Quilt Plano

The Plano Quilt Guild's show was this weekend! What a wonderful day!

My husband and I met Ellen, Abby, and Abby's friend Jane at the show. Ellen and I also ran into Sharon, who we had met at the Garland Quilt Guild meeting earlier this month -- it's a small world! We saw so many beautiful, incredible, inspiring quilts. I can't begin to decribe them all!

Then we shopped. I wasn't even planning to buy anything but I just couldn't help myself! I met Michelle, who designs fabrics and quilt patterns in a Southwestern style. I loved everything in her booth! The designs are gorgeous and unique and I want to make them all. I ended up buying 2 applique patterns -- 1 features blocks that look like Mexican tiles, and 1 features a variety of different Southwestern-style crosses. Then I ended up buying some solid fabrics from another vendor so I can get started on the Mexican tile quilt.

We also stopped at the booth for England Design Studios, which also had patterns and fabric for sale. The patterns all have a naturalistic style -- we were especially drawn to the bird patterns -- and are made using a technique called picture piecing. It's similar to foundation paper piecing except you don't have to sew the pieces to foundation paper. I'm not sure how hard it's going to be but I just had to try it, so we got a pattern and fabric kit to make a small bird feeder wallhanging.

Plus I got a Norman Rockwell Santa Claus panel (no idea what I'm going to do with that), a kit (including backing!) for a cute Christmas wallhanging, a set of fat quarters from the Katie Jump Rope line (also no idea what I'm going to use it for), and some yellow fat quarters for a baby gift I need to make.

And then we bought Ellen an early Christmas present -- a lovely old quilt. I don't know anything about how old it is or where it came from, and it has a few tears and 1 unfortunate coffee stain, but it's pretty, and we liked it, and Ellen liked it, and it was affordable, so we got it. I don't have a picture of it because we already gave it to her -- nothing like instant gratification! -- but maybe she will post a pic of it.

And then after all that I managed to get a ton of sewing done on 1 of the 5 surprise gift quilts I'm working on. Plus I washed and ironed some of the new fabrics. So I did manage to do some sewing in addition to all the shopping!