July Shop Hop

For the past few years there has been a July Shop Hop in Southern Ontario. It involves visiting 15 stores to collect block patterns and the fabrics to make those patterns. Each store makes their own version of a quilt layout using the same blocks and it's amazing to see the 15 completely different quilt layouts. 
They ask that participants not take any pictures in order to keep it a mystery for everyone until the end of July, so I reluctantly comply with that rule and don't have any quilts to show you.  

shop hop blocks plus teal

But believe me we saw some lovely quilt layouts which will eventually be able to be seen on the website here. I think you can still see the 2017 quilts when the theme colour was grey. The 2018 quilts will be posted any day. This year the colour was beige/neutral and the blocks are kind of boring. So I decided to spruce those up with some teal fabrics left over from 2 of my previous quilts - Clarissa and a Patchwork Times mystery. The idea to add teal to the sampler quilt came from the Cherished Pieces shop in Tillsonburg.
Some of the shops I travelled to on my own, and some parts of the journey I was able to car pool with some quilting friends. 

Esther of Heart N Home Creations

I was happy to be able to visit each one of the shops during the month of July, and ended my journey at Esther's shop in New Hamburg called Heart N Home Creations. A huge thank you to all the quilt store owners for organizing this fun summer event for us. The Shop Hop is a lot of fun for quilters but it's also a lot of work for the store owners. I hope it is financially worthwhile for them otherwise they won't continue to offer it. You can rest assured that I bought something at every store and definitely did my best to support the effort! I treated myself to a new cutting mat, a roll of batting, new needles, marking pens, and perhaps a bit of fabric here and there! LOLOLOLOL 
I am well stocked for the year (well, for years to come actually!)