Bloggers Quilt Festival

My friend Pattie told me I should participate in the Amy's Creative Side Blogger Quilt Festival, (formerly known as Park City Girl) and I thought, why not, I'll do it!
I think Amy and Jennie thought this idea up of having a blogger quilt show about a year ago, but I missed that one. I tried to get the little button thingy to post, but I couldn't figure out how to get the code for it. Lame, I know. Jennie figured it out for me!



We both agreed that my Lantern Bloom quilt had to be the one to showcase. It's my current favorite, although I've pretty much loved all of the quilts I've made.

I made this quilt for my most fabulous and wonderful boss's birthday. She makes going to my day job extremely enjoyable and is a very generous and fun person, so I decided she deserved a quilt for her birthday.

It was love at first site for me with this fabric. I resisted it for quite sometime, but then it was getting scarce, so I bought an eighth yard bundle from Quilt Home. I decided that the Slide Show pattern by Terry Atkinson would showcase the fabric perfectly. Of course by buying the fabric prior to deciding on a pattern, I didn't have a wide enough cut for the big squares, so I decided to border them.

My favorite quilt saying is "it's not a mistake, it's a design opportunity" and this was definitely one of those. I L.O.V.E. how it came out, so much so that I may need to make one for me. 
I quilted it with vertical wavy lines to achieve a more organic look. Jennie suggested it to Michelle for her table runner at our retreat and I thought it was a great idea for this quilt as well.
I put Curly Minkee on the back because my boss absolutely adores Minkee. I'll tell you, if you haven't felt Curly Minkee, your life is not complete! People can't help themselves when they see it. Their eyes go all unfocused and their hand starts to reach for it as though they have not control over it. Then they pet the Minkee and say 'oooo....it's soooo soft....' in a dreamy voice.

The quilting looks great on Minkee too.
These are a few of my favorite blocks:




There are currently over 500 quilts listed in the show and a slew of them are in the group pool on Flickr as well. Check them out for inspiration.
I've noticed several bloggers are doing giveaways and sales at their online stores in conjunction with the festival, so you should check out the festival page as well.

Gardening

I started planting seriously this week.
I was able to plant 4 different blueberry bushes (2 early producers, 2 late producers), a raspberry bush, 3 tomato plants, 1 orange pepper and many, many seeds before the rain two nights ago.

I bought all of the seeds from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds out of Missouri. It's an interesting store. The man who started it began it out of his parent's house when he was just 17 years old! It's grown exponentially every year and now they have a whole pioneer village thing where they have festivals, an apothocary, a mercantile and a natural food restaurant.  I'd like to take a road trip there sometime.

I love the names on my carrots:

That's right, I have Obtuse, Cosmic and Atomic carrots!

I still have my lettuce and a multitude of radishes yet to plant, but the weather got all rainy, so that will have to wait until after the Husky Hike on Saturday. I don't mind the rain, but the Husky Hike is a ton more fun in nice weather. And it will be especially fun this year because my cousins Ashley and Chris just moved into the area at the beginning of the month and will be joining us for the hike! Yeah!!!
I usually take Robbie with to the hike, even though he's not a Husky, but I don't know, his privilages may be revoked after what happened the last time he went to a Husky hike.  Of course, this time he will be under my supervision, so that would make all the difference in the world. Still, I'm not sure that I'm willing to risk it just yet.

More Shop Hopping

Another shop that I totally loved on the Bus Shop Hop was Eagle Creek Quilt Shop in Shakopee, MN.  This store is in a renovated train Depot. They had an amazing amount of oilcloth and laminate. Everything from Moda to Paula Prass oilcloth! It was fabulous.  You can see some of the Nicey Jane laminates at the cutting counter there in the middle.

Pardon the over-correction of brightness in the photo below. I was trying to show the great details of the building and the back lighting from the windows just would not let me do it.

Some Nicey Jane fabulouslness.I wasn't sure if I liked the green floral fabric in this line until I saw this quilt. Now I'm sure I love it.

My favorite part of Eagle Creek was the batik room in the back portion. It makes me want to live in a place with brick walls just so I can hang batik quilts on it and have them look that fantastic.

It looks like I followed Gale, the lady in pink, everywhere in the store!

And I think this about sums it up for quilters everywhere:

It's a little fuzzy, but what do you expect when taking a photo in the bathroom. Yup, that was painted in the bathroom. Back on the bus several ladies mentioned that they took photos of it too. Is it wrong to take photos in a bathroom?