Monday, June 30, 2008

Shop Hop - Lots of pictures

Saturday

Me and Patrick got up at around 9 am to start this shop hop. Patrick had a meeting to go to at 5 pm so we had to be done at 4:30, but if that didn't happen we might have been able to do this in one day.

Our plan was to go north then south.

Remember you can click on any of the pictures to enlarge it! ^_^

Always Quilting

Our first stop was Always Quilting. Was this place hard to find! I drove all around 43rd and 42nd street a couple of times before Patrick saw the sign pointing to the back of one of the shopping centers.

I liked how open this place was, it had a lot of fabric but didn't seem packed. It was kind to just look around. Patrick helped me out pick out this fabric.



I got 2 yards of this.

I think it's pretty cute, so I thought okay maybe I'll get musical fabrics from every shop I go to. Well I was planning to get some fabric everywhere, we will see how wayward I got as you read through this blog.

I really liked how they put their charms on a latch, so you could stick it on your phone or anything really.

What I found to be a little annoying was the checking out, since it was shop hop there was a lot of people and we all wanted to check out at the same time, it was so slow, they do their check out through their website which makes it super slow. But we made it though, and I really like the fabric we got.

We were finally able to go on our way.

Melody's Yardage so far - 2

Laurel Leaf

Now Laurel Leaf was packed, in fact all those people that were in line with us in Always Quilting were there too! We hoped we wouldn't be caught in the rush through the whole experience. *crosses fingers*

So Laurel Leaf was the opposite of Always Quilting, it was small and packed full of fabric but very very friendly.

The Asian fabric caught my eye. I wanted it! I knew I wanted musical fabric but so what now I want Asian fabric!

This is what I got.



I got a yard each of this.

The top fabric you don't think much of it, until you pull it out all the way. I didn't even know till the person cutting my fabric showed me. So lovely.



This was super fast, me and Patrick were in and out in no time. From Always quilting we thought that we wouldn't make it through a lot of shops if checking out was so slow but I guess it was just them.

Melody's Yardage so far - 5

Eddies Quilting Bee

Of course we knew this one since we were there on opening day. It was okay, I wasn't impressed with their Asian section but I found a cute musical pattern.

This is what I got.



I got 1 yard of this.

I like it, it matches the fabric I got at Always Quilting.

Melody's Yardage so far - 6

The Granary

Of course I know the Granary it was the first quilt shop I ever went to and got all the stuff I needed to start to quilt with. I love this place, though I don't visit it as often as I should.

I went to the sales rack and found some wonderful fabric. I really love it so I got the whole bolt!



The whole bolt was about 5 yards.... I know that's a lot! But it was on sale so I only spent like 30 dollars on it... that's good right?

With their charm we got a set of sewing needles which was pretty nice. Also there was homemade cookies... ummmmmmmmm.

Melody's Yardage so far - 11

Golden State Sewing Center

Then we went to Golden State Sewing Center, we almost got lost, that was fun, I mean seriously the San Thomas Expressway around this area was kind of weird.

Anyways they were having a special 30 retro fat quarter for 22ish bucks. That was such a good deal I got it! Here is what it looks like.



Here is it all laid out.



So this is 7.5 yards.

This place had a great Asian fabric selection. It was hard to pick just one... so I got two...



I got a yard each.

Also with the charm they gave us a fat quarter each, this is what I picked out.



So this is .5 of a yard.

I really liked how friendly everyone was here, granted every quilt shop is friendly, I just thought they were friendlier.

Melody's Yardage so far - 21

Judy's Sewing Center

So this was the first one that was kind of far away being in Scott's Vally, the 17 was kind of windy. By the way I was the one driving, not Patrick! ^_^

This place was super friendly too and I got 2 fat quarters. Here is the fabric I picked out to get and the fat quarters I picked out.



I got a yard of the red fabric. For some reason during this day I was very attracted to red.

Melody's Yardage so far - 22.5

Round Robin

Round Robin was fun too, there was fresh strawberries. What I remember from that was when we went the people that were suppose to stamp our passport where eating and they sort of embarrassed about it but they joked around about it, one of them said "and today we are going to show you how to eat a salad and pizza", so funny.

Anyways this place also had a good selection of Asian fabrics, I got a green one.



I got a yard of this.

Melody's Yardage so far - 23.5

San Jose Museum of Quilts

Then we drove back up north to cover east San Joseish. First we went to the Quilt Museum, we were pretty crunch for time so we just got our stamp and charm and left. I want to go back there some day to check out though.

The Sewing Machine Center

This shop was hard to find also! The map on the shop hop paper was mis-leading. We finally found it, I liked it a lot, we got a little goodie bag of sorts - chips, water, pens and some thread.

I got another Asian print. I got two panels the where 2/3rd big.



So I got 1.3 yards of this.

Melody's Yardage so far - 24.8

Quilts and Things

Okay our last stop for Saturday was Morgen Hill's Quilt and Things. I know I know you want to tell me that we should have just saved this for the next day because it is on the way to the Hollister shop, but Sunday was only from 11 to 4 and I wanted to give us a bit of some wiggle room to make it to all the shops and spend some time there.

