A little late - update

Howdy! Remember all my excitement last month about the shop hop I was going to go on? Well I'm finally getting around to posting about the experience. I'd taken 2 days off of work and we had 11 shops to stop in at. I had this all planned out for 2 easy drives with plenty of look around time. SO - off we went the first day to the shops actually in KANSAS City. We get lost going to the first shop and totally throws us off the maps I've printed. So we relied on directions from shop to shop and ended up doing the whole thing in 12 hours. Our last stop was in Topeka and I've been to the Capital for conferences enough that I knew how to get home from there. I'm really thinking I may have to invest in one of those navigator GPS things if we do more shop hops in the future! I was really excited about this whole experience because last years participants had such a good time and came home with a ton of prizes and freebies. Well, there was nothing free this year. One shop was even charging for soda's and snacks. There were no in store drawings. Just a line to drop in your name, collect your pattern, and get your charm. I'll probably only return to 2 of the shops and only purchased items from 3. It was fun to have the adventure with Greg though. I made our own memory blocks from the kits they were selling.

MINE

One shop was selling these quilt labels for the back of the special fabric quilt so I built my block of of it.

The music batik is the speciality fabric for this shop hop. I noted that we drove 300 miles in 12 hours (that includes lunch)

to make it to all 11 shops.

Greg's:

Greg started this sewing machine block for another purpose then abandoned it when it measured only 4 inches high not the 4.5 he was going for. (picky picky). So I snatched it up to make his block. I added the phrase "Men Quilt Too"because this seems to be his theme this year. I'm not saying he's not had reason to be sensitive to this... but we've met a number of male quilters at each shop .. maybe Greg just doesn't "Look" like he quilts.?? Anyway, the block isn't really that wonky. I had issues getting it into the frame. I should have glued it to the board... and lets just leave it at I went with a less effective method that had I really thought it out wouldn't have attempted it. He also has a safety pin marking the spot that the charm he's misplaced goes.