More swap blocks and "stuff"

I have been busy with some fun stuff!  Last weekend four quilt shops in the area had a shop stroll.  I spent a day going from one to another, about six hours and almost 100 miles driven.  Busy Bee Quilts is 27 miles away(one way), so I drove out through the canyon to a small town east of the mountains.  I really enjoyed the shop, great staff and lots of fabrics and patterns I liked.  I will make the trip to go there again, just not very often.  I will wait until I have a project in mind and get everything I need in one trip.   The next shop was 13 miles to the north west.  It was a nice drive across the Rio Grande river to Quilts Ole.  I really enjoyed their shop, too.  They also have a great staff and wonderful fabrics.  I want to visit them again, too.  So the two shops that are the farthest away from my house are the ones I loved!  Kokopelli Quilting (only six miles away) has lots of beautiful southwest fabrics and patterns so if I want to do something with a southwest flair I will stop there.  My last stop was only about 3 miles from home and it is the shop I usually visit, Quilt Works.  They have a very helpful staff and a large selection of fabrics, too.  I had lots of fun, bought a few goodies and am entered in drawings from each of the shops.  Each shop gave away a Halloween block pattern to make a cute wall hanging.  At two of the shops I bought the block kit for their piece of the wall hanging, at the other two I found patterns I liked.  One of the drawings at each shop required a $5.00 purchase to enter so I made sure I entered each of those.  The drawings for the large prizes are at the end of this month, so I have my fingers crossed for luck!

I received swap blocks from Beth:

These gorgeous blocks, a needle keeper and a very nice note.  Thank you Beth, I love the variety of wonderful fabrics and colors. 

Next, I have been working to catch up on my Snowbound blocks.  I finished June, July and August. 

Cute little Mr. June in his derby hat.

Sweet Miss July with her ribbon of hearts.

And Mr. August racing away in his little wagon.

I am enjoying stitching these little snowmen so much.  The next block pattern comes out the 5th of September so I am ready for it.  I need to start putting the snowman blocks and the Irish chain blocks together.  I have enough done to finish three complete rows.  August, September and October form the fourth row with November and December in the last row.  The idea is to have a finished quilt by Christmas, we'll see if that happens!  I will have to have all my other projects finished so I have time to do the quilting before the holiday.

I finally made the label for the blue stars quilt and got it in the mail to Florida.  I decided to just call it "Stars In the Sky" because the background looks like the evening sky.  I forgot to take a picture of the label though.  I used two left over blocks from the quilt at the top, stitched on a cream square to write on, added a poem, the quilt info and a navy blue border around it all for the label.  It looked really nice on the back of the quilt.  That's about all for now.

Hope you are all making lots of progress on your projects!