Shop Hop Saturday

I'm truly late with this final post on shops from the Atlanta Shop Hop. My only excuse is that I've been "playing." I've had lots of great opportunities to spend time with family and friends. Thanks for understanding! 

On Saturday of Shop Hop week, Kristie and I hit the road to visit two additional shops. Sweet Home in Conyers was the School House on the Tour of Houses.

The librarian in me just loved this display.

The book "... on Mulberry Street" by Dr. Seuss has a "special" place in my heart. Lots of fabulous Dr. Seuss fabrics

Classroom rules

Lots of fabulous tote bags!

Sweet Homes' Shop Hop Quilt

"Comfort and Joy", an awesome new Christmas pattern from Silver Thimble Quilt Company

There's a Tumbler Quilt in my future.

Lots of fabulous displays

Who needs a new spring wardrobe? Just wear a quilt!

Wool! Lots and lots of wool!

A Scarlet Thread in McDonough, Georgia has expanded it's space in a brand new location off of  interstate 75.

Scarlet Thread's Shop Hop quilt

Lots of colorful samples

collegiate fabrics galore

patterns, bolts and bolts of fabrics, walls of  notions, rooms of machines  

A comfortable spot for waiting husbands or tired quilters!

Retail Therapy

This is rather a LATE blog post about our latest "retail therapy" meeting. The Saturday before the last week of school, Kristie of M.S. Doolitte blog, Brenda of the Quilting Cowgirl blog and I met at Sweet Home to play. (We are displaying our "end of the school year" educator smiles) I received an email from Brenda asking if I wanted to meet them at 10:00 on Saturday morning. I didn't know where we were meeting, but instantly replied that yes I'd love to meet. It was sure to be a good time no matter where we met. We couldn't have found a better place to visit than Sweet Home.  Melisa, the shop owner, was away shopping for her customers at Spring Market, but the "girls" and Mike, her husband took great care of us.

Peggy Barkle, author of the quilting book  Blendable Curves: Stack, Slice & Sew Unique Quilts in a Weekend  arrived shortly after we did. Peggy or "P.J." was teaching a class in the upper classrooms. P.J. is president of the Gwinnet Quilters Guild, an awesome quilt designer, machine quilting teacher and a professional longarm quilter.  Many of my quilts were quilted by P.J. She does awesome work.

While tempted by many fabrics, notions, books and patterns, it was an upcoming Christmas line that was my undoing. I had previously contacted  Melisa with my credit card in hand to have her reserve two charm packs of the new French General line, Lumiere de Noel for me.I'm developing a real obsession for all the Moda fabric lines by French General.  I do have a plan for these charm packs . The new 3 Sisters line, Park Avenue was very tempting, too. There have been few lines by 3 Sisters that I didn't absolutely LOVE. Thanks, Brenda and Kristie!  I'm ready for our next "outing". It's SUMMER, we've go to PLAY.

National Quilting Day

Happy Quilting to all! Today, March 20th is National Quilting Day. It was a fabulous day with lots of quilting fun. I actually began celebrating last night with the Friday Night Thimbles group. Last month, I had to miss our quilting day because of our county Readers Rally competition. This month, I sewed with my quilting buddies Friday after work and most of the day today. Brenda and Kristie sewed on Friday evening, too. Last weekend, I cut out a new project, Scrappy Nines by Pat Wys of Silver Thimble Quilt Company. I used tone-on-tone black for the red in the pattern and white with black for the shirtings.

I sewed strips for the nine-patches last night and today. Of course, there was lots of chatting and laughing, not so much serious sewing. Show and Tell was wonderful.

There were lots of fantastic quilt tops. This top was pieced by a new quilter. This is her second quilt. It's a Miss Rosie's Quilt Pattern called Grandma's Scrapbag. Her choice of color for this top is super.

Mary Agnes (no blog) pieced this top using '30's fabrics. It's from a magazine, but she couldn't remember which one. I'm hoping she e-mails me the title, month and year. I have a bit of 1930's fabric:)

Sarah (no blog) created these awesome P.J. bottoms. They're perfect for Spring.

