Quilt in a Day -- Almost!

On Thursday a good friend and I did our own "shop hop" to visit the many quilt shops from the south end of the Salt Lake Valley down to Springville, UT (about an hour south). We started at a darling shop called "Corn Wagon Quilts". It was a shop featured in Quilt Sampler about 6 or 7 years ago.

We then hit a couple shops in Orem, Utah -- including one I had heard about but never been to: American Quilting. They had some great quilt samples around the shop, with many from Edyta Sitar's book "Friendship Strips and Scraps". (Yes, I ended up buying the book because the shop's samples were so inspiring.)

We went to an old country store in Lehi, UT that also has a fabric store. I didn't buy much there, but my shop-hopping friend bought all of the fabrics she needed to make Bunny Hill Design's fabulous Yoyoville quilt.

After a stop for lunch at Thanksgiving Point, we went to four more shops in Salt Lake City. I had shown my friend the flannel log cabin I am making for my mom, and she decided that she also wanted to make that quilt. So we ended the day at Quilts, Etc. so she could buy the Woolies Flannel fabrics.

I had decided to buy fabrics for a quilt to "commemorate" our do-it-yourself shop hop. I bought coordinating fabrics at each of the shops we visited to assemble into a quilt that would become a memory of the great day we had.

I knew that I wanted to buy fabrics a bit outside my comfort zone. (I'm definitely a "Jo Morton -- Kansas Troubles -- Civil War reproductions" fabrics kind of gal.) I had originally thought I'd buy some Amy Butler fabrics, but I'm not quite there yet. I love her fabrics, but I haven't figured out how to make them work together in a quilt. Some day I will! Anyway, these are the fabrics I bought during our shop-hop adventure (plus the bolt of white that I have in my stash):

And after a busy day sewing yesterday (and about 90 minutes this morning to add the borders), here's my finished shop-hop quilt top:

The design is called "Round the Twist", by Alex Anderson. It appeared in the June 2003 American Patchwork & Quilting magazine. (Yes, I keep my old magazines for quilt inspiration!) This morning as I was adding the borders, I was kind of wishing I had used black rather than white as the centers of the blocks. But I do like the way it turned out. I will probably end up giving it away at some point in the future because although I love it, it doesn't fit with my style of decorating at all!

The quilt would be a great beginner project because it is just snowball blocks and the square "twist" block.

The only tricky part was laying out the blocks, because there isn't a method for setting them. You basically have to play with the blocks in order to create the interlocking color rings.

I have finished sewing all of the blocks for my mom's flannel log cabin. I'll start sewing them into rows today.  She thinks it still needs to be bigger, and wants me to add a border. The thing is, I don't think I've every seen borders on log cabin quilts. I'll have to do some investigating.

Have a great Memorial Day weekend and take advantage of every opportunity to honor those who have died in the service of our nation's freedom!