Shop Hop Day Two

Yesterday was the final day for Shop Hop Phoenix. Four of us set out from my house and went first to Quiltz, just five minutes down the road. Lauren arrived safely, excited and prepared to enjoy her first experience of this nature.

Thence to The Olde Worlde Quilt Shop on Cave Creek Rd., lots and lots of fabric here, and a plentiful supply of Lauren's favorites the Civil War Replicas, so many in fact she had difficulty choosing.

The furthest away from us on the west side was In Stitches, where we were joined by Andee and her chauffeur, DJ.

Here they demoed a cool tool to make the quilt blocks behind us very easily, Andee is currently tackling a similar block so it was of great interest to her.

From there we visited Bearly Stitchin and by this time lunch was on our minds so we stopped at a nearby Wildflower where I usually love the food, but perhaps my taste buds were hampered by my URTI because my portabella mushroom sandwich lacked flavor.

Quilter's Bee was the next store, BJ's "home store", closest to her house, and then SunValley Quilts where we turned in our "passports" all duly stamped except for Lauren's, whose accident last week cause her to miss all the east valley stores. Bummer! The fabric care package was some consolation for her!

Finally this last stop at Arizona Quilts where Andee went a little wild at the sale rack and where even with coffee and refreshments we were all rather drained, brain and body weary and just plain exhausted. Somehow we all managed to put a smile on for this photo op. with tiaras still in place to show how much we enjoyed the day! Or perhaps it is simply our joy at having survived visiting another seven quilt shops in one day!

I failed to get pics of everyone's purchases, perhaps next time I'll be more organized but no doubt pics will show up on FB or Andee's blog.

I came home and pretty much collapsed. After some chicken soup I was still feeling horrid so I checked my temp, right around 100, don't have my voice back yet, still coughing, yikes, guess I have the creeping crud! No way I will be keeping the little Tin Hat Man tomorrow, just when he is feeling better.

This morning DH went off to church without me and I am taking meds and hoping to feel better soon.

Finished For Friday, Andee's Christmas Sampler Quilt

Andee's Christmas Sampler

Isn't it a beauty?

The quilting is hard to see in pics but nicely subtle in reality, using the beautiful Superior Rainbows thread that sews so nicely in my A-1 machine.

I happened to have the perfect variegated thread for this quilt it seems to have been made for it.

Every block is custom quilted to suit the piecing...........

but in a sampler quilt I think it's important not to distract from the piecing and to follow some kind of theme block to block.

The borders have two rows of simple, graceful, feathers..............

shown here perhaps a little better on the backing.

I love the red binding that frames the quilt.

Currently my house is in turmoil, partly due to the remediation of the leak upstairs in the laundry that also flooded the kitchen. So while the kitchen ceiling was open DH took the opportunity to add a half dozen can lights, it's like daylight in there now! We had intended to rehab the kitchen this fall so we might as well go ahead with that now.

Meantime the laundry is still disrupted, appliances in the loft while DH tiles the floor there. I hope by Monday I can do laundry again!

I will post pics of the renovated kitchen whenever it is finished!

Meantime I have come down with a nasty URTI, thanks probably to #3DGS, laryngitis, painful coughing etc. Yuck. And tomorrow is our second shop hop day, I am going, I will not breathe on anyone, LOL!

Little Tin Hat Man!

He has been very ill again, high fever.

Shop Hop 2011

This is my first experience of Shop Hop. There were four of us all told today who convoyed around the south-east quilt shops in Phx., there were to be five but Lauren was involved in a horrible accident five minutes from my house in which her car was totaled. The good news is that apart from cuts, bruising and general soreness she does not appear to be seriously injured but we would all like a few minutes alone with the idiot who caused the accident by jumping out in front of Lauren's car on the 101! We hope and pray she will be ok to join us next Saturday.

So after confirming that Lauren was not able to come with us BJ, Alissa and I headed off to our first stop, The Three Dudes quilt shop. These guys are award winning quilters and know that shoppers need sustenance so they always have great coffee and cookies available!

When we walked in their door a little girl looked at us and said "mommy those ladies have tiaras"! If I had a spare I would have given her one!

Next stop was The Quilter's Ranch, another place where our tiaras were a hit!

Here's where we met up with Andee and DJ. DJ played chauffeur, doorman, porter and photographer but she cannot hide the fact that she is beginning to catch the very contagious quilt pox!

The Cutting Edge was our next quilt shop on the list, and once again we had our photos taken! It's in old town Chandler in San Marcos Place. We paused for lunch there at a nice bakery in the Square.

It was fun to add yet another 'new to me' quilt shop as I had never been to A Quilter's Oasis, where they were demonstrating a cool tool, Deb Tucker's "Square Squared Ruler" [Square 2]. Andee and BJ both fell for it so I know where to borrow one, LOL!

The final store for the day is one of my favorites of all the wonderful quilt shops in our area, The Bernina Connection on E. Indian School Rd. It's hard to choose between them, but some have collections more to my taste I guess and geographical distance also counts. Bernina Connection is a checkpoint for Quilts Of Valor so I go there more often anyway to pick up and drop off QOV's.

Val, one of the two women owners, was so kind, when she heard about Lauren's accident and I explained that we were making up a "care package" of these CW replica fabrics.......

she sent a collection of F8's to add to the bag.

