Friday, June 20, 2008

The Albuquerque Quilt Shop Hop Purchases

The bed at the St. Regis was so big and pretty that I thought it would make an excellent backdrop for all my shop hop purchases. I lined them all up just right and started my photo-shoot lol (I better not quit my day job!)
I went a little crazy at Quilt Works in Albuquerque. What can I say? It was the first store in my shop hop and I didn't know how many other great fabrics I was going to see. I certainly don't regret any of the purchases. The top two are the southwestern birthday gift fabrics. The left two on the bottom were half price and will make excellent quilt backs. I just LOVE the flamingos and the eagles in flight are going to be the back of my Thunderbirds quilt. At least I have a plan! (And a patient, forgiving husband!) I also got the Perfect Piecing dvd here (I'm never satisfied with my piecing, I hope it helps), but I forgot to take a picture of that.
These four fabrics are from Quilting from the Heart (also in Albuquerque). I'm going to make a Fantasy Pony quilt out of them. The center panel has blocks of ponies, the green cactus fabric will surround that, I'll cut the stripes of ponies (bottom fabric) to surround that, then use the turquoise fabric at the left to surround the whole thing. I think it's going to look really cute and it should be very simple to put together, which is always a big plus for me.
I think I must have been getting a little bit saturated by the time I got to Southwestern Decoratives because I bought a very similar fabric to the one I got at Quilting from the Heart the day before. I'm not upset about it at all though, because all of the previous purchase is earmarked for the Fantasy Pony quilt, so this one I'll be able to keep for my (very small) stash. It's true, my entire fabric stash fits in about 4 large shoeboxes. Though if I kept on buying fabric like I have this past week I'd need a whole new wing on the house!
Just so you know, we have been shopping in stores that are of much more interest to Larry than to me. For instance, between shop 2 and shop 3 in Albuquerque, we went to World of Knives, which had a very small selection of really cool stuff.








Here is Larry holding what has to be the largest scissors I have ever seen. We were both very surpised at how light weight it was. It actually would have been very functional.
And here is a knife so scary looking that it could cut you just by looking at it! It immediately reminded both Larry and me of a Klingon knife once described in a Star Trek novel. As Spock would say, "Fascinating." Actually, we were both really surprised at the small selection of items in the store. Perhaps they hadn't gotten all of their inventory displayed, or something. I don't know, but it looks like Texas really rules when it comes to knives. We have House of Blades in Fort Worth which has AT LEAST 100 times the selection in a really gigantic store devoted to blades of all descriptions. Plus they have a really cool chair made out of antlers on display that always makes us want to break out into song - you know the one from Beauty and the Beast, "I use antlers in all of my DECorating..." We both just love that store! (I know, I'm not really a girly girl at all.)

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