Road trip shopping - part 1

 The first 2 quilt shops I visited on this road trip to Tucson were in Dodge City Kansas and Albuquerque New Mexico.  Both shops had been recommended to me; both were fun stops. The owner of the shop in Dodge City is so charming and helpful. And the shop was small but had such a great selection.

I always look for something unique that reflects the location to take back home and cut into 6” friendship squares to share at guild. The cowboy hat fabric fits the bill.  The pink fat quarters just had to come home with me - because pink is the RSC color for this month.

Birds of a Feather shop also carries quite a selection of panels.  I bought one to use for a Quilt of Valor, and one that just was for fun. The eagle/flag panel will make a stunning QOV center.  And that hummingbird - it just spoke to me.  Ironically we’ve seen a lot of hummingbirds in Arizona on this trip.

More to come on Albuquerque and Tucson shopping in future posts. 

Relaxation

 No sewing … but there has been golf, wine tasting, sight seeing and time relaxing with family.  We’re really enjoying this little road trip. 

There is a quilt shop or 2 planned for next week, as my cousin’s wife is also a quilter. It’s been fun to see what she is working on.

Road trip check-in

We’ve driven about 2500 miles on our little road trip so far.  And we’ve discovered a host of places we could have visited - if only we had been there a different day of the week.  LOL 

My husband doesn’t “do” vacation, just for the sake of being on vacation.  There has always been a work meeting, or a family wedding or reunion involved in any trips we’ve taken.  

But we are actually ON VACATION.  The picture is from the Gila National Forest (New Mexico), a view of Emory Pass.  Beautiful, but the curvy road was a challenge.  

More adventures await . . .

February goals

I've been a list maker my whole life.  But I've reached that stage in life where if I don't write it down, it isn't likely to happen.  So it's a good thing I'm accustomed to writing things down.  My list for January was long, but my list for February is going to be shorter, with an emphasis on catching up and making progress.  Finishes would just a bonus.  

There are 3 quilts currently in the hands of a quilter, 2 of them are pictured above.  Hopefully there will be some binding accomplished this month.

• Bind 1 quilt from this list
• Bricks
• Nanci's Stars
• Blue & White RBD Challenge from 2022
• Progress on 1 (or more) current WIPs
• Add borders to Country Bunnies
• Cats Sew Together bag
• Valentine pillow cover
• Framed 9-patch
• Catch up with Block of Week/Block of Month projects
• Saturday Sampler
• Sewcialites 2
• Scrappiness Is Happiness
• Rainbow Scrap Challenge - February color is PINK
• Pyramid blocks
• Scrappy Irish Chain blocks
• Small Hearts
• Rainbow Connection (strings) blocks
• Stashbuster blocks
• other misc RSC blocks

January review

The new year has begun with quite a bit of productivity.  Not all are finishes, but I did move forward with several projects.

My January goal list was a very long one, but knew I wouldn't finish everything. I'm actually surprised at just how much I did accomplish.  

• Frog Quick Strippee child size quilt (get to flimsy stage) - Flimsy is DONE
• Michelle's blue runner - ** PRIORITY - DONE & mailed to her
• Blue/white snowflake pillow - DONE
• Saturday Sampler - Month #1 - DONE
• Scrappiness Is Happiness sew-along (blocks) - Through block #11 done
• Sewcialites sew-along (blocks) - Through block #12 done
• Humble Homes - finish at least ONE row (big UFO project) - not touched
• find backing for blue/white Riley Blake quilt - backing purchased, in hands of quilter
• Quilt of Valor blocks and/or tops - not touched
• Bag progress
• finish Cocktails bag - DONE
• forward progress on Cats bag - sides made, front quilted
• RSC blocks (bright and dark blue)
• Pyramid blocks - 6 new blocks made
• Framed Friendship blocks - boy version blocks finished, flimsy assembled
• Rainbow Connection (string) blocks - 2 new blocks made
• Plaid blocks - 6 new blocks made
• Irish Chain blocks - 8 new blocks made
• small heart blocks - 4 new blocks made

Design Wall Monday - next UFO in line

 Since I'm working on binding one UFO, I pulled out another on Friday for some planning. 

It all started when I went to the Winter Crazy Days sale at my local quilt shop, where I saw a couple of fabrics that just seemed perfect for simple borders for the Country Bunnies UFO.  And yes - I also found some other "hard to resist" things, including a couple panels and a table runner kit.

This botanical print is going to be the outer border with the aqua used for a narrow inner border and binding.  It has the aqua, green, yellow, orange, red, and brown that I also used in the bunny blocks.  The color in the photo below is very weird, as all of the colors are much less "bright" than they look in the picture.  That yellow just screams in the picture, but is actually much more muted. 

This UFO has been in the planning stage for too long.  The blocks themselves were part of my Rainbow Scrap Challenge collection.  I had a variety of ideas for layouts but kept dismissing each one.  The blocks are rectangles, so some plans just didn't work.  I ended up just sewing them together without any sashing, and I think it lets the bunnies be the star without any other distractions.

Adding these borders will be part of my February goals.  

What's on your Design Wall this morning?

https://smallquiltsanddollquilts.blogspot.com/

RSC23 - week #4

A bit of blue happened this week in my sewing room.   

The bigger version of last week's runner has been quilted.  I did some very simple quilting on this one before adding binding in that darker blue.  Hand stitching will happen next week hopefully.

And 3 more Scrappy Irish Chain blocks were made, with one of them being blue.  See that bright yellow?  That was from a scrap of the backing of the quilt I posted about yesterday. I just couldn't resist using it for one of these blocks.

I'm linking up to RSC23 today for more scrappy fun . . .

https://superscrappy.blogspot.com/