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!