Minnesota Shop Hop Bus Trip

I'm back from the Shop Hop Bus Tour and we had a great time. I traveled down to Blackduck, MN with these 5 lovely ladies, we were the only Canadians on the bus. It was an early start, 7am so we drove down the day before and did a bit of shopping and spent the night in Blackduck.  Once on the bus we drove 90 minutes to International Falls to shop at Up North Quilt Shop! If you are ever traveling through Northern Minnesota and wonder if it is worth the trip to the top of the state to check out the quilt shops I can honestly say 'Yes, it is worth the trip!"  I'm kicking myself for not getting photos of the entrance to each shop.

Missy has been a great support of our Highway 10 Designs patterns and likes to display my samples in her shop. Here is my Simply Dashing double and baby size on her shop wall!  Missy also has the Shop Hop Quilt sample I shared in my last blog post in her shop, but didn't get a photo...it was pretty crowded in that area of the shop so I didn't want to get in anyone's way.

Once our time was up we headed back to Blackduck and shopped at Anderson Fabric's Quilt Shop.  I was so happy to see they had made a sample of our Shop Hop quilt too!  

 I also discovered a wonderful sample of our Not Your Mother's Rail Fence pattern  hanging in the shop.  

After they fed us lunch we hopped back into the bus and headed off to Oklee Quilting Supply in Oklee, MN.  There I found a lovely sample of our Detour table runner pattern.

The shop was bigger than I expected and the huge cutting table made for a fast moving line to get fabric cut.  All the shops were great at setting up extra cutting areas.

This was the Barn quilt that hangs on the outside of the Oklee shop.

Then back on the bus and off to Sadie Rae's Quilt Shop in Bemidji, MN.  I found a fun sample of our Quarter Sections pattern on the wall with kits made up as well.

So we were all back on the bus and in Blackduck by 7:30pm.  They were able to keep everything running on time and we didn't lose anyone along the way!

Minnesota Shop Hop Quilt

Earlier this year Lori and I were asked if we would like to design a quilt for the Quilt Minnesota Shop Hop Northwest Region.  We thought that would be a great way for Highway 10 Designs to connect with the four shops in this regions so said yes!

We designed a pattern that was lap size and could use the  Kansas Troubles fabric line that the Shop Hop participants will receive as a gift ( 4 half yard cuts) after visiting all four shops in the region.  We wrote the pattern in four sections so each shop can hand out one part of the pattern so once participants had visited all our shops they had the complete pattern.

The Shop Hop started August 2nd and runs to August 18th.  I'll be on the Shop Hop bus that is touring the Northwest region on Saturday, August 10 and I heard there are a few spots left!  Should be a lot of fun!

We designed this pattern you can chose either a dark background or a light background.  The fabrics you receive as your gift will depend on which shop you complete your four stops at so will not be exactly like our sample quilt but they will be Kansas Troubles fabric. Here are two diagrams we created to show how the pattern looks in the two colour ways.

Stellar Quilt Top

Thought I would share one of my finished quilt top on the blog as I am still trying to figure out how to quilt it. This is one of our  Highway 10 Design patterns called Stellar and the great thing about it is there is no curved piecing, the circles are created using straight line sewing.  It is made using the Tri Rec ruler, that is the trick to getting the right angle to create the curves. 

I had to put rocks on my quilt top to keep it from blowing away!

I used batik fabrics in shades of off white, blue, brown and orange.  It is similar to our cover quilt but I added more blue. Lori made and quilted our cover quilt so thought I should go through the whole process of making it too!  

I started piecing it back in February 2018 at a quilt retreat and I worked on it off and on over the next year.I t has been sitting and waiting to be quilting for about 6 months now.  I want to custom quilt it but still not sure how yet. I have the whole month to work on it so this might be my only opportunity for awhile!  Here was the picture I shared of it as a WIP back in Feb 2018, it was a great retreat project and easy to keep organized!

So I hope the quilt starts to whisper to me soon as to how it wants to be quilted! :)