Row By Row Experience

I've been having fun this summer collecting row patterns for the Row By Row Experience.  If you're a quilter, you probably know what this is.  If you're not, you can read about it here.  In a nutshell, this is a shop hop for summer travelers in the US and Canada.  1250 shops in 34 states are participating.  Simply visit any participating shop for their free row pattern.  Some shops also have kits available for their pattern, as well as fabric license plates with a slogan picked by the shop.

While I was in New Hampshire in July, I collected patterns from 8 shops in NH and 2 shops in Maine.  If you follow my blog, you might remember some of the shop hop posts from July.  I also had patterns from 2 local shops in Virginia.  Last weekend, I was heading to a VCQ meeting down in South Boston, VA, so planned the trip to collect some more patterns.  I stopped at 2 shops in Fredericksburg and 3 in Richmond.  On the way back Saturday, I stopped at another in Boydton.

Then on Monday a quilting friend and I went to 5 more shops. I forgot to take pictures of those shops, so instead, below is a collage of their patterns.

That brings me to 13 patterns from Virginia.  So, you might ask, what am I going to do with all of these rows?  The point of the shop hop is to make a quilt using at least 8 rows.  The first person to bring a completed quilt to a participating shop wins a prize from that shop.  I'm not going for a prize, still haven't decided if I will use some of the rows to make a quilt - that remains to be seen.  Since the rows each focus on a season, one thing I'm considering is putting rows from the same season together for a "summer" or"fall" quilt.  There are some rows I'm completing as table runners.  My row from Artistic Artifacts is waiting to be quilted, and I have the materials to do the same with my Keepsake row. 

No matter what I end up doing with them, it's been fun collecting them and visiting the different shops.