Pumpkin Picking Quilt

Southeast Michigan's small-town charms

BY JANE AMMESON

TECUMSEH — In the 1830s, travelers journeying be-tween Saline and Tecumseh, two booming towns in southeastern Michigan, would spend hours along a stagecoach route that joined a dirt byway often covered by oak planking to keep horses from getting stuck in the mud.

Those early highways, Chicago Road and La Plaisance Bay Pike respectively, meant hours of dirty, dusty travel typical of those long-ago days.

Fast forward nearly two centuries. Today, Chicago Road is U.S. 12, a state heritage trail and the main street in Saline, and the Pike is M-50, a wide, paved road (no planking needed) that still passes through Tecumseh. It’s a journey of less than 30 minutes between the two locales.

Still, there is much of the past here in these quaint and charming towns, making them perfect places to explore and an easy summer day trip from West Michigan.

Saline

Saline, with its charmingly restored mid-19th century commercial buildings, was ranked as “One of the Top 100 best Places to Live” by CNN/Money Magazine three consecutive years and it’s easy to see why. It was the site of abundant salt springs used by Native Americans for trading and preserving food. French voyageurs who paddled the Saline River gave the town its name — French for salt.

Saline went from salt collecting to agriculture when Schuyler Haywood built a flour mill on the west side of the river. Before long, other early settlers started a sawmill, blacksmith shop, cooper shop (for making casks) as well as a windmill factory. Those early pioneer businesses are gone, but Henry Ford saved the three-story flour mill. Ever the entrepreneur, he hired some 700 farmers to grow soybeans and used energy from the river to create electricity, turning the soybeans into an oil used in plastics and paint for the auto industry.

Now those soybean fields are lush gardens and stone walkways and accented with a gazebo, flowing fountain and antique-style lamp posts on the grounds of Weller’s Weddings, a venue for special events set in the lovely old mill and carriage house. Guided tours are available on Saturdays and visitors can stop and walk the gardens on Tuesday, Thursday and Friday at no charge.

On the east side of Saline, the Rentschler Family Farm, now a city-owned museum, showcased Midwest farm family life during the early 1900s. The 15 working exhibits include a grand Victorian-style farm house, ten barns, hog pens, flower garden and a windmill. There’s even an ice house where ice blocks were kept under hay during the summer to prevent melting. (Before refrigeration, ice, after being harvested from frozen lakes in the winter, was used in warm weather to minimize food spoilage.

SAVE THE DATE! 2011 Pumpkin Patch Shop Hop Dates Announced ...

SHOP HOP INFORMATION – More details on passport — passports on sale soon! 

Passports will be on sale soon.  Watch for the date to be posted.

Check with your local stores for purchase.

Check with your local stores about bus rides, leave the fun to us!

Passports will be $5.00.  The passport will provide each participant entrance into

8 Quilt Stores for a 3 day extravaganza of rewards.

Every store will provide each customer with a gift upon entrance.

Every store will provide a 20% storewide sale on fabrics cut from the bolt.

Every store will have additional specials, sales or goodies for passport holders only, inquire at each store for their rewards.

Every store will provide a portion of the original design 2011 progressive quilt.

This year’s quilt will be a simplistic and serene landscape. It shows a wonderful and rich night sky blue background with three different yellow stars and a moon.  It also has three different pine tree designs in shades of greens that scatter across the bottom.  With the exception of the moon, it is pieced with straight line sewing, and can be increased in size with adtional blocks and/or optional borders. Border kits, border fabrics, binding and backings can be purchased at any of the eight stores during the hop at the 20% discount.

This year, because we are included detailed color picture pages of the pattern, it will only be available in the fabric kits for the quilt.  When you see how easy the visuals make it to cut and sew the quilt, you will know it was worth it.  The kits will only be $7 at each store, a great low price for a wonderful quilt with patterns.  The cozy quilt can easily be customized for that perfect cabin quilt, for nature lovers, picnics, a manly man or just a concert in the park.  The quilt and additional border ideas will be submitted for your viewing by the individual stores as they are finished.

SHOP HOP CASH PRIZES 

Total of 12 prizes will be given drawn from stamped and completed passports.

*Prizes – Quilter’s Cash Certificates will be in the following increments:

$300 Grand Prize – 1 winner

$100 1st place – 2 winners

$ 50 2nd place – 4 winners

$ 20 3rd place – 5 winners

These certificates may be used at any store for in-store merchandise only.

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