My Stash has increased by the fabrics below, I love the blue/brown combo. I have no particular design in mind and will add a couple of other fabrics, a brown and a blue to this collection.

The stripe is for the border, that much I know!

The Batiks below are for a commission quilt that I will soon be starting, it has to be ready for a Christmas gift.

I don't plan to add any more as I think I have a fairly good variety of dark, medium and light now plus blenders.

Next Saturday we will be visiting the quilt shops in the northeast part of the valley, another long day, I think we will see eight stores! We need to take our vitamins and get lots of sleep this week!

Kentucky Whirligig Quilt

Here is BJ's very first "original design" quilt and she is so happy with it she says she will never part with it!

The origin of the design was nine patches which then became "whirligigs". The outer border is also her original idea.

BJ is first and foremost a "scrap stash" quilter but she will purchase new fabric to enhance her ideas.

It's quilted with a freehand all over flower/leaf design using a beige thread. I had thought about quilting the Kentucky state flower [BJ is from Kentucky originally and still sounds like a Kentuckian!] but the state flower is Goldenrod, not a very good design for this quilt.

Backing is a small red print that reads as a solid, and makes the quilt reversible.

Nice work BJ!

Tomorrow is the first day for our little group to check out the Phoenix area annual Shop Hop, we will be heading out at 9a.m. to begin our tour of over a dozen quilt shops. We only expect to cover half of those tomorrow but we will all still be weary at day's end.

Hide the plastic, LOL!

This Week's Quilting

The two Seuss quilts below are now ready to return to the piecer.

Both have the Dr Seuss backing, the first uses red thread because I chose to quilt the blocks and borders separately. The red stop border has titles of different Dr.Seuss books written there.

Using Hobbs 80/20 batting gives a little more definition, I have been using it a lot more recently and I like the lighter weight too. The weight is of particular concern on king and queen sized quilts, they can become real heavy weights!

This one is about 74" square.

Close up of the blocks, showing the "puffier" look of the Hobbs batt.

Dr. Seuss backing.

This Seuss quilt got freehand peacock feathers in white thread.

The Quilter's Dream batting is a firmer product so the quilting isn't as well defined.

Another of Leslie's tops is going back to her next week. I started out quilting freehand cherry blossom in the body of the quilt but quickly saw that I would struggle to see where I had quilted, so out came a panto! It looks appropriate for the design and certainly easier for me not to have to strain to see the thread path.

The border is quilted with freehand gingko leaves, the only place where the quilting really shows.

BJ and I were the only ones from AZ Huggy Bunch to sew today, this was her progress on joining blocks of a UFO.

My effort was to combine the blocks we made for our group QOV and prep the backing so it's now ready for me to quilt.

Saturday Sewing

BJ and I sewed a bit today. We got the label made for her "Butterflies and Bumblebees " quilt, I forgot to take a pic but I will when I see the quilt again!

The two HOB quilts below for the young sons of a Fallen Hero, Justin McNeley, received labels today.

I did not make either of these quilts, they were sent to me by quilt guilds in CO. all ready to receive their labels. I am so grateful for the generous amount of help from CO. quilt guilds in this mission, many, many tops and quite a few completed quilts like these.

It's especially wonderful when they come all finished and I don't have to quilt them!

I will mail them out to the boys next week.

We also went to visit a new [to me] quilt shop, "Arizona Quilts". They were having a first anniversary celebration with cake and other refreshments, lots of sales and hourly door prizes. And was I surprised and delighted to be the recipient of one of the lovely hourly give-aways!

This adorable shoe, that will become a very cute pincushion, and five Moda FQ's perfect for a little boy's quilt. They will come in handy as many baby quilts as I make, nine so far this year.

Having recently received a commission to make one of my Resurrection design quilts in lap size and in specific colors, I am on the look out for a few fabrics to add to what I have in stash.

The two above will be good additions for that quilt I think, so no guilt in purchasing them and at 20% off it was a good time to buy. The pics were taken without flash so the colors aren't quite as bright as in real life.

As much as I love to make watercolor quilts I am always drawn to the florals that are so necessary for this design, and the two below were irresistible especially at 20% off.

This one will work well for the cross in some of the Resurrection quilts and also for borders so I bought two yards.

The larger print looks three dimensional and will not show up as well cut into 2" pieces so I am not sure how I will use it but it's gorgeous eye candy for a quilter! Perhaps it can become the centerpiece for a quilt.

I suspect that I am so attracted to these fabrics and the watercolor style partly because my Mum loved them; Mum was a master gardener who knew the botanical names of just about every flower, tree and bush and would much prefer to labor at her gardening than do anything else! Perhaps God has her hard at work in His Heavenly garden.

And last a very sweet panel- for no project in particular, but just because it is lovely [and on sale!]. Were my dear Mum still alive I would make it into a quilt for her.

If you have the opportunity please do yourself a favor and visit this shop - click here for their website. The ladies there are so very nice, friendly and super helpful and the shop is bright, well organized and stocks a very wide selection. There is definitely something for every quilter in that store. Unfortunately it isn't on the Phoenix area Shop Hop list later this month but they will be offering all kinds of special enticements during that time so stop in and check it out while you are out shop hopping!

Then head on over to 67th. avenue and have lunch at Babbo's, yum yum!