All Iowa Shop Hop

 I spent Friday on a section of the second annual All Iowa Shop Hop with friends. There are 82 shops sprinkled around the state, and there is no way I will get to all of them, but what a great chance to visit some new shops! All of the shops had the chance to order some special Iowa Counties fabric, so everywhere we went we saw lots of cute things made up using it. I preordered mine at Cut UP and Quilt. Most of the shops are out of this limited edition fabric now. (They still had some left at Cut Up and Quilt as of Thursday.) Every shop you visit has a different Kona cotton 6" fabric square, so you can collect them as well as stamps on your passport. You can see many of the cute quilts, bags, and other items made using the Iowa Shop Hop fabric if you go to their website.

We headed east and decided to start at the farthest shop on our list and work our way back. So we headed for Quilting Connection in Ames. It is a HUGE shop with lots of gorgeous fabrics. The clerks were all wearing Shop Hop fabric aprons, I wish I would've gotten a picture!  I managed to find a couple batiks I couldn't live without!

 I mean, really, could you have passed this one up?

 I will definitely head back to this shop again in the future!

 Block Party Studios in Nevada was our next stop....what an awesome place!  I tried to post a link to their website, but it just won't load! They are on Facebook, too.

 Dianne is excited to be here!

 They print lots of their own cute sayings, and have patterns and kits to go with them.

 Yea, we found a few things here.....don't worry, Karen, your husband doesn't read my blog!

I grew up on a farm in Iowa, and we always had Farmall tractors. Plus my husband worked for International Harvester for many years, so I really HAD to get his fabric!

 They gave us a little saying with our shop hop 6" square....it will make a cute mug rug!

 I love these fabrics and really need more reds in my stash. I don't tend to use red as much as other colors, not sure why.  Plus I love the little girls ironing, that is one of Block Party's prints.

We saw some Snap Happy bags made up using fat quarters here and I knew this would be perfect for one! So skipping ahead to yesterday, I did get one made!

 I have enough fabric left, so I just might make a little one too. We visited seven shops on Friday, so more on that tomorrow. Off to quilt!