stitched. Nice work.

Since she had pieced the quilt, she chose the "Caring Hands" pantograph for quilting. Hearts and hands throughout.

"Let's Ride!" by me.

I have been fortunate enough to ride Cycle Oregon in 2014 and 2015. Fingers crossed for future years as well.

I found the pattern for this quilt in a magazine from a friend. It's designed by Vivan Perry of Egg Money Quilts.

I used a royal blue marbled background and a bright red for the bike.

Then there's the backing. After returning from Cycle Oregon, 2015, my friend Xande and I went to the fabric wholesaler here in town. The first thing we saw when walking in was an entire collection of bike fabric called "Cycles of Life". Of course, we had to buy a bolt of this!

I plan to donate this quilt to Cycle Oregon, hopefully they will use it as a fundraiser. In 2015, the ride had to be detoured due to a fire, and we were unable to visit the towns of Halfway and Joseph. Since 2000 bike riders and all the support for this tend to bring money into the towns that we visit, these two towns could have used our financial support. I hope that this quilt will be able to help them out in some way.

Balloon crayon box by me.

I pretty much always have a hand piecing project with me at all times. This one traveled with me for a long time on my bike, and I would just piece the hexagons in a "theme" of colors in each block. I bordered each block with white muslin first, then black sashing strips. Cornerstones were randomly chosen squares from my collection.

The Balloon part of this quilt is the pantograph of hot air balloons flowing across the quilt. This one has gone to the Portland Police Sunshine Division.