Sewing a Yellow Brick Road

This past week has been so crazy busy, but delightfully so. It started off with Memorial Day on Monday. Bruce worked at the museum and I worked out in the yard. On Tuesday I basted my flag quilt (picture later in the post), but I had to clean the floors first, of course. I also stopped in at at 2 local quilt shops and spent the $20 (plus $5 of my own money) that was given to me last week by Jannis for the kennel quilts. They are pictured here, and the plaid (2 yards) is a flannel. The rest will mix and match nicely with my existing gold-starred backgrounds and other assorted cat-themed fabrics in my stash.

Wednesday was daughter Emily’s visit with her kids, as they are moving to Colorado this weekend. It’s hard to see them leave, but at least we will be visiting them in September.

Then on Thursday was my grandson Easton’s high school graduation. They held the ceremonies about 40 minutes south of us down in Utah County (in Orem, next to Provo). Let me tell you that someone screwed up badly when they set up the bleachers in the auditorium. I am all of 5’5”, and my knees were jammed into the seat in front of me. Plus the seats were all inclined forward. It was torture, literally. I lasted an hour before I had to get up, creaking and numb, to stand in the aisle instead. As soon as Easton was handed his diploma, I was OUT OF THERE. But the freeway onramp was shut down due to an accident, so I had to kill some time. Can you say SHOP HOP???  American Quilting was right a few blocks away, and so naturally I had to visit. They had a great sale room where fabrics were $4.99 per yard. And they were part of our annual Utah Shop Hop, which ran from Wednesday the 31st to today, June 3.

Finally, on Friday my sweet friend Terri and I officially went shop hopping. We visited five stores and had lunch at Gardner Village.  I’ll show you my treasures momentarily, but first, let’s talk Rainbow Scrap Challenge. I am linking to Angela’s Scrappy Saturday, so hop on over to see all the rainbow goodness. Our color for June is Yellow!

    

So, here on the right are my two “yellow brick roads”. Actually they are the gold and the yellow columns for my selvage rainbow quilt.  On the left, they are stitched in color order with last month’s two green columns and the teal column. That should give you an idea of what the quilt is going to look like. There will eventually be 2 orange columns, a red and 2 pinks on the left of the gold, and then a blue, 2 purples and one other dark neutral - either brown or gray - on the right. A total of 14 columns.

OK, so here are my Shop Hop treasures. I still get occasional commissions as a lace broker, and this week my biggest client placed an order, so part of it funded my fabric purchases (shopping spree!) and the rest went in the savings. Yay!

Above: Free patterns from each shop, plus collectible pins. I bought 4 yards of the crayon fabric to use as a background for the crayon quilt I’m making. Then the blue cat fabric was in the sale room at American Quilting.

In the picture above, the green is much brighter/richer than the picture shows. It’s 4 yards of flannel for an autumn quilt I’m planning.  The stripe is a large piece for the back of Bruce’s guitar quilt, which I am busy planning out. It will begin this summer. The floral will just go in the stash and the Christmas fabric (I’m such a sucker for holly fabrics) will be pillowcases or a quilt back or something. Oh, and the wild blue one is another Tula Pink "Tabby Lane" fabric, the last one I wanted for my next personal cat quilt, whenever that happens.

Kaffe Fasset fabrics, above: Only the FQs along the top were purchased during the Shop Hop. The Layer Cake (also in the top row) was an order from Missouri Star Quilt Co, and the yardage was from early in May when I took advantage of a sale at one of the LQS’s.

   

The above pieces and FQs are random purchases, but some are intended for future projects. And I couldn’t resist the Florence Flamingo pattern. My DGD Lauren loves flamingoes (who doesn’t?) and may get a quilt for Christmas.

Finally, here is my in-progress Flag Quilt. I am just doing “organic” wavy lines. “Organic” here means not measured; random. Once it’s washed, who will notice or care?  I’m about three quarters done, so it will finish up this weekend and I’ll have a full reveal next week.

So that, my friends, was my week. Last year for the RSC, yellow month was later in the year and I started and made my yellow crayon and yellow strip blocks. So, after I do the yellow bookshelf and assorted other smallish blocks for this year, I may start on an all-yellow quilt. I have been planning a pineapple quilt for awhile, so we’ll have to see how that goes. I may finish up my crayon quilt instead, or my Farmgirl quilt. So many choices!

Have a great week!


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