In last week’s post, I covered the first week of my trip to the Seattle area to teach fabric collage. On this excursion to the Pacific Northwest, I was accompanied by my husband, Tom. After our visits to Sammamish and Shoreline on the east side of Puget Sound, Tom and I caught a ferry to the west side of the Sound and continued up to the north of the Olympic Peninsula to the town of Sequim (pronounced “squim”), where I then taught for the Sunbonnet Sue Quilt Club.
Instead of lectures and two-day Fish, Bug, and Butterfly classes as I had taught at each of the first two quilt guilds, this guild chose a four-day Fabric Images class. It’s all fabric collage, but with longer classes there’s a choice of subject matter, and these ladies chose quite a variety.
Our hosts while in this part of the state were Sherry and Chuck Nagel. Sherry graciously turned over her quilting studio/guest house to us for the week. Their dogs Charlie Rose and Robin Hood, were enthusiastic greeters and the apples of their mom’s eyes. Charlie had been the subject for a previous class project, below right. Robin was to be the subject for this class. Below left, you can see that Sherry got well along in the collage process. At the end of the week, she showed me a collection of copper colored embellishments she’s planning on adding to this project once it’s been quilted.
This class capped off my time in Washington State, and it was a few more days of great color, pattern, and creativity. Check out the in-progress photos of all these ladies’ projects below.
Student Work Slideshow
One day Anne Peacock brought in a couple collages she had made based on sun and moon patterns included in my book Serendipity Quilts. I had to get photos of them to share.
That’s another of Anne’s quilts below. I love the color and energy that she puts into each of her pieces. Anne as a very loose and intuitive approach to her art—with the ability to capture the essence of her subjects. What a treat it was to get to see this work.
The Olympic Peninsula in Washington State
Our travel saga continues from the Seattle area of last week’s post, to the Olympic Peninsula. After driving off the early morning ferry from Seattle, the first stop was a coffee shop right at the ferry gates, and a wonderful and warm mocha latte to start this leg of the journey.
I had two days off between teaching weeks, at the end of which Tom was to catch a plane back home. So our sight-seeing time amounted to two partial days as we had the drive to Sequim on one day, and on day two was Tom’s departure prep and two hours drive south to the Seattle-Tacoma airport. We squeezed as much as we could into those two days though.
After dropping off our bags with our host, Sherry Nagel in the little town of Carlsborg, Tom and I headed into Olympic National Park and up to an overlook called Hurricane Ridge. At a little more than a mile high, the air was colder than we low-landers had expected. After a quick stop at the Visitor Center gift shop for warm socks and gloves, we piled on every other layer we had brought with us for the day and went on a hike—in the clouds.
According to several of the plaques we saw, the view from Hurricane Ridge encompasses Vancouver Island on one side and a deep swath of the park including Mount Olympus on the other. We may have caught brief glimpses of these views, but the cloud cover was low and intermittent, cloaking us one moment then opening up the next. The sights were still exceptional, especially coming from the coast of Maine where we have a road named “Mountain Road” which has an elevation of perhaps three hundred feet, as opposed to the 5242 foot elevation we were at.
Later that afternoon we decided to try our luck with scenic vistas at sea level and drove north to Ediz Hook, a spit of land jutting into the Strait of Juan de Fuca, which separates the the USA from Canada. From there we could look back at the cloud covered mountains we had just descended from.
On the other side of the rocks, the ocean waves hit the shore and wash up impressive piles of driftwood. We inadvertently walked into a sea otter crisis—a mother otter had become separated from one of her two yearlings. Tom saw two otters in the water and went to get some photos. I had lagged behind and then heard an odd noise nearby. Turns out the mother was calling and searching the shore, while one baby otter was wandering through the driftwood not too far from me, making his own cries. So Tom and I tried to get ourselves out of the way ducking behind a nice big log. Happily, we got to witness the family reunion.
That evening we explored the artsy little town of Port Angeles, right outside Olympic Park. We found a choice little cafe/bar for an early supper, then walked around for some window shopping. It happened to be an Arts Walk evening in town, with a fiber arts show and a few shops and galleries open late. What good timing we had.
