I Spy in Colorado Springs

Aargh! I have not posted in two weeks and not sewn a stitch in that span of time either! Travel and recovery from travel to Oklahoma City and Colorado Springs took priority. My previous post was about a visit to an Oklahoma quilt store and this post will help me get back in the quilting groove by touching on my visit to a Colorado quilt shop. I had a brief but enjoyable peek at Nana's Quilt Cottage in downtown historic Colorado Springs.

I wanted to collect a fabric license plate from this shop. Alas, they had not yet arrived from the printer, but the owner will mail one to me when they come in. My collection is in its infancy and here are five plates I have so far -  one from Washington, two from Oklahoma, and two from California. My Colorado one from Nana's Quilt Cottage will go in the upper right corner above the door to my sewing room when it arrives.

The shop did have a cute collection of packs of containing forty 5" squares each, in a variety of novelty prints, perfect to be made up into an I Spy quilt. Truth be told, I also loved the novel packaging and that influenced my purchase. Presentation does count for a lot. The acetate container had four overlapping swirls that interlocked to close the packet of forty squares.

Here is a sample of an I Spy quilt, hanging in the storefront window, that could be made from those squares. Because it is backlit, the colors do not pop but at least the idea of the pattern can be discerned. The large squares are thirty-six of the I Spy fabrics from the pack of forty. Nana's Quilt Cottage provided a free pattern which instructs the quilter to supply her own background fabric and one accent fabric. The top without borders measures 39" square. The sample quilt used a rose solid for the accent and borders and a similarly colored mini-print for the background rectangles.

I bought one pack of forty squares because, aside from my fascination with the packaging, I really was attracted to the two prints that were showing at the top and bottom of the stack. Those two prints are the first two in the leftmost column - the zebra and parrot prints. When I got home, I laid out a few of the others out of curiosity what they all were. Most are positively adorable, but a few are just so-so, like the mini-prints in the second column. Even so, the mini-prints still provide a challenge for the look and find game of "I spy with my little eye" for items such as tiny hearts or itty-bitty letters or small chickens. 

I have trouble being totally random so I think I will split up this packet either by color hue, by color intensity, or by theme, and supplement with novelty prints from my own stash. As I arranged the 5" squares, the left most column is mostly greens, the second column of mini-prints is sort of red/white/blue, the third column is bold-toned whimsy, and the fourth column is more pastel whimsy. After all, I have three grandkids now, and each may want to play a game of "I Spy"!

I am hooking up now to this week's Freshly Pieced works in progress for inspiration and motivation to get back to sewing!