Winter Blues? Go on a Shop Hop!

Due to the cyclical nature of my job (I'm a secondary school teacher) we have a fresh start at the beginning of Semester Two when we meet all new students and, in my case, teach all new courses as well. In many ways it is a fabulous refresh but it is also exhausting, paired with downright miserable grey weather that isn't going anywhere (winter lasts soooooo long!).

Enter a shop hop/ travelling quilt exchange/ lunch with friends! C and A and I agreed on a little shop hop to check out a new bricks-and-mortar store for an online store we all knew of, Fabric Spark.

Fabric Spark was having a birthday celebration!

 Fabric Spark is a bricks-and-mortar new shop from a combination of two online stores. It was cute but it was a long drive.

Bright, open shelves and pretty modern fabrics.

We then ventured on over to Ewe Knit in their "new" location which I have not yet been to. 

Their storefront is lovely.

The inside is even more lovely!

I really enjoyed the vibe, size and selection here at Ewe Knit. I bought a few fabrics and C bought a TON of embroidery floss. 

Then we decided to pop over to The Workroom.

This is the most "downtown" of the stores and also the most expensive.

I was able to score something lovely while at The Workroom, plus C was able to sign up for an EPP class she is going to take in March.

Here was my haul from the day:

Aren't they all just super yummy? That orange and yellow were a result of C challenging me to get something that wasn't green or blue or teal. That was hard. That background Alison Glass will be the backing of my #QBtravellingquilt.

The day was super awesome, but it took way to long to blog about it. Some of these have already been cut and put into action for WIPs!

QB Travelling Quilt

I have the privilege of having not one but two quilty friends who are always up for sewing days and shop hops. And when I suggested to them that we try a "travelling quilt" they both jumped on board! It is cost effective because we all live close together (zero postage!) and C and I have extensive stashes so we didn't need to purchase a thing (A is a buy-with-purpose quilter- I know, I don't get it either- but she ordered a beautiful bundle for hers!).

We each make the first "foundation" block and choose two words to represent our vision for the quilt. Mine are "decadent geometry" and I pulled a bunch of super saturated fabrics based on some colours in this Katy Jones limited edition print from Art Gallery Fabrics. The teal, navy and deep pink just delight me for some reason.

The fabric pull with the pattern for the foundation block.

I went with half of one of these pillow fronts from Love Quilting magazine. 

This is my favourite quilting magazine and it is, unfortunately, very expensive because it is a UK import. My hubby paid for two years subscription but I told him not to renew...I can choose if I want to buy it from the local bookstore.

The cutting was actually a bit of a pain in the butt, but I was like where it was going when I finished cutting all the templates and laying it out.

I could see it coming together.

And here is the finished result!

My foundation quilt block.

Decadent Geometry will come back to me two more times before being finished by one of the other two ladies in January 2018. We have a spreadsheet and a list of rules and I am soooooo excited to give this a try. It pushes us all out of our comfort zones in the best way!

I'm sure you'll see peeks into  #QBtravellingquilt as I work on the other two. I wonder what we will all end up with in January!!