Door close, window open

I believe in luck, I am definitely one of those people who think that if a door closes, a window will open in its place.

I was scheduled to attend a meeting for work about 40 miles away on Tuesday. I had planned to visit a fabric shop that was very close to the meeting afterwards. I used a mapping site to plan my route, the directions were easy and simple. My printer has been driving me mad lately, it has a full ink cartridge, all the test copies come out perfectly, but when I try to print, I get nothing but a blank page. So instead of printing a map, with specific directions and mileage, I looked at the estimated time my trip should take and headed out, after all, there was only 5 turns on my entire route.

Then I hit construction, and traffic caused by the construction, I was sure I had missed my turn because I had been driving for well over an hour and knew I would be missing the meeting but I still had a shop to find! So as I backtracked, taking different turns here and there, I spent 2 hours looking for the quilt shop before I gave up and headed for home stopping at a Joanns along the way. I saw a lady buying a 6x24" ruler and asked if she was a quilter. Yes, she was. Did she know where the shop called Zig Zag was located? She replied, it closed 6 months ago. Just great. With the price of gas where it is, I just had a 2½ hour wild goose chase. Well I still felt I needed to buy fabric, so I stopped just a few miles from my house at the Back Door quilt shop.

The meeting was one of many scheduled so I rescheduled for Thursday. Not a big difference, but I work nights, so i worked until 8am and the meeting started at 2pm, an hours drive, plus showering, etc. I was running on about 3 hours of sleep and knew that would be all I would be getting before starting another ten hour shift that night. I learned of an alternate route, fewer turns, country driving, less traffic and it would bring me right to the location of the meeting, and I headed off. So I actually made the meeting and was driving home thinking about all the irritation I had caused myself a few days prior, I was stopped at a red light, looked to my right and had one of those "Angels singing Aaaaaahhhhhh! and a ray of blinding light" moments, I'll be danged if it wasn't a quilt shop! Not the one I was looking for, but an honest to God real live quilt shop nonetheless! I had to stop. Yes, I had spent my allocated fabric dollars a few days earlier at the Back Door, but, but, but I still HAD to go in! What a great little shop! And I do mean little. The owner was extremely friendly and apologized for being so tiny, explaining she was looking for another larger location. But it was so cozy, and had tons to see and look at. I told her the whole story, and she said, "The Zig Zag isn't closed, I just talked to the owner last week." What??????? You've got to be #%$&* kidding me!!! So I know where I'm going on my next SEX (Stash Enhancing Experience) field trip! LOL

While browsing, I happened upon a collection called Prairie Paisley by Moda which I have seen in magazines and online, but none do justice to this gorgeous collection as does seeing it in person, and her lone star shop sample was incredible, so I splurged and bought this:

Try this link for a better view of the entire fabric collection:

Moda's Prairie Paisley by Minick& Simpson

There's about 9 yards of fabric there, enough I think to make at a lap/twin sized quilt. It didn't take me long to figure out what I'm going to do with this....Why a Wild Goose Chase quilt of course!