Great quilt shop and another quilter is born

Today my sister and I visited just one more quilt shop before I leave for home. We went to Intown Quilters in Decatur, GA and what a find it was. They carried all the kinds of fabrics I like - Kaffe Fassett, Michael Miller and many, many more bright, bright fabrics. I was in heaven. I did have to restrain myself and really did pretty well. Lucky for me, I do come to Atlanta often so getting their frequent buyers card was great. I will definitely be back on my next visit. You can visit their website at www.intownquilters.com.

My sister saw a quilt kit that she liked and I bought it for her as an early Christmas gift. It does look like a good starting kit with straight lines and big pieces. I hope to give her a few lessons before I leave for home. She has always sewn but never quilted. If she likes I could always funnel some stash pieces her way so I could not feel so guilty when I buy new fabric!

No pictures on the last few posts but once I get home I hope to show some quilts in progress. Keep watching this spot.

Southern Living Idea House

No fabric stores visited today. Alas! But I did go to a very cool little town about an hour south of Atlanta. My sister and I went to Senoia, GA to see the Southern Living Designer House. It was very cool. It was an end unit townhouse, 4 stories tall. They have an elevator but that was not in use during this tour. You can see more about it on the Southern Living website. The house will be featured in the August issue of the magazine.

The best room in the house was a craft room on the 4th floor. It had a tall table with four chairs and lovely closets for storing craft materials. There wasn't a sewing machine in sight but that could be easily fit in the room. There was a full bathroom and another room with a bar, microwave, terrace and as I write this I'm thinking that could be the sewing part of the fourth floor. It was certainly large enough to fit in a quilt frame for hand quilting.

Now I just want to go home and re-organize my sewing room. So many ideas, so little time and money!

New fabric stores to explore

Just spent two lovely days in Asheville, NC with my sister and three good friends. While touring the Biltmore Estate I couldn't help but notice there were no signs of anyone there doing any quilting. Hmmmm. They have beautiful tapestries from Europe and many other textiles but I didn't see one quilt. Perhaps some of the servants may have done some quilting but nothing pointed that out.

The estate and grounds are absolutely gorgeous. You can imagine how much they loved to sit on their balcony and look out over the Blue Ridge Mountains. Simply breathtaking.

No fabric shopping until today. Managed to stop in one quilt store in Asheville and one in Hendersonville, NC. Just a small purchase this time but there are more shops to explore. I can't do any sewing right now but nothing says I can't add to my collection. Some friends are telling me I shouldn't buy any more fabric but where is the fun in that?

Last minute works for me...

I have been working on the blocks for Moose on the Porch jelly roll quilt-along. For the past 7 I have been able to make them shortly after they were posted. The last one somehow got lost in the shuffle of life and last night I realized that today there will be a new one. Oops! So, right before midnight I finished number 8. Woo-hoo. This has been a great quilt along. Since there is only one every two weeks, it is usually easy to keep up. I love seeing what everyone else has done with different fabric.

New block is being posted today. Not too late to join!

What brings us together?

It all started with a quilting class. I had retired and a friend and I decided to take the class together. We both made a sampler quilt which taught us so much about so many different piecing techniques. The class only had 3 people in it so we got lots of one on one attention.

The most amazing thing was seeing all our quilts when they were finished. We all made the same blocks for our quilt, set it the same way but got, oh so different results. Mine was traditional, Cindy's was black and bright and Joanne's was earthy. And I must say, they all looked great.

Now we can see in our group that while our common interest is quilting, we all come to it from a different place. Very experienced, fairly new at quilting and in between. Some of us like more traditional quilts, some like applique, some really, really like fabric and want to showcase that in our quilts. It will be so interesting to see what we do with the block we make each month. I can't wait!

Let's get started

I met with some other quilting friends tonight. We had decided that we wanted to start our own small quilt group. We actually got a lot accomplished in a short time. After showing what we are working on, we batted around other ideas of what our group will look like. So far, we want to do some kind of service project, share ideas and new things and learn more about traditional quilt blocks. Thank you, Fran, for volunteering to be our first teacher.

Amazing what can be accomplished when quilters get together. Even though our conversation veered off track occasionally, we did manage to get organized. Can't wait to see what happens next.