Quilt Shop Hop Trip

I went on a little trip this past weekend and had a wonderful time!  The local quilt shop was part of a shop hop and I gave my newsletter to a friend and she and three more friends wanted to participate.  Yeah!  So this past Friday morning we set out to visit nine shops over two days.  We had a blast!  You buy a pass which was only $5.00, at each stop you receive a punch or a stamp, and when you visit the last shop you leave your pass to get a chance to win a sewing machine.  A really nice sewing machine!  We also got our names in daily drawings at each shop for gift certificates.  As of this moment I do not think any of us has won anything, I have not at least.  But as I said we had a ball!  Each shop offered a quilt block pattern for free and you could buy the kit that went with it for $3.00, and we all did.  Also each shop made the blocks up and put them together differently offering a finishing kit that you could purchase to finish a quilt top.  Here are my kits and the finishing kit I picked:

Here are a couple of examples of the quilts we could make from the block kits we were buying:

Here are my long time and new friends that I got to make the rounds with:

I am the short one in the the middle.  Sorry I never smile at the right time when the picture is taken.  It was hard to pick a picture that someone was not squinting or not smiling at just the right moment so I decided to pick the picture that everyone else was looking good in.  One day I'll take a picture that I am happy with and finally have one to add for my profile.  One day...

We had a favorite shop that also included a large yarn section:

And one of the ladies has a cottage on a lake that we got to spend two nights at. 

We all brought food to share and made some awesome dinners and had some great dips and snacks.  One of my new friends taught me how to knit along with another friend who already knew how but needed some help starting a new project.  We are working on this dishcloth pattern:

I cannot even explain how we were getting taught but it was hilarious and I think we laughed so hard that it wore us out more then our day of shopping.

I made everyone a felt book to keep needles or pins in.  Here is what they look like:

The outside.

The inside.

I have more of these cut out ready to put together, I just need to find more of the scissor charms that I used.

It is my blog anniversary this month,  I have been putting together a little something to give to one of my bloggy friends and I want to add one of these needle books to it.  So stop back this week when I post because sometime between today and the 30th I hope to post a give away!  I know this was a long post but I had such a great time I wanted to share it with you.  Thanks for stopping by and have a great week!