Shop Hopping

 So, It's that time of year once again! The All Iowa Shop Hop has begun! I've been perusing the magazine for a few weeks and decided that this year instead of shopping my home region, I needed to see some new shops, so I told Hubs, we need to go West!

So here's my haul from the two days we spent driving around Iowa! We drove through dozens of small towns that I never heard of! Such a pretty scenic drive too!

First stop a couple of shops in the South Central Region, The  Redfield Quilt Shop in Redfield, followed by Gap Creek Quilting in Guthrie Center. 

And on to the West Region, 

 Log Cabin Quilt Shop in Elk Horn then, Annie's Quilting Bee in Harlan, 

then on to Denison Wise Monkey Quilting, then Acadia Quilts in Acadia. Each shop gives you a block pattern for free, so they're in the pictures too. 

Over to Lake City we stopped at Towne Square Quilt Shoppe, we were kind of in a rush to make it to Sac City and Tin Ceiling Quilts, but we made it!

I decided we would stay overnight in Sioux City. Besides Hubs, I'm traveling with our four legged kid, Ringo. I booked us at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Sioux City. We're testing Ringo to see how he does -he's a great rider, he just lays down and goes to sleep for the most part. 

Here he is relaxing in the Hotel room. 

The room was nice, the pillows have guitars on them.....

and the comforter has guitars on it......

Trace Adkins was hanging above the pet food dishes....

and Bruce Springsteen was in the bathroom.... 

and, I made Ringo drink tap water, because, well........$4

The bed was very comfy and Ringo and Hubs were both great! No barking and no issues!

Ok back to hopping! Sioux City has two participating shops

Heart & Hand Dry Goods Co was a huge shop, and Tri State Sewing and Quilting was just a real treasure-so many machines and thread!

Then the last shop to complete the West Region, Cherokee has Quilt n Kaboodle! What a nice shop!

Before heading home we hit two shops in the North Central Region, Clover Cottage in Emmetsburg and then The Quilted Steeple in Lone Rock.

Here's the whole haul! I'm planning to make a 4th of July quilt so my mission was to collect red and blues and whites. It's good to have a plan otherwise I come home with a pile of cool fabrics, but they don't go together and there's no plan, so this is much better. 

I got this fireworks print to use as the background, but I'm not so sure now that I see it all together. 

I also got a free sample of pins and a little ruler too. The fabric for the Hop this year is Iowa State Fair themed.  SO in addition of the red white blue combo, I'm getting some of the fair fabric too. Here's what I have so far.

 It has a panel with the fair on it and then the prints with the main buildings and features of the fair, It's pretty cute fabric!

There's a lot more to shop Hop, but that's all I'm doing for now. Off to sew a flag or two!

Sewing Day! YAY!

So first I had to do a little bit of mending. A patch on a patch, a patch here and there..... DOne with Hub's jeans...he rubs a bare spot on his jeans with his pencil eraser.

These jeans belong to DD's friend. He's pretty hard on work jeans it looks like to me! But this ought to hold him together!

Now this T shirt for hubs. He burned a cigarette hole in the pocket. I stitched it over, but that didn't look so good. So I un sewed the top part of the pocket and added a band to cover the mended hole LOVE the paisley pocket!

One more pair of jeans to patch...there now I can move on to the dog collars-oopsy I forgot to take a picture! Riley has trouble with her brother Finn, ripping her collar off of her and chewing it. I had enough left un chewed to make one collar. I'll need to shop for some webbing to fix the rest.

I want to finish this quilt today! I had to make a stop at the JoAnn store to get some backing for it. 

They call it Soft and Minky.....it's ok. The pattern with Big Foot...I mean Darrell, is called Legendary and is designed by Elizabeth Hartman. 

SO I started it earlier this month to work on between mystery quilt clues. It went together pretty easily!

The hands were a little tricky-there are 7 pieces in one hand!!!

And the trees can together really well too! I made them out of all the same fabric-lots of folks on line made them with multiple green and brown shades. It went pretty quick-I had it done before the mystery quilt that's for sure!

Here it is all done!

With the Soft and Minky on the back. I spray basted it on the kitchen counter-it's far too cold outside today and the spray baste doesn't hold well in the cold.

I used the same fabric for binding as I used on Big Foot.  Then I just used some brown variegated thread to do a big meandering quilt job on it. Not my best work, but perfectly adequate. I'm a little out of practice. 

Funny thing-see that one background block looks a little darker? Well I chose to use the wrong side of the fabric for this quilt, because I wanted to use what I had on hand, but I wasn't fond of the hat print, so I used the wrong side. You know what they say..."you paid for both sides of the fabric, so use it!"

Anyway, there are several background blocks that are right side/wrong side up. It makes a very vintage look to the background. I should have done more of them that way!!

I just finished snow blowing the driveway, so I hopped outside to hang this quilt up for a quick photo op. 

The backing was perfect-not one wrinkle and the binding was really good too! It finished at something like 60"X 72" I'm sure my background setting borders were a little bit wrong, but it came out great! 

 

Ringo in the Car

 

We've been having trouble with our boy Ringo. He goes for a ride every once in awhile with Hubs. but when they get home, Ringo won't get out of the truck! 

He actually growled when I reached for his collar to give him a tug!! Finally I threw his favorite ball and he got out to go get it. Craziest thing ever!

So I started taking him along in my car once in awhile. He likes to ride. 

I see him in my review mirror.

And I put his leash on him too, so he knows I mean business! He's always free to go out at home with our fenced yard, so he's not very used to having a leash on either.

Isn't he a pretty fella! 

There's a New Kid..errr...Dog in Town

 I'm still working through my list of things to get done before winter...I got the wire mesh placed over the two window wells on the North side, I get so tired of cleaning out the leaves and debris, this should help a lot!

 Look there's Riley-she wants to help.

 Ladybird, Hank, Riley, Sandy and Ringo played with the kids a couple of weeks ago, they all play so hard!

 Up the steps and down the steps!

 Little Jaymie is a very good toy thrower for them to bring back to her!

 I also got the automatic dog water dish arranged to suit a couple of weeks ago. I should have told about it sooner.

 I got this nice dish off of Amazon, then got the quick connect hose connections and a new drinking water safe hose too. It's been hot so the dish has been doing it's job very well. It's a lot smaller than the old one-only about 2 or 3 quarts, but it fills right up as they drink, so it's fresher.

 And we've got a new kid in the yard. DD decided she needed to foster a shelter dog. I appreciate that-but I'm not sure she needed to be the one...but he's a sweetie, about 6-8 months old and who know what he is.

 He's been named Finn. There was a lot of discussion about that!

 And he's fitting in with the pack really well! His roommate Riley really loves to play with him.

I think he's beagle and St Bernard with Carolina Dog mixed in. Off to let them all outside now!