A Journey Through the Quilt Shops of Time

Maybe some of you have seen the new quilting journey being undertaken by Audrey over at Quilty Folk.

Maybe some of you are participating. If you haven't heard of it, then you can read all about it at that link I've given you up there. In a nutshell, Audrey is making a little circle block for each day of the year. As I understand it, hers are designed to reflect how she's feeling on any given day, but you could make them any way you want to. 

Well, this really caught my attention, but I'm not wanting to start any more long-term projects until I get some of my larger projects finished. Nevertheless, it gave me an idea. You know how I love to visit quilt shops in our travels. And you know how I look for regional prints when we're traveling. And you might know that Mike is going to retire in April of 2017, and quicker than you can say Bob's your uncle, we're planning to take off on a big trip back east. Well. Don't you think this would make a great project to commemorate our trip? And...bonus!...it will give me lots more reasons to visit quilt shops as we go. And it will give me a reason to buy more fabric! And I can just go on and on listing all the reasons I'm excited by this whole idea!

But that led me to this morning's journey through time. My friend Debbie had a great suggestion about going through all the regional fabrics I've already collected and starting a bin for this project. There will be plenty of traveling between now and our big trip fo 2017 to collect more fabric, but I've already got quite a collection.

So this morning in a no-time-like-the-present moment, I scanned through the many blog posts I've written about quilt shops I've visited and identified the regional prints I've collected for this quilt so far. To be clear, I've purchased a lot of fabrics on these excursions, but I'm only including fabrics that are at least remotely regional. Also, I'm only including fabrics from RV trips we've taken...not local quilt shops. 

So, ya' wanna see? Please say yes. Okay, as long as you're insisting, here goes:

This one from Deer Country Quilts in Seeley, Montana. (If you're a die-hard fan of these quilt shop posts, you can click on the links I'm giving you and read all about them.)

For planning purposes, I decided to make a little note on each fabric in case I want to include where it came from when I make my quilt blocks. If the fabric was too dark, I pinned a little note to it.

I used my 9 1/2-inch square ruler to cut a swatch. And there you go...the first fabric in my bin! Isn't this so exciting????

How about this one from Friends & Company in Cody, Wyoming.

This one from the Stitchin' Post in Sisters, Oregon. Okay, so this one isn't strictly a "regional" print, but I like the fabric and I love the shop, so I'm including it.

This one from Highland Quilts in Athena, Washington. And, okay...not strictly "regional" again, but I remember this quilt shop very well. It's in the middle of nowhere in the Palouse region of Washington, and I wanted to include it.

This one from Pendleton Quilt Works in Pendleton, Oregon. There were a lot of cowboy prints in Pendleton, but I figure salmon are pretty well regional for the area.

You may recall this next one because I used it on a quilt back recently. This one is from Cabin Quilts & Stitches in Grand Lake, Colorado

I got this one and quite a few others when we traveled the Montana Hi-Line on our way to the Great Lakes region. This one came from Quilt With Class in Shelby, Montana. The Montana Hi-Line was dotted with grain elevators, and so I was happy to find this print. It's really pretty with a metallic gold.

Trains are very important in the region, and I purchased this next one to use in a project currently on my back burner. I found it at The Enchanted Room in Glendive, Montana. I recall we were having the tires replaced on our trailer when we visited this shop.

Oh my gosh. Did I whine and complain about the roads we encountered in Minnesota and Wisconsin on that same trip! So when I found this next fabric at the Quilt Corner in Beaver Bay, Minnesota, it was a perfect reminder of our travels there.

We were visiting this area on our way to the Split Rock Lighthouse on Lake Superior. The folks at the Quilt Corner had mentioned this fabric to me, but they were out of stock during my visit. I was very happy to find it when I visited the Orchard's Edge quilt shop in Bayview, Wisconsin.

Of course, no trip to Wisconsin would be complete without some dairy fabric, now would it? I found this cow fabric at Quilt Essentials in Oshkosh, Wisconsin.

Okay, now if you're paying attention, you got me there because I didn't actually purchase that cow fabric in Oshkosh. They didn't have any, which was seriously disappointing. However, I did find some at the next shop we visited, Lickety Stitch Quilts in Lusk, Wyoming, where I picked up this next fabric.

And if you want to take me to task for that little bit of cheating I just did, I have just four words for you: My Quilt, My Rules.

So there you go...12 fabrics to get my future 365 project off the ground. I'll just keep adding to the bin until we start our trip, and then I'll start making the blocks while we're traveling. It will be a good RV project since it won't require a lot of space to make those inset circles.

So our new "free roaming" kitty policy is going better than expected. With the exception of one minor scuffle yesterday evening, Smitty was a perfect gentleman yesterday.

And Miss Maggie wisely played hard-to-get most of the day.

This morning, she's been quite the explorer, following me from room to room. She thoroughly explored the sewing room while I was going through my fabrics.

Smitty happened to be up in his He Man Woman Hater's Clubhouse at the time, with his nose seriously out of joint. Maggie looked longingly at the clubhouse door, but didn't try to enter. As I said, she's a wise woman.

Of course, you can't be a proper quilting cat until you've sat on the pile of quilts to be quilted.

Also, this morning we had some excellent lap time while I did my hand stitching, and she also took a swipe at the end of my embroidery floss. It's nice to see her acting less like a fraidy cat and more like she owns the place.

Speaking of embroidery, I didn't do any quilting yesterday because I spent most of my sewing time working on getting hand work ready to take on our next trip. We're leaving in two weeks, and I think I'll have plenty to keep me busy. There were four all-embroidery blocks for the Live, Love, Teach quilt. These are all traced out, iron-on stabilizer attached, and they're ready to go.

These next two are re-do's. You might remember that I tried adding the names to this finished block, but the brightness of the lightbox prevented me from noticing that I had the block upside down at the time. Doh!

And this one...the year at the bottom was wrong on the original block design. I wouldn't have redone it just for that, but then I ended up cutting it off center, and so decided I'd go ahead and start again.

The first time I did this one, it was all done by hand. I've learned a few tricks since then, and so this morning I used the triple stitch on my sewing machine to do the circles on the clock face. I'll stitch the rest by hand. (Same piece...different lighting.) Interestingly, when I looked at the first block that was all done by hand, I almost thought I'd used the machine stitch there too. Obviously the triple stitch is a good stand in for a hand-done backstitch.

Finally, I traced out the Block #7 for the Gingerbread Square quilt.

And then I colored it in.

The coloring is very time-consuming. I think I spent more time coloring than I did making all five blocks.

Today, I'm planning to get back to the Quilting Snowladies. It was good to take a little break from them yesterday. Still, I'm hoping to finish it before the weekend is over, and so it's time to get stitching.