My trip to Purl Soho

I had my birthday in January and my craftiest best friend gave me a gift certificate to Purl Soho in New York City. I checked their website earlier when Jean was giving a review on Her podcast, Quilted Cupcake and was absolutely drooling. I asked Fiance if  He wanted to come with me to buy some fabrics, but He said He'll pass. Then I asked my friend if She wanted to come with me and She gladly said yes. So we'd set up a date to meet on President's Day Monday to go and as it turned out Fiance changed His mind and just came along. We met in Grand Central and went from there. Since we haven't seen each other for 6 weeks and both of us are talkers we didn't realize that we forgot to get off the Subway at Spring street :) We went all the way down to Brooklyn Bridge, then came up to realize that all the stations are closed north bound between Brooklyn Bridge and Union Square. After spending 45 minutes on the Subway we finally arrived at Canal street and took a walk from there. I was so anxious to get to the store and arrived with high expectations. Needless to say it proved to be what I heard and beyond. They have a yummy selection of yarns and all kind of goodies that made me feel like I was lost. Later I realized that next time I go I'll take a list with  me because seeing all that made me forget everything I wanted to get. I went all the way to the back  of the store to check out the solids. I knew that I wanted to get some of those because I want to make a double wedding ring quilt for my Cousin who's getting married in September. I chose a neutral pallet since their house is decorated in earthy tones. Of course I had no idea how much fabrics I'll need and  I still don't even know what size  quilt  I am going to make. They're in Europe and I have no idea about European bed sizes. I'm hoping their bed is no bigger than a full size :)

I was emailing with Katie from Katie's Quilting Corner podcast and was asking her if She knew any patterns for a double wedding ring quilt. She generously offered to send me templates that She had laying  around on Her shelf along with a book. I got them last weekend and was thrilled to see that they were the exact ones that I decided to buy after watching a few videos on Youtube. You can check it out here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1DMYUtYbhs 

So on my trip to New York I picked up a little surprise for Her to return the favor (She didn't let me pay for the templates). And since it's  a surprise I won't post any pictures about it.

Today I've got the time to wash and iron the newly bought fabrics and took some photos.

First the neutrals for the double wedding ring quilt:

Now some more dot fabrics:

And now I've tried how they will look with last week's purchases. I think they match pretty good!

Again, I'm pretty happy with  my purchases! I also bought some solid fat quarters that are not on the picture since I didn't wash them.

After shopping for over an hour my friend suggested to go to Her favorite place Le Pain Quotidien to have lunch (http://www.lepainquotidien.us/). It was an interesting experience since they're sitting everyone to 1 long table and it seemed like we were having lunch with 40 other people :) The food was delicious, not the least expensive place though, but I can highly recommend. They were so busy that they forgot to kick us out so we were chatting away for more than 2 hours :) I had a really good time even though I  don't like to go to the City that much. On our way home we stopped at Pearl River Market (http://pearlriver.com/v2/index.html) which is a 2 story store where they sell pretty much everything from Kimonos to houseware items. It's a little expensive, but we managed to pick up some Japanese lychee candies that we just looove!

I hope I'll have some time to make a test block for my double wedding ring and can post some pictures in the next few days.