Karin, who blogs at Life in the Slow Lane shared this wonderful quilt using Moda's Glace fabric. The pattern is from Fig Tree Quilts (I think)

After our sewing session, Kristie and I headed to Sweet Home Quilt Shop in Conyers. This weekend is the Atlanta Quilt Shop Hop. Sweet Home is one of our favorite, if not favorite shop. The shops have new samples, new fabric, and decorate with a theme. Sweet Home's theme was As American as Apple Pie. Yum! Each shop gives away a pattern for a quilt block. Quilters have to visit all 11 shops to get all the patterns. This is Sweet Home's Shop Hop Quilt.

One of the quilts in the foyer.

This masterpiece was done by Debbie Frey. She is the class sample for an upcoming class she will be teaching at Sweet Home.

This quilt is from the book 40 Fabulous Quilts. I am cutting fabric to make this top. I am using red, blue and tan scraps from other projects.

This was one wonderful National Quilting Day!

Visiting Sweet Home

It's been a challenging winter. Yesterday, I finally made a road trip to my favorite quilt shop, Sweet Home in Conyers, GA. It was in December, the last time I had visited any quilt shop. It was pure pleasure visiting Melisa and Mike, owners of the shop and visiting with quilting buddies, Karin and Cindi. Even Pat of Silver Thimble fame was there teaching a class for beginner quilters. I love neutral fabrics. The entrance of the shop had several projects in neutral fabrics including Pat's White Chocolate design and her neutral body pillow design, Wrapped in Comfort. I'm working on a king size White Chocolate. I actually expected to have it finished by now :)
"Moda Man" even made it to the shop. He has a special pocket in Karin's "Bad Melisa" bag. He "deactivated" the head-gear that protected us from the "gotta buy this Moda fabric" airwaves.I picked up a charm pack and yard of the new Boutique line to make a tote bag for a gift. I'm also cutting two new projects. I needed more tone-on-tone black fabric to make Pat's Scrappy Nine quilt. I also need more white with black prints.
This motto, "Live Well... Laugh Often...Love Much" is in the entrance/foyer of the shop. Those vibes were vibrating at Sweet Home!Karin had completed piecing her Sixteen Patches and Pinwheels that several of us participated in trading strips. Gorgeous! Can't wait to piece my top.

Friday Favorite

Melisa at Sweet Home Quilt Shop has a special give-away on her blog on Fridays. Visit her blog to enter her give-away this week - Shangri-La charm packs and yardage. Visit and enter, but I have my fingers crossed wishing for this one!

Party on the Porch

Last Friday evening was "Party on the Porch." I know Melisa, owner of Sweet Home Quilt Shop has another name for her shop anniversary event, but I can't for the life of me remember what it is. It was a much anticipated event. Quilters in our area had been a buzz about the event for the past couple of weeks. I was just excited to attend this year. This was my first time attending the Friday evening from 9 to Midnight event. Last year, I was recovering from hip replacement surgery. I enjoyed the stories that were shared from last year's event.

High school football season began here in Georgia last Friday. My husband is passionate about high school football especially our local high school team. He left at 5:00 pm for a 7:30 pm game at our home field. Karin and Sarah met me at 7:15 to drive to Conyers for a 9:00 event. We planned to be on the porch for 8:00 pm. We were not the first to arrive. Melisa and her staff provided cookies and lemonade plus some mentally stimulating quilt games to help us pass the time. There was lots and lots of laughter.

I'm definitely on a quilting budget. With college expenses for Michael, my shopping has been limited. I'm thrilled with my purchases from the event. I have a project waiting for me to begin using Moda's Portabello Market jelly rolls. I've been looking online for a backing fabric, but couldn't commit to a purchase. I'm glad I didn't. There was just enough of this bolt from the PM line for my future project. And of course, on sale!

I've been thinking of making a change to a kit I purchased earlier in the year. I haven't even completed a block of that quilt. This print from Moda's Libertyville line will change the look of my quilt, but give it the feel I want.

My last purchase was a yard of Aviary fabric from Moda, of course. I'm planning on making this tablerunner from the charm pack that I won from Brenda's give-away. This will be for that project.

Thank you, Melisa for a wonderful "Party on the Porch." Hope that you survived all your birthday and anniversary celebrations! It was a wonderful time for us all!

