A little bit country

In a departure from my orange, lime green and pink phase, I pulled out this table runner pattern the other day.  The fabrics come from my favourite quilt store, located in North Bay, called Homestead Stitches.  It is a very lovely store where you won't find Amy Butler or Kaffe Fasset but you will find fabrics like these.  The fabrics are all cozy, country-type fabrics that I normally don't gravitate towards in other quilt shops but I do here.

I love sunflowers and love the mellow browns that just set them off.  The fabric, including the panel and the pattern is from a book called Pumpkins and Spice by Terri Degenkolb.  I did have a little bit of trouble on the corners and do find that my lack of attention to detail results in slightly uneven joins in the little squares but I'm not really bothered by it.  I was glad that it was a table runner and not a big quilt though.  The little squares would have driven me bonkers in a larger project.

Back to the store.  The owner, Annie, is lovely and churns out quilts at blinding speed.  She is in her twenties and always dreamed of owning a quilt shop and now she does.   She was featured in one of those quilt magazines that profiles shops a few years ago.  The only Canadian store in that particular edition.

Last Christmas I used some of the fabrics I bought there to make this Bento Box pattern for my dad.  If I made it again, I would make sure that the light fabrics were more related to each other.  I find the lighter beige and the darker beige don't really work together as well as the dark colours do.

Again, back to the store!  The store has a tin ceiling and dark wood shelves filled with all sorts of gorgeous fabrics and samples of Annie's work.  The flannels here are the nicest I've seen and I absolutely have to go there whenever I visit North Bay.  One thing about the fabrics there is that it is generally easier to put together a quilt for a man.  Obviously, my penchant for orange, lime and pink would not appeal to many of the male population.