An Excellent Quilt Shop

Posted on July 30, 2023 by zippyquilts

We recently went to Western North Carolina for several craft-related events and I fit in a visit to Five Little Monkeys, a quilt shop in Weaverville just north of Asheville. (Who can resist a visit to a quilt shop while travelling?)

One of the greeters at Five Little Monkeys

Five Little Monkeys turned out to be a wonderful quilt shop, well worth the side trip!

They had multiple bolts of some of my favorite fabric lines.

I love these large-scale novelty prints from Alexander Henry!

There was a huge selection of patterns! It’s conveniently located on the stairs leading up to the sale area 😀

I never saw so many patterns in one shop!

And they had a better selection of quilting books than any store I’ve visited in the past couple of years. Just look at this!

The owner designed this quilt for the wedding of friends and she does sell the pattern through her shop.

Wedding quilt designed by Angie, who calls herself the “Queen Monkey” at Five Little Monkeys

There were multiple other lovely quilts on display, including this one that I thought was especially fun.

Not a great picture, but the quilt was up high. Fun to look at anyway!

There were many attractive displays throughout the store. I had to walk through several times to decide what I “needed”. I’m not showing everything I bought because some items were gifts for folks who probably read this blog. But you get the idea.

I did get some half yards for my low volume stash.

The fabric on the far right has silver metallic speckles, but my camera doesn’t like metallic

And I found a couple of patterns I just have to try.

Stay tuned for quilts made from these patterns. And if you get to Asheville, it’s well worth a trip to Weaverville to visit Five Little Monkeys!

Swedish Sunrise

Posted on July 23, 2023 by zippyquilts

I first mentioned this quilt when I spent a lot of time cutting squares of very particular colors for the Postcard From Sweden pattern. (Here, if you want to read that post.)

Photo is from the front of the Postcard From Sweden pattern

My arrangement of colors originally cut for the Postcard From Sweden pattern

After cutting all the squares and looking at the layout in the pattern, I decided to change it up. I put more of the blue at the top, green at the bottom, yellow in the middle, with the idea of imitating a sunrise.

I made a quilt with a similar idea a couple of years ago. I chuckle about it because some people call it “perseveration” when you repeat an idea like this, but if you’re an artist it’s called “working in a series” 😀

Here is the previous quilt:

Sunrise, 75″ x 50″

And here are some close-ups of Swedish Sunrise.

Quilt Stats

Name: Swedish Sunrise

Finished size: 61″ x 76″

Designed and made by me, using the colors suggested in the Postcard From Sweden pattern

Quilted by: Linda Nichols

Anniversary

Posted on July 16, 2023 by zippyquilts

Back at the beginning of June I marked (or failed to mark in print) the 10th anniversary of my blog.

My blogging friend Andrea recently reviewed her stats and noted her most popular posts. I almost never look at my stats because I’m writing this for fun, not for fame, but I liked her idea. So because of her I’m going to review several things I found interesting when looking at my stats.

First up: Where in the world are my readers? One of the things I love about blogging is the opportunity to exchange ideas with people I’m unlikely to encounter otherwise. Not surprisingly, most of my readers are in the U.S., followed by Canada, Australia, and the U.K. generally. After that there are a number of European countries, other English-speaking countries, and some countries I never heard of!

A blogging friend in South Africa wrote about her borage, so I planted some and it’s beginning to bloom! The circle shows a little hitch-hiker I found on the plant.

I have had no readers from Greenland or most of the countries in the African interior.

Pinterest and the WordPress app itself are the most frequent source of viewers. I know people often click on pins (Pinterest) from my blog because of the pages on which they land when visiting me. Many visitors come to this post I wrote years ago about Jo Glover, one of the original Big Stitch quilters. I expect it’s because of the pictures of some of her work, including this one:

Some Big Stitch quilting by Jo Glover

As for other popular posts, of course many people visit the home page and About Me pages. Another frequently-viewed post is about AQS Quilt Week in Chattanooga in 2016, possibly also because there were so many quilts from there added to Pinterest.

But the thing I enjoy most about blogging, regardless of stats, is encountering other quilters and their ideas. I’ve only met one blogging friend in person, but I’m hoping to meet others one of these days.

Laura visited in 2021 and was the first blogging friend I met in person.

In looking at some of these older posts, I’m surprised to see how long I’ve been exchanging comments with some of these friends. Some blogging friends have disappeared, to Instagram or otherwise, and I’m sorry to see them go. I did finally subscribe to Instagram just so I can see what’s going on with my friend Chela (colchas_y_mas), but it isn’t really a habit yet. And I’m pretty busy, so maybe it never will be. I did manage to post one picture so far 😀

Based on this review, I have a suggestion for friends who are trying to get more traffic to their blogs: Post your stuff on Pinterest. And I have it on good authority that your blog can be sent over to Instagram. I haven’t figured it out yet, but that might drive traffic to your blog as well.

I’m just happy to have met so many people through my blog, regardless of traffic in general. And to all my followers and commenters, THANKS!

Two Quilts

Posted on July 9, 2023 by zippyquilts

I mentioned last week that I had forgotten to blog about my improvisational quilt, so here’s the whole story.

Last summer I took part in an improv quilt-along hosted by Shannon Fraser Designs. I made a bunch of blocks in response to her prompts.

Eventually, I used my signature little black strips to combine them into a final design.

And then I forgot to blog about the finished product. So here we go:

Quilt Stats

Name: Improv 2022

Finished size: 42″ x 57″

Designed, and made by: me, in response to improv prompts from Shannon Fraser Designs

Quilted by: Linda Nichols

More recently I made another raid on the scrap drawers and put together this top.

It’s from an old book from Cozy Quilt Designs, entitled Strip Clubbing: Fast and Easy Quilts with 2 1/2″ Strips. I was pleased with the pattern and directions. Instructions were such that every one of those seams nested!!! How great is that? Because of that, almost all of those intimidating-looking intersections were close to perfect! Woo!

This is only about 36″ square, so it will be a donation quilt to cover a premie incubator at a local medical center. If you’re interested in the book, your best bet probably is a used book site like Abe Books. Sure it’s available new, but it’s old enough that there are plenty of used copies out there at a fraction of the price.

Have a good week!

Tilda, and a Forgotten Finish

Posted on July 2, 2023 by zippyquilts

A few months ago I was caught by the Tilda craze. The fabrics were just too beautiful to leave in the store, so an assortment came home with me.

Turned out they were all medium values.

I played with various options and finally decided to use my little inserted strips to bring some definition to the blocks. I’ve used these strips for years to add structure to various quilts.