Celebrating Birthdays

My quilting buddy Karin from Life in the Slow Lane also celebrated her birthday this week. Her birthday was Saturday. (Happy Birthday, Karin! ) My MIL likes to send money for birthday gifts. I like to get "a little check" for my birthday. My birthday check was burning a hole in my pocket. A trip to Sweet Home Quilt Shop seemed a perfect match to purchase my own birthday gift. I e-mailed several other quilting friends suggesting a little shopping at Sweet Home on Saturday followed by lunch. Luckily for me, this idea also appealed to Karin and Kristie, M.S. Doolittle Quilter.

All three of us are planning to join in the fun of Bonnie Hunter's lastest mystery quilt, Christmas Lights in Quiltmaker magazine. With the help of shop owner Melisa and her staff, we searched for the perfect red, gold, green and black fabrics for each of our projects. I purchased a gold fabric and a red tone-on-tone to coordinate with a green and a black already in my stash.

This week I worked on my version of last year's mystery quilt Orange Crush (more on another post) I needed border fabric. Melisa and Kristie helped me select this wonderful blue dot fabric for the outer border. The black will be the inner border and the black and white stripe will work for bias binding.

Melisa showed us a sample she had finished using a Christmas charm pack. Kristie worked on her table-runner last Thimbles get together. I have several charm packs from an old Christmas line that I would love for a holiday table runner, so this lovely little pattern followed me home, too.

We went into the historic area of Conyers for lunch. We had great sandwiches and wonderful talking time. We were hungry. I didn't remember to take pictures of our sandwiches.

A Little Side-Trip to Sweet Home

It was P.J. and Gretchen's fault. They both mention going to visit Melisa at Sweet Home. It's their fault that I HAD to slip in a side-trip after school on Wednesday. From my school, it's over an hour drive. 

P.J. or Peggy Barkle is a master log-arm quilter. When I picked up my last quilt, she mentioned visiting Sweet Home. She raved about the Moda Scrap Bags that she had purchased. I knew instantly that I had to have one or two for me. My schedule is bonkers this month. It would be difficult to drive to Sweet Home before Melisa sold out of them, but with the wonders of e-mail I was able to ask Melisa to put two of them aside for me. Bingo. Two  of the new Moda Scrap Bags had my name on them. The scrap bags are real neat. The strips are 3 1/2 inches wide. If my math is right, each bag contains four yards of fabric of various Moda fabric. I recognized Peace on Earth and Hello Betty. I'm already thinking of projects to use some of these strips.

Gretchen blogged about her trip to Sweet Home. She picked up the latest issue of Quilt Sampler magazine. This is one magazine that I always purchase. I still have all the issues from the very first one published over ten years ago. Another e-mail to Melisa and the magazine was added to my stack.

Today, Karin blogged about her recent trip to Sweet Home. Melisa has some luscious fabrics in stock. The new Moda lines -Aviary and Flag Day Farm -stopped me in my tracks while in the shop. I'm also wanting some of that green, black and white line that Karin took home. Karin hope that you left some for us! Thank you, Melisa for a wonderful place to shop and visit!

Shop Hop.- Sweet Home

Saturday morning in the middle of rainstorm, Gretchen, her Mom Joette and I took off in my car to visit several of the shops on the Greater Atlanta Shop Hop. Our first stop was Sweet Home Quilt Shop in Conyers, our favorite shop in town. The shop was decorated like Grandma's House. Doesn't Melisa, the shop owner, look stylish in her vintage finds?

Each shop designed a block and quilt for the Shop Hop. I just love the black, white and green quilt at Sweet Home. The quilt was stunning. My photo doesn't bring that out.

Here is Strawberry Pie by Pat Wys. I currently have a blue and white version of this quilt on my Finish It Up List.

I tried to stick to my "shop hop list." I didn't deviate too badly. The black with white prints are for a future project. I'm hoping to get to it this Srping. The shirtings are also for a future project. The green flannels are for a Rag Quilt for my Michael to take to college. His school colors are navy and hunter green. I was out of Retayne to use in pre-washing fabric. Sweet Home looked fabulous with the samples, kits, and vintage decorations. Melisa and her staff did a wonderful job! Looking at the photos makes me want to rush back to the shop!