Shop Hopping

I have now participated in a Shop Hop - my first as a shopper!  The Magical Mystery Tour Fall Shop Hop involved four quilt shops and a lovely drive through the Indiana country side.  My quilting and longarm friend Lori had asked me to go with her on this shop hop, giving us a chance to catch up.  So, off we went.

The weather was gorgeous - cool in the morning but bright and sunny.  Our first stop was Shiisa Quilts in Bloomington.  They had a software patch to download to my sewing machine so that gave us time to look around.  I've also been talking to Janet, owner of Shiisa Quilts, about doing a class on making a fracture quilt so I had a sample quilt to drop off.  We talked about what might make a good fabric for a fracture as well as how we might structure the class.  Stay tuned for the class date - probably some time next March.

Here I am at Shiisa with my fracture.  Easy to assemble and striking to look at.  It's best if you stand back a few feet so you don't feel like your eyes are going bonkers.

I picked this fabric up at Shiisa and am going to try a flower fracture next.  I'm going to try this one on the diagonal to give an additional punch to the flowers.  We'll see how it goes.

Next on our trip was Ady's Fabric and Notions in Morgantown.  After a lovely drive past the Oliver Winery on the west side of Bloomington (too early for wine tasting - drat!), we got to Ady's.  We had a demonstration of  a new ruler on the market - ways to make cutting flying geese and eliminating the waste fabric this typically entails.

Ady's had this version of the Magical Mystery quilt.  The blocks were designed by Janet Mease of Shiisa Quilts and each shop put the blocks together in a different way.  An interesting view into the different personality of each shop.

From Ady's, it was a short jaunt up to The Back Door.  They've expanded their batik section so it's a good thing I was busy picking up the bolt of batting I had ordered or I would have spent the rest of the afternoon looking and pawing through the batiks.  I did swing through the shop and drooled over the children's fabrics - they had a version of the Bazillion panels that I've used.  But I've already got two baby quilts done with a third top completed.  Not sure how many I need to have in reserve so didn't buy any (sob!).  Want to see a picture of my batting???


Our final stop was The Fussy Cut Quilt Shop, a relatively new shop in Beech Grove that neither Lori nor I had visited before.   They had treats for shop hoppers - welcome since we were running on empty.  Check out my find - not fleece but cotton!  Finally!

Ran into this fabric at The Fussy Cut Quilt Shop.  Pillowcases for the Colts fans in my family!

We barely had time to squeeze in lunch before heading back to Columbus so that Lori was in time to meet the school bus.  Made it with minutes to spare.  And Lori and I are now caught up - at least partially.  There is lots more we COULD have talked about but ran out of time.  Oh, well - perhaps we'll have to schedule a sew-in day or longarm meeting in the near future.

As I headed home after dropping Lori off, I stopped at Home Depot and picked up a piece of plexiglas.  Harriet has promoted the use of this for auditioning quilting designs and there have been times recently when it would have been extremely helpful.  It's one thing to draw the pattern on a piece of paper.  It's something entirely different to see the pattern on the quilt itself.  When auditioning designs on Lois' quilt I took a picture of the quilt, printed out a picture of the quilt, and then drew possible designs on the blocks.  It made selecting a design much easier.  But sometimes I know about what design I want to quilt - just need to tweak it a little bit.  That's where the plexiglas will come in very handy.

What a great day!

Cheers!

Margaret