Quilt Run, pt. 1

The Southern California Quilt Run commenced last week (Thurs - Sun) and concludes this weekend. I spent Friday evening, all day Saturday and most of Sunday “running”. Basically, I covered about 700 miles and shopped in 27 quilt stores. Some great, some not so. My buying limit has been more than surpassed (good thing I saved a little in preparation), and I now have more projects than I could complete in a year. But still - that’s the goal, to complete them all and start again next summer.

My favorite finds so far (still have 7 shops left, to be completed on Saturday) are Amy Butler’s new home dec line of fabric, all of her patterns for purses and clothes, and Denyse Schmidt’s book. Other favorites include Heather Bailey‘s Freshcut line (colorway 1 pictured) and any and all 1920s and 30s reproduction fabrics (old news, but I still love them.) I got a bunch of cute patterns for purses, aprons, and of course, quilts.

In each shop we get a charm - most are quilting related. Some signify the store in some way. These are a little annoying. What am I going to do with a penguin charm?

One cool shop was Quilt in a Day -that’s right, the same as the show on PBS. Turns out the shop is actually the studio for her show! You know, not when she’s in a fishing boat or in front of a log cabin, but when she’s constructing the quilt pieces. The shop was annoying though because I got there right at 9:01 pm (closing time) on Friday and had driven over 150 miles that day, and they wouldn’t stamp my damn card, so I had to go back to that store on Sunday. I even called in advance because I knew I was going to barely make it and the lady said, “oh, you’re not going to make it - we will be closing at exactly 9 pm.” Which sounded like a dare to me, so I DID make it, only she pretended not to hear me knocking on the door as she counted out her drawer. So I didn’t buy anything from them when I returned - their loss. But besides one other store with no parking, I had only happy experiences in each shop.

It was fun to keep running into the same ladies as we traveled the same path along the freeways. Lucky for me, I had my brother-in-law’s trusty TomTom One GPS device. I tell you, that thing is a marvel of convenience! I’m not sure if you’ve ever driven on the freeways in California, but the exits are often not where you’d expect. The TomTom warns you - it tells you which lane to get in! Amazing! I chose the Austrailian guy’s voice, and listened to his fun accent for every exit and turn. Very pleasant. And no furiously and dangerously looking at mapquest directions to figure out what comes next! I highly recommend TomToms to everyone!

At one point, I was in gridlocked traffic on the 405 freeway in Orange County. I hit “Alternate Route”, “Avoid 405″ on the TomTom, and the Aussie (whom I assume is very handsome) told me to exit right away and proceeded to take me on a lovely scenic route through Topanga Canyon and along the Pacific Coast Highway. Couldn’t get any better than if someone else had been chauffeuring me around, paying for all my fabric.

So, this Saturday, I have to hit the last seven shops to be entered to win wonderful, fabulous prizes. I’ve also been entering all the guild opportunity drawings for gorgeous quilts I could never construct. Wish me luck!