The next morning, Tom’s final day in Washington, we had breakfast at the Saw Mill Cafe, then hiked along another spit of sand, the Dungeness National Wildlife Refuge in Sequim. At the end of the 4-mile spit of land, there is a lighthouse, but we were content to take it easy and simply beach comb and take numerous photos of driftwood, water, and rocks.
Then, before Tom had to get ready to catch his red-eye back home that evening, we visited the Olympic Game Farm, a drive-through large-animal preserve. There we met some very assertive llamas, some hungry fallow deer, some talented bears (could catch slices of bread with their mouths), as well as bison and elk, some of whom left their slobber on our rental car.
As entertaining as parts of the park were, in hindsight, both Tom and I are conflicted about confining animals in such places, even if it is for their own benefit. As we drove past the enclosures for the predatory animals, it saddened us to see wild animals such as wolves and big cats, confined to small cages. We read that this wildlife refuge was originally set up to provide a home for animals trained in the film industry, and then no longer able to be released into the wild. We don’t know if that’s still the case.
Soon Tom said goodbye to me and Washington State, taking Carmine, our little red rental car, back to SeaTac Airport and catching a flight to the other side of the country and back home. The next day I started the four-day class with the Sunbonnet Sue ladies. Those days flew by, and soon enough I was on my own red-eye flight from Seattle to the east coast.
We could see why the Pacific Northwest is beloved by so many people. The temperate climate, the many opportunities for outdoor activities, the laid-back culture. There’s still sights on our list that we couldn’t get to, here’s hoping for a return visit someday.
thank you for a personal re-connection to a beautiful part of our country, where I lived for a couple of years on a tiny (and long-gone) radar instillation on the Makah Reservation, just a wee bit farther west of Sequim. Forty-two years ago, Sequim was a blink of an eye, the last place to find a mid-wife, if you were in labor and had to make it all the way to Port Angeles, 2 1/2 hrs away, on the two lane blacktop that wound like a roller coaster around and through the hairpin turns of Highway 101. So glad the art community has found a breath-taking place to establish home.
My husband was stationed on Bainbridge Island in Puget Sound in his Navy days, and we enjoyed two trips to this beautiful area. Your pictures bring back great memories.
Thank you for sharing all the great scenery I really enjoyed the sea otters they are so sweet and fun to watch
Thank you for sharing some of the most beautiful areas of the Pacific Northwest. We live in Oregon and find it hard to leave this vacation spot of the world. We too struggle with the idea of caging those magnificent cats. I think we can do better by them!
Thank you Susan for these beautiful pictures. My grandparents owned a dairy farm outside of Sequim where my mother grew up, and I was born in Port Angeles. My last trip out these was 20:years ago. I have to say y’all really got some beautiful pictures of the driftwood. Thanks for the trip down memory lane.
What a treat to see this post. My daughter lives in Port Angeles, and Sequim has enjoyed a special place in my memory from my first trip there so many years ago when it was barely a wide spot in the road. It was almost a shock to see it last year and how it has developed over the years. The Old Mill Café was one of my favorites on our last trip to the area. Great soups and sandwiches!!!!
What a delightful post! I am drinking my morning coffee and 3njoying every monite of your trip. Thank you for sharing so much, so well!
As Kim says, what a delightful post, I don’t suppose that I will ever see these wonderful places that you show us on film, but thanks to you,and your husband, I can travel around the USA.I don’t write messages very often, but you can be sure that I wait patiently for your mails, and enjoy watching the students progress.Really, you are two wonderful people who give such pleasure and so much of your time ( I can’t imagine how) to others.
Thank You Susan for being an awesome teacher! I would gladly take another class from you now that my time is my own now. And thank you for your wonderful comments. I changed the direction of my tortoise and added some more interesting background giving it a bit more depth. You and your book helped, Free Style Quilts, A “No Rules” Approach. Hugs and hoping for more adventures to come, Anne Peacock
We so enjoyed your visit to Quilter’s Anonymous. We learned a lot from you. So glad you got to see some of the Northwest….even things we haven’t seen! We expect to see a sea otter, moose or bison in your future collages. Hope you do return to our neck of the woods sometime.
Yes, that was the only thing about the game farm I disliked was the small cages these beautiful animals were pinned in. I remember I took a friend to see the wildlife and a bison came strolling up to her open window and liked her with his green tongue…oh she was mad at me for letting it slime her…lol!