A Very Quilty Day

We started the day with our long awaited Saturday Sampler session with Janet Salcido. Indicative of how eager we were, was the fact that it did NOT take a well-placed stick of dynamite beneath Karen to pry her from her bed at 6:45 on a Saturday morning!

We gathered at Leah's Fabric Gallery, forming a line outside the shop where the kind souls running the show had placed coffee, juice and donut holes for us to get a kick start to the day! We checked in, got our sampler packet and snagged a seat with the masses to await our teacher.















Janet did her little "infomercial" and showed us a number of really nifty tools and gadgets. Then she explained portions of this month's block, and answered questions with her usual delightful brand of encouraging humor.

Yes, this "exploded" block below, is the first step.........

on the way to THIS:















Afterwards, Karen singlehandedly made up for them having to open and staff the shop so early, by purchasing a huge amount of fabric to make this year's BOM Mystery Quilt. She picked Asian prints in a gorgeous off-white, and a pink and a green.















Sigh! So pretty.....















We dashed home, and I threw my machine and sewing box in the car and headed for Karene's house. Yvette joined us there, and the Three Amigos rode again! We headed for the Claremont University campus where Karene's mom Doris works, and joined Doris and her boss Laura in a conference room. We plugged in all our machines and spent the day making a quilt top that will be raffled off as a part of her Claremont University team's efforts for the American Cancer Society Relay for Life in May.

Here you can see Laura, Yvette and Karene industriously organizing, sorting colors and placing them in rows to begin piecing.
















































































































































We kept Doris busy once or twice with "reverse sewing", and she was a big help with ironing and even went out in search of Mexican food to keep us fortified!















It grew.......and grew......















We persevered despite the "reverse sewing" necessary when we mixed up a few positions of a few pieces, and the results are seen here.















Beautiful! All Laura has to do now is add her borders, quilting and binding! I look forward to seeing a picture of the finished quilt.

Pattern info: Better Homes & Gardens American Patchwork and Quilting magazine,15 Anniversary issue, April 2008, issue 91, named Two of a Kind, Page 71-79.

Before we left, Laura and Doris gave us a hot tip about Ginger's Quilt Shoppe, right there in town. We decided to stop and check it out - and were we glad we did!

It's one of the nicest shops I've visited, ever! Huge, airy, light-filled and filled to the brim with gorgeous quilts, patterns, samples, fabric, books, a spacious class area, and a Gammill too! The Gammill had a sign that said "do not touch" so I drooled from a safe distance.

I found one quilt I would LOVE to make for Michael. It was called Rising Star, and it is exactly the sort of patriotic quilt he loves.... but I think one must attend class to have any chance of getting the pattern.....and since it is a good hour from my house to Ginger's Quilt Shoppe.....there's no way I can do that on two consecutive Mondays. (It's different than any Rising Star I have seen before.)

I commenced pouting before we left the store....

All the fabric and quilts and ideas made me temporarily forget to take pictures while I was at Ginger's Quilt Shoppe.....I think I should go back and try again!

:) Thanks to my Amigos for a fun day with them!