Spring 2011 Quilting Shop Hop

This weekend I enjoyed a fabulous Saturday shop hop of 5 local quilting shops. This was my first hop ever and I'm addicted! I think that it helped that the friend I went with was familiar with the shops and is a more advanced quilter than I am. If you are not familiar with a shop hop, you visit the each of the shops participating and at each store you get your passport stamped and a small swatch of fabric. When you have visited each of the stores, the final store has the instructions of what the project is you will be making. The one we got was an armchair sewing caddy. I can't wait to start this project as I will be able to practice with my new free-motion foot I purchased for my sewing machine!

I found some clever accessories to (hopefully) help the machine quilting go easier. The first is called "The Fabulous Fabric Glide". This is used when free-motion quilting and it moves the entire quilt as you use it. I hope it works! Click HERE to see a video on how to use it.

The other product I purchased is the "Jaws" to grip the quilt and hold the roll in place while I machine quilt it. As I am making a queen size this will make my life SO much easier!

Finally, I purchased some 505 spray so that when I "sandwich" the quilt I can just use this temporary adhesive to put it together instead of a gazillion safety pins. As this is a first, I'm crossing my fingers it works because it will save me SO much time (and save the tips of my fingers from pressing in all those safety pins through three layers of fabric and batting!).

I got this tip through reading some quilting blogs so hopefully my "tools" here are inspiring you to simplify your quilting projects!