Quilting in Catalonia (Part I)

As soon as I found out I was pregnant, I knew I was going to make a my baby a quilt. I love quilting and I will use any opportunity to create one. What I did not know was how difficult it would be to get going.

When we were living in Israel, there was one quilt shop that was about an hour from us by public transport that was opened on weekday mornings and some Friday afternoons - basically during our working hours. I think it opened on some Saturdays too but since that is Shabbat there, it is even harder to get around. It eventually closed last summer but I had already given up all hope for quilting in Israel. The prices for everything were high and there just wasn't time in our lives to squeeze in quilting. So I was really excited when we were leaving so I could get back in to my favorite creative hobby.

I started searching online for different fabrics to get ideas of what type of baby quilt to make before we left Israel. I even bought some cute nautical fabric from Dear Stella with the idea of taking on that trendy theme.

Selection from "All Hands on Deck" by Dear Stella

Shopping for fabric online, however, is just not the same as being able to go spend hours in a fabric store, mixing and matching different fabrics until you have the right combination for your project. Also, shipping fabric from the US to Europe or Israel is not exactly the most economical solution so I decided to wait until we arrived.

Fet A Ma Patchwork (photo courtesy of their website)

There are two small quilting shops in the town where we are living, which is AMAZING and both offer classes in applique and hand-quilting. These shops don't sell much fabric, however, so I needed to do some research about where I could find fabric stores in the area. Eventually, after trying to figure out the correct word for quilt in Catalan and Spanish, I stumbled upon a site that included a directory of quilt shops in Spain and from there it was just a matter of getting to Barcelona during their opening hours.

One rainy day, Kilian and I made our way to Barcelona and found ourselves holed up in a small fabric store for over two hours as I mixed and matched until I got the right number of fabrics and the right combination to make a simple fat quarter baby quilt.

The final selection - a clear departure from the Dear Stella nautical theme.

Poor Kilian was dying of hunger since he hadn't had lunch and I kept having him get down and put back bolts of fabric. He took leave to get a sandwich just as the rain was coming down the hardest. Of course we forgot our umbrella so he got pretty wet on his hunt for lunch. I am so thankful for his patience that day; it is small acts such as these that remind a woman of how lucky she is to have found someone so special.