I really liked this shop! They had some great fabric on sale. I got all this on sale!



purple/green - 2 yards
Yellow - 1 yard
Blue - 1 yard
Red - 2 yards

Then I got this panel. I got two panels which ended up to be 1.5 yards.



Patrick also won a fat quarter from their spiny thing.



Everyone was super nice and I got this binding clip tool, I bet everyone knows what I'm talking about, it looks pretty cool.

We made it back in San Jose just in time for Patrick's meeting.

Melody's Yardage so far - 31.6

Sunday

Patrick and I got a late start, when I went over to pick him up, he was totally not ready! That's okay but we didn't get to hit the road till 10:45 when we wanted to leave at 9:30. *shakes head*

Homespun Harbor

This I thought was the most out of the way shop in this shop hop but I liked it also. I probably won't come back here until the next shop hop so I got all the fabric that caught my eye.

I love love love the blue Asian fabric. As I was getting it cut a ton of people walking by thought it was really great. I don't know if this picture is doing it it justice. It's really nice.



One yard of the yellow, red, and black.
2 yards of the blue.

As me and Patrick were leaving we ran into Kathy and Paul! How funny is that. They actually planned to finish on Saturday but Kathy had to work but they were going to the same fabric stores as us so we would probably run into them in the future.

Melody's Yardage so far - 36.6

Your Hometown Sewing Center

This shop was huge... but this is the place with the chocolate fountain! Patrick stuck by that for a while. I found some great sale fabric.



One yard of everything.

What was great about this place was the shopping center had a farmers market going on. So me and Patrick got some awesome fruit, kettle corn and a corn on the cob, it was super yummy!

Melody's Yardage so far - 41.6

Back Porch Fabrics

I love this place! I found some awesome fabrics, the people were super nice, it was great.

Here is the fabric I got, I also got some pure black fabric, it's hard to tell on this black table top, but it's there.



One yard of all of these

Then I saw this fabric I thought it would be great to practice my quilting skills, so I got two panels of this.



1.3 yards of this.

Then I saw this on the window. It's great!



I bought the rest of the bolt which was 1.5 yards.

We ran into Kathy and Paul again! But I was paying and ready to get to the next shop.

Melody's Yardage so far - 48.4

The Hand Maden

This shop was pretty small, and I thought it was pretty dark but the lady working there and her mother were very nice.

This pink fabric was just a little over 4 dollars a yard, what a good deal!



One yard of everything except the pink (which I got 2 yards of)

And this shop concluded our shop hop, we got our bracelets and called it a day.

Melody's Yardage so far - 54.4

Final

I tried to fit all the fabric into one plastic bin, didn't fit, but I wanted to show a picture of what I had. So here it is.



This is what about 54.4 yards of fabric look like.... oh well ... now I have a pretty big stash. ^_^

So that concludes my first shop hop. It was great fun... I probably spent too much money but that's okay. ;-)

shop hops

Sorry this weekend was super busy, but I did do the shop hop around the bay this weekend (managed to do 9 on Saturday and 4 on Sunday).

Hopefully I'll have time to blog about it tonight. I got some awesome fabrics.

Saturday, June 21, 2008

bottom right + middle bottom

To get away from seem ripping I decided to sew the bottom right with the middle bottom.

It was a lot faster and easier than seem ripping everything out.



So I'm going to put this together with the bottom left soon. I am working on the top left right now... almost done with that. ^_^

Thursday, June 19, 2008

Woot again left bottom done!

Me and my seem ripper are getting to be good friends, we are almost on a first name bases now. ^_^

well I finally finished bottom left and now I just need to do the 24 top parts of it... oh what fun.. but I am liking how this is turning out.

So here is my bottom left set.

Tuesday, June 17, 2008

WOOT right bottom done!

I just finished with the right bottom.



Now I'm going to work on the left bottom. I am also going to sew these to the bottom middle pieces.

Monday, June 16, 2008

Yay

Patrick agreed to go on the shop hop with me this year. I was looking at the map and it looks kind of hard to do. How am I suppose to do all the ones south of us in one day?

Sunday, June 15, 2008

After the mystery quilt day

Yesterday we did our mystery quilt that Cheri hosted at Holly's house.

Cheri got the pattern from http://www.constantinequilts.com/mysteryquilt.htm

Check this person out! ^_^

I got pretty far yesterday.

I got all the big parts done but didn't make a block yet



You will notice I don't have the bottom right group in the picture.

I'll tell you why, this morning I was thinking I would finish the quilt before I had to meet my parents for father's day dinner.

Then I looked at it and didn't like it.

Last night I stayed behind with Holly and Kathy, just to chit chat. ^_^

I saw Holly put her's together and she matched up the parallelograms (Holly's word for them, so geeky! ^_^) and I thought that was a good idea.

So I started working on it.

Here is the before pictures of how some of mine look like.





And here is an after picture.




I know this will take me a while but it will be well worth it because I think it looks way better than before.

Friday, June 13, 2008

Cheri's Mystery Quilt

Cheri is hosting a mystery quilt.

You're supposed to have 6 deep dark fabrics, 6 medium dark fabrics, 6 medium fabrics, 6 medium light fabrics, and 6 clear fabrics.

Okay I'm not too good with fabrics so what I did was 1 deep dark fabric and 3 each for the rest.

So here are my fabrics



I hope this quilt comes out well! ^_^