Shop Hop 2004

This is the quilt top I made from the blocks from the Western Washington Shop Hop 2004. It was the third year I went on the hop. This time there were four of us. My sister, Karla, her two daughters, Katie and Brita, and myself. We started on Wednesday evening by driving up to Lynden. We spent the night in the hotel with a windmill. Very cute place.

Thursday morning we got to the first shop about the time they opened and hit the other two shops in Lynden before heading toward Bellingham. We stayed focused (very key if you want to get to very many shops because most shops are just too inviting for fabric junkies). We did all the shops along the I-5 corridor down to Puyallup on Friday and spent the night at Katie's little house there.

The next morning we were up and at 'em again and went to all the shops between Puyallup and Vancouver (except the one in North Bonneville, which was just too far out of the way). That year there were two shops in the Olympia area and we barely made it from one to the other before closing time. That night we slept at my house.

Saturday we were a bit more leisurely and did the shops on the Olympic and Kitsap Peninsulas. In the end we made it to 61 of the 64 shops in the hop. We had such a fun time. Lots of great memories. The random elephants in Lynden, drawing postcards to send to my daughter who was in Pennsylvania that summer, Brita's problems hanging on to her shop hop passport. Probably one of my favorite memories was going to one shop where the lady was explaining their 'improvisaaaational' block. Karla said to her 'so that's an artsy-fartsy way of saying crazy quilt'. The lady just didn't know how to respond.

My quilt ended up with 4 improvisaaational blocks because 61 just doesn't come out even for laying out! Once again I ended up with a huge quilt. As always, the blocks just don't come out the same size from the directions you are given so I have found that bordering all the blocks with the same color and cutting them all to the same size works best. These I bordered with a rich purple Moda Marble. Then I used solid black on the bottom and right side to make the blocks look like they are floating on the gold. This quilt top is awaiting quilting and then it can get moved from the UFO/WIP list.