New locale seems to be lacking

I moved to Rochester, Minnesota, one year ago next month. I moved for a job and to be closer to my family. It is a great place to live and I'm starting to dig in to community life and various activities. With a population of over 105,000 people, I had some expectations when I moved here. Quilter's expectations.

It's been a bit disappointing. The Twin Cities (Minneapolis/Saint Paul) has abundant resources for quilters with some of the best shops I know of. 

There is only one independent quilting shop in town and it has completely unrealistic hours. They are open Monday through Friday 10 am to 5 pm and Saturdays from 10 am to 2 pm. For those of us who work full-time jobs, those hours don't work. You basically have four hours on Saturdays. (Unless it's the Labor Day weekend because they're closed the entire weekend)

I guess since they have a big online store, they're not really concerned with non-virtual customers. 

Said quilt shop also doesn't offer any classes. I love taking classes. (I checked out Community Ed and they don't offer any quilting classes either!)

Plus I love being able to quilt my own quilts on a long-arm machine. However, there is a catch: I don't actually own my own long-arm. I've been driving up to the Cities to rent a machine.

But there is hope. I just have to be willing to drive a bit further.

I've discovered a very welcoming quilt shop (All In Stitches) in the small town of Stewartville, just south of Rochester.  They have sane hours and classes. I'll be doing their block of the month starting in September and they're starting a "Groovy Girls" group.

If I want to travel north of Rochester, I can drive up to Cannon Falls to a cute quilt shop (Fourth & Main) that just opened up a sewing studio last week. I'm already signed up for a couple of their classes.

Rochester has a quilt guild and I'm planning on attending their next meeting on September 12th. I've never been a member of quilt guild before, so I'm trying to erase all my assumptions about guilds as grannies having a quilting bee before I join up.  They also have quilt show in October and hoping to get my big quilt in to it.

But the best bit of news was my discovery of a long-arm rental service nearby. (o2bquilting.com) And when I say nearby, I mean about 25 miles away. I've scheduled my first appointment for September 19th and now I just have to narrow down which quilt tops will be selected for quilting. So many decisions.

Who needs art?

I recently moved into a new two-bedroom apartment and am still figuring out where to hang pictures and what to do with the windows, etc.

The two bedrooms are not the same size; one is obviously the "master bedroom."  Not only is it a bigger room, but has a nice walk-in closet. Naturally, one would assume that the larger room is where I put my bed and then use the smaller room as an office or den.

That would be an incorrect assumption. My queen size bed fits very cozy in the smaller room while my computer desk, sewing machine table and healthy fabric stash fits very nicely in the larger room.

I haven't hung any pictures in the room, but the walls are not bear. 

Generally at any one time, I have about three or four block-of-the-month projects going on. Why hide those beautiful blocks away when they can be used for decorating purposes.

These are five blocks from a BOM called Migration (lots of flying geese) that I'm doing through the quilt shop, Quilt Cove (Eagan, MN). It is a 20-month project. Yep, you read that correctly - twenty months! It's about 1/2 way done, so if you're good at math, you'll figure out that I'm already five months behind.

The fabrics are batiks, but the colors make up a wide range of values. Greens, blues, purples, pinks, browns, oranges, etc. Can't wait to see it finished.

These blocks are from the 2011 Calico Hutch (Hayward, MN) BOM. Only 12 months and the calendar follows the normal January through December schedule.

The exclusive Calico Hutch quilt pattern is called "Front and Center" by designer Mike Ellingsen. Each block features a red focus fabric in the center.

This one is a bit of a stretch for me because it uses very traditional colors with the Moda Fabric, Kansas Troubles.  The pattern can be finished as queen size quilt (and set on point with log cabin squares) or as a lap quilt with star sashing. Not sure which one I'll choose.

And finally, in the corner by the window, you'll find my basket quilt blocks. I'm hanging five of the blocks, but I'm thrilled to say that all the blocks are completed and I'm getting ready to cut out the finishing kit.

This is another BOM from Quilt Cove from batiks. (You should see my batik scrap stash from all my batik BOMs!) Each month you would make a 10" block and two 5" blocks. Four 5" blocks will be combined to make a 10" block and then pieced together.

As you can see, I don't wait until the quilt is done to use it to decorate my home. And my visitors can see what I'm working on.

Do you use your blocks to decorate your home?

First Post

What the heck am I doing here?

Although I started quilting 20 years ago, the quilting bug has bit me hard in the last two years. And I love it. I love quilting. My dream is to make my living as a quilter. Maybe open my own store and teach newbies all the quilting basics. I would have to own my own long-arm quilting machine, too.

This blog is going to be about my discoveries in quilting, quilt shop tours, product reviews, stories about others who quilt and how they inspire me.

Right now, there's nobody reading this blog. This is the first post on a blog that no one has heard of. I already have a successful blog (Random Thoughts from My ADD Brain) and I love writing it. I just didn't feel like it would be a good idea to change the focus of the blog to a quilting blog and just figured I would start a completely different one.

I have a Twitter account for this blog (Quilt_Addict) and will most likely start an Etsy account to sell what I make.

So, here goes...