Northern AZ Shop Hop

The 2nd Annual trip for a group of my quilting friends took place this last week. Last year, we were maniacs and managed to visit all seven shops in one day, the furthest being almost 200 miles from home. This year we scaled back and only visited six shops (of nine possible).

Here is some of the fabric I found: 1... fabric designed for the Arizona 2012 centennial celebration. I plan to use this on the back of my Arizona Flag quilt.
2... adorable kitty cats and a mouse companion print from Alexander Henry. If I fall in love with an animal print, chances are it is from this company!
3... gorgeous rainbow print, to make a dress for my daughter. She wants me to start sewing right away, but finding a pattern may be difficult since she has stringent requirements for clothes.

Each shop gave us a small pack of 2.5" strips, along with this block pattern.
This is my EQ6 rendering of the block called "Kansas Dugout." It should be a fun scrappy quilt to put together, and I love designs that take advantage of jelly roll fabrics.

My other treausres...a pattern called "Modern Pickle Relish" from Modern Quilt Relish. It's a cool quilt with a very graphic geometric look. And the "Lil Twister" template to make tesselating pinwheels.

New Projects

Thursday afternoon I had some time to kill, so I decided to go to the quilt store. I planned to get fabric for a mystery quilt that Judy is hosting. Of course, I browsed the sale rack while waiting for inspiration to strike. Great sales technique - 20% off when you take the rest of the bolt! That explains about half of those fabrics. Hey, I don't shop very often, so when I do, it's definitely a SPREE.
Then I picked out some fat quarters and fat eighths, whatever struck my fancy.

The greens here are my accent fabrics with the marbled tan/cream background for the mystery quilt. I am hoping it has somewhat of a manly look so I can put it in the QOV pile.
Then, I joined the Block Lotto group. You can find a link in my sidebar --->
Each month there is a different pattern, and when the winners are announced, you send your blocks to that person. It's a fun way to try some new patterns, and maybe I'll get lucky sometimes and win enough blocks to make a quilt.

Have you figured out that I am *not* a monogamous quilter? LOL. Time to go cut more squares for my centennial project!

Quilt In

I know the suspense is killing you...which project did she work on?!?

I took three - the graduation quilt, storm at sea and stack-n-whack fabric. I got all the blocks done and sashed together for the graduation quilt, next step is borders. No photo yet, I'm deciding if it needs two borders or just one. Leaning towards two, which is my default style!

The storm-at-sea is from a class I took two years ago with John Flynn. Did I choose the easy option of buying a laser-cut kit?!? NO! I decided to cut my own in traditional blues. And I cut, and I cut and I cut. Came home, and the project sat in the UFO bin. Last night I took it out, and read through John's rather sparse directions. The directions show very clearly how to piece the blocks together, but there are no cutting instructions! As in, "use template A to cut the diamonds." I have lots of squares and triangles, but I am missing the diamonds. So that project was set aside until I can research what to do next.

I perused my "Stack-n-Whackier" book, but I didn't see anything that caught my fancy. It's funny how Bethany Reynolds' designs have been adapted by others. She has a quilt that is basically the One Block Wonder (hexagons) and another that looks like the Doubledipity stars. I've already done the Treasure Box style, so I wanted something new. I ended up with a different pattern called "4-patch Stacked Posies" which is an easy kaleidoscope made out of squares. I love this butterfly print by Alexander Henry (the background is a rich plum). The repeat is only 12" which doesn't make for much variety in bigger blocks, but my pattern uses squares from 2.75 - 3.5 inches so it's working pretty well.

And here are a few blocks that I finished. The best part is putting them together in their different variations!