Shop hopping in Illinois!

Well, I HAD to go to Illinois the last couple days. A couple of friends were getting married...the ones I made the black, white and red quilt for! :) Their wedding was beautiful! I thought Northern Illinois was ALL corn. As it turns out, I'm 99.9% right, but at Starved Rock it was beautiful caves, cliffs, and tons of trees!!! I highly recommend hiking there if you are trying to kill time! :)

Anyhow, before the wedding I had an entire day to kill! The ceremony was at 4:30, so I took myself up to Rockford, IL to a few quilt shops, and as it turns out they were having a shop hop! Fantastic!!! So...here's what I ended up buying....
I bought some random Kansas Troubles fabric for a log cabin that I'm collecting for. A few patterns, including a Christmas tree one, a watermelon log cabin, and a Mexican star pattern. A few other random yards of stuff, and then a kit (in the plastic kit bag) for a neat ice skating table runner by Atkinson Design.

What have you bought lately? :)

WI Quilt Expo

Well, today my friend Kate and I went over to Madison to the Wisconsin Quilt Expo....and boy did we have a good time! We got through the whole expo in about 3 hours, and saw lots of quilts with itty bitty pieces! We thought of Jen the whole time, lots of crazy small paper piecing with one inch squares, or 1/2 inch strips and using salvage edges!

Here's a few pictures of some of the quilts we saw and how tiny the pieces actually were!!!


I put my hand up near the quilt, we weren't actually allowed to touch them, so my hand looks slightly bigger than it should be compared to the pieces, but it's pretty accurate! :)


The highlight of my day was this lady, Rebecca Barker, paints pictures of nature scenes, but that also tie in to a quilt block! For example, Ocean Waves has a scene of a shoreline, but faintly in the sand you can see the Ocean Waves quilt block pattern!!! I ended up buying the Alaska, Lilies, and Delectable Mt's. along with a few of her cards!

Check out her website!!!
http://www.barkerquiltscapes.com/

Fruits of my boredom

When I'm bored I tend to rifle through my patterns, pet my fabric and tinker with my notions. Usually I take everything out, look at it, think "wow this stuff is neat! I can't wait to use it!" And then I put it all away. Well, every once in a while I end up making something completely random. Like a purse or a belt! :)

I used Moda Blush for the purse.....

And I added another small pocket (on left) for my cell phone. I hate it when my cell phone rolls around unsupervised in my purse. And then I'm going to put a button hole on the top side of the big pocket to clip my badge for work or my keys on. That way they're not rolling around either!

I had to have some of this fabric! It's from the Windham Shelburne Circus line. I thought it'd be cool to have a ton of people around my waist! And I've been meaning to make a belt forever....so this was a good 10 minute project that I embarked on last night just before I went to sleep!

I also bought some kiwi fabric to make a belt out of. It's really neat! Great to wear with a pair of jeans! A nice pop of color!

So tell me, what do you want around your waist???




Not bad for the fruits of my boredom eh? :)