This post is out of order, but I wanted to end the vacation posts on a quilty note!
Very often when we take trips to places where the weather is better (everywhere!) I get ideas of moving. Many times near the end of trips, I’ll drag Jim to open houses trying to convince him we need another place somewhere warm! On this trip, though, I was mostly thinking what great places they are to visit, but they were very isolated so I wouldn’t want to live there. That is until we got to St. George. It is a lovely little city and we had a short, but nice visit. It was fun to walk around the historic district and we had a delicious dinner I’m still thinking about at a Thai restaurant called Benja.
We stayed at a great B & B called the Seven Wives Inn (Utah’s first bed and breakfast). You have to love a place when you walk in your room and there is a Blooming Nine Patch on the bed.
I still have a little of this Carol Endres border fabric in blue! They even used it for the dust ruffle.
You didn’t think I could go a whole week without checking out a quilt shop, did you? Of course not! How fortuitous there was Quilted Works was just a few blocks from the B & B so we walked over to check it out. It is a beautiful, bright shop They had a fabulous selection of fabric and lots of inspiring samples. I couldn’t believe how much fabric they had that I haven’t seen in our area. I did my part to support the local economy, especially since they were having an anniversary sale!
As we left town we stopped at one more shop called Scrap Apple Quilts. This was another large, beautiful shop and they also had lots of stuff I haven’t seen here, so I stuffed a little more fabric in my suitcase! What I really liked about both of these shops was that they carried traditional fabric as well as the bright, fun modern prints. Their samples also used contemporary fabrics in traditional quilts.
By the time we left St. George, I was looking through the real estate listings!
There was no time to waste when we got home. My quilting group is meeting on Thursday and I haven’t even started our project for the month. We’re working on Perpetual Motion from the Scrap-Basket Beauties book. I found a box of 30’s reproduction strips and thought they would work fine for this quilt. The pattern calls for 36 blocks and uses seven connector corners for each block, even for the half-square triangles! I’m making 48 blocks and knew I didn’t want to make 336 connector corners so I pulled out my Omni 96L ruler and cut the trapezoids to size. It was a little tricky because the angles go in opposite directions but once I got a system worked out it was really easy to cut.
After the cutting was complete, it was easy to chain piece the units. I got quite a bit finished but wanted to see how the fabrics were going to work so I made a few blocks.
30’s fabrics aren’t my favorites but I think they will work fine in this project. I may run into a problem with the border—there isn’t any 30’s yardage in my stash so I may have to piece a border. I guess I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it!
I’m linking up with Design Wall Monday at Patchwork Times. Be sure to click the links to check out what other quilters are working on this week!
What great shops! I wondered when you would get around to one. I remember when St. George would have been too small for you, too. =) There’s enough to keep a person busy there for several days, really, if you’re into western history, which I am. And also, I’m LDS. I love St. George. Paul and I talked about going there to live, several times, but could never quite make up our minds. Cedar City is so pretty, too, and close by. Did you hear that the locals call that area Dixie? It’s because it was the warm, southern area where the pioneers grew cotton! And had a thriving honey business, and silkworms, too. =) Though the Salt Lake temple was the first one started in the west, the St. George temple was the first one finished and operational. It’s so beautiful at Christmas with so many lights!
P. S. I think your thirties fabrics are great in that block. It’s going to be a gorgeous quilt!