A Fun Saturday!

I ♥ Saturday mornings, especially when Mr. Painted Quilt says, “How would you like to go to the Big City to do some shopping?”  All I needed was 20 minutes to have a shower, dry my hair, get dressed and we were out the door and on our way.

We arrived in front of the not-so-local quilt shop (65 miles away) at about 9:45, fifteen minutes before it opened.  Instead of waiting, we went to my favorite green grocers called Farm Boy, conveniently located almost directly across the street.  Their fruits and vegetables are second to none and the aroma of freshly baked breads made us light headed.

Forty minutes and six grocery sacs later, we were back in front of The Running Stitch.   While I went inside to shop and chat with the girls, Mr. PQ and Mac our Westie went for a walk…a long walk.  I specifically wanted to replace my little silver thimble tip that mysteriously disappeared last week.  (I think it inadvertently wound up in the trash…by me!)   I use this particular thimble when I do any hand stitching or quilting because it’s so tiny you don’t even realize it’s there.  It’s the one in the little packet on the right side in the photo below.

I also picked up a Jo Morton book, some Civil War fat quarters, a red Pigma pen for my redwork and some embroidery needles.

I brought along my Raggedy & Friends quilt for them to have a look at.  Well the gals helped me to decide as to what I will do with it.  I will be releasing it both as a hard copy and PDF pattern as soon as I can set aside the time to do it.  For all of you who have shown interest and have written to me both publicly and privately, please bear with me because it’s a huge job.  I’ll let you all know here when it’s available.

By then it was lunch time so we stopped and had some Chinese.  Yummo!

Our final stop was at a smaller quilt shop in the town where we live.  They were clearing out some Kansas Troubles fabric at $5 a meter (39”) and at that price, I bought l-o-t-s of each!

Last night I finished my Irish Chain mini quilt.  What a fun project to work on!

The top…

I hand quilted a feather wreath in each of the setting blocks.

And I used some red toile fabric for the backing.

The “no border” responses were in the majority and that helped me make the decision to just quilt and bind it.  The finished quilt measures approximately 20” x 20”.  I think these minis are going to become quite habit forming.  *wink*

Happy stitching!

Kaaren ♥