Barb and Kathy's Excellent Adventure, Part 2

The Corn Fest was more fun than anticipated.  There was a parade...

My mother is a clown.  (Really, that's my mother with the pink hair!  She did face painting in the park after the parade, too.)

I think LOTS of people should have this sign on their car.

I got to see several of my old classmates, some of whom I hadn't seen in about 30 years, so that was fun.

There was a quilt show, and unbeknownst to me, my mom entered two of the quilts I had made for her.  We won a blue ribbon!

This was a Lone Star quilt top that my grandmother had pieced.  After my grandmother passed away, my mother gave the top to me to finish.  This was early on in my quilting career - I finished this quilt in 1991.   The top includes a lot of feedsacks and fabrics from my mother's childhood.  I added the cornerstones, setting triangles and borders, and hand quilted it to death.  I kept track of my hand-quilting time; I think it was 120 hours or something like that.  After it was finished, I gave it back to Mom.

When we went to pick up the quilt, I found that we had won Viewer's Choice, too!  They said they liked my hand quilting.  Not many people (including me) do a lot of hand quilting any more, so a quilt with hand quilting is kind of rare in a quilt show these days, I guess.  So I have a blue ribbon and a purple ribbon to add to my quilt wall.  I was pretty excited!

In looking at this quilt, a lot of the colors are popular again - there is quite a bit of navy blue, that icky green, pink and cheddar.  I'd do a lot of things differently on this if I were finishing it now, but I guess I'm happy with it the way it is!

After all the Corn Fest activities, and visiting with our families, Barb and I headed back to Wisconson on Monday.  We found some more shops to stop at!

Our first stop was in Cedar Rapids at Pine Needles Sewing Center.

This shop is also a Bernina dealership, and they have tons of everything and very helpful service. There were quilt models everywhere in this shop - you could spend all day in here!


Our second stop was Village Needlework, a shop which sells everything you can think of for cross stitch, needlepoint, etc.   They have an online store, so if you need any type of cross-stitch floss, I can recommend them.

Our third stop was Cottage Rose Quilt Shop, a shop in downtown Marion.  I had quit taking pictures by this point, but it's a cute shop in a historic building, in among lots of antique shops.   Marion is a neat place to visit.  Cottage Rose does some of their own patterns, so it's worth taking a look at their website!  We each bought a cute little wool kit that uses an antique sugar mold.  I have mine almost done and will put it on the blog next week.  It was a quick project that will be a fun memento of our trip.

The last stop (and we were dragging by this point!) was Mill House Quilts in Waunakee.  This is a huge shop in a converted historic feed mill.   They were a Top Ten Shop one year, too, and it's worth a stop just to see the mill!   They, too, have everything - wool, reproduction fabrics, batiks, kids fabrics, everything! 

So, that's our Great Shop Hop of 2013!  After two recent outings with friends, I need to stay home for awhile and sew up all this stuff I bought.  I've been keeping track of yardage in/out this year, and I'm way in the red for this year.  I may dig out by year end, but I'll have to get busy in order for that to happen!