We Interrupt This Quilt Update

My husband and I spent the whole month of May driving around the country and visiting my daughter and her family in California. Because family stuff was happening there which we didn't want to miss, we decided on driving rather than flying. That decision was a way to gift ourselves a vacation to celebrate our 50^th wedding anniversary. It also interrupted my momentum in updating this blog. 

However...

While in California I met up with a quilting friend to make our own little quilt shop hop! We drove down to Temecula specifically to visit the Temecula Quilt Company, owned by Sheryl Johnson. (Temecula Quilt Co. - Quilt Shop in Temecula, California) If you love Civil War and reproduction fabrics, projects, and tiny things, this is the place for you!

I discovered Sheryl's shop while weeding out my enormous magazine collection, and found her shop profiled in American Patchwork & Quilting Quilt Sampler Fall/Winter 2009 edition! I immediately signed up for her newsletter and ordered some lovely blank cards which contain directions for tiny quilts. They are perfect to drop a note to a quilty friend! AND I put her shop on my list of must-visits. Good thing I zeroed out my credit card before I left home! I didn't think to take a picture of my loot, but trust me, it included reds! We had a lovely conversation and have like minds about not starching fabric before working on small projects. You can bet I'll be visiting her shop again on my next California trip!

Among the other shops we visited that day was Primitive Gatherings, Lisa Bongean's shop in Murrieta on the way back home. (Primitive Gatherings | Murrieta, CA | Fabric & Quilt Supplies (primitivegatheringsca.com) Good thing we got there about an hour before the shop closed because I could have done some significant credit card damage there! Her staff is great and informative. We learned some pretty funny stories of customers who come in with husbands and who try to hide how much fabric they are buying or how much money they are spending! Thankfully, I don't have that issue!

The next week we went north to Carpinteria to visit Roxanne's, a colorful, lively, and happy quilt shop (Roxanne's (roxannequilts.com). Featherweight fans should know she has a little room devoted to those machines! I found a beautiful collection of aboriginal-designed fabrics from Australia and picked out only one (that was so  hard!). This is another shop I will put on my list for future visits!

That day we had lunch at the Santa Barbara pier, the perfect end to another perfect quilt shop day.

Red Buds

OMG! When I saw this quilt I absolutely knew I would make it! This is another AP&Q Calendar (2019) quilt designed by Monique Dillard. If you know me, you know that red is my favorite color. I had been collecting fabrics from “Red is the New Neutral” line by Marcus Brothers, and whenever I saw any of it in a quilt shop, I snatched it up (why do you think this blog's title is Fabric Overload?). I did begin the piecing in Florida 2020 but, of course, Covid.

I finished piecing the top on April 12, 2020, not long after returning home. I recently got it back from my wonderful long arm quilter Janice.

Audiobook for this quilt:
The Night Fire (Harry Bosch, #22; Renée Ballard, #3; Harry Bosch Universe, #32)
by Michael Connelly
read by Titus Welliver