Welcome to our Blog!!!  Rise and Shout Quilters was created about five years ago as part of the quilt retreat hosted by the BYU Alumni, Houston chapter.  The key word here is hosted!!!  Everyone is welcome to our retreat and to follow our blog.  I am Jann Davies and I have been in charge of the retreat since it started in 2010.  

My sister and I belonged to our local quilt guild and had attended a few of their retreats in the past. After coming home from one several years ago, we were all sitting around talking about how fun it was, when my husband came up with the amazing idea of hosting our own retreat as part of our responsibilities with the Houston chapter of BYU Alumni.  He is a smart one!!!  I loved the idea and put together our first retreat.  I will ever be grateful for those 27 women who trusted what we were trying to do and willingly shared ideas to create our awesome retreat.  The retreat has grown and we now have to limit the number of attendees.  FYI...I keep a waiting list for those who want to attend.  It is a great four days of quilting, laughing, laughing, and did I mention laughing.  

I have grown to love these women and look forward to spending time with them every year.  Many are from the original group, who now bring their friends and family.  As it always is with quilting and friendships, I realized that once a year is just NOT enough.  I have been trying to figure out how we could have more contact with each other and how we can expand our retreat to reach others.  Because we started as part of BYU Alumni, we have shared ideas on our retreat at our training conferences and assisted other chapters in starting their own.  I thought this blog would allow all of us to come together and share the love of quilting.   Drum roll please......I am announcing our first ever Rise and Shout Quilt Along!!!!  Whoo Whoo.   Invite your friends and family, share with others, and follow along!!!  Post your helpful hints and pictures.  We are going to learn from each other and especially share ideas and the LOVE of quilting.  

We have decided to following along with the Fat Quarter Shops' Sampler Block Shuffle.  FYI...

Fat Quarter Shop, http://www.fatquartershop.com, is one of my favorite online sites to buy fabric.  They are fabulous!!!  They carry such a wonderful assortment of patterns and quality fabric.  They ship orders extremely fast so when you are needing a fabric fix, be sure to check them out.  

You will need to go to their site and download the free patterns as the shuffle will be closing Feb 2016.  Here is the link to the Jolly Jabber and Sampler Block Shuffle  http://fatquartershop.blogspot.com.  We will follow their format of doing one block a week.  I'll post links to helpful hints and mini lessons we can all learn from.  Please feel free to post any ideas that you feel will benefit the group.  

Week 1 (maybe a bit more)   Choose your fabrics.  Download the patterns.  Get your self organized for a wonderful quilting adventure.  Sounds exciting huh??  

Again, feel free to post ideas, helpful hints, links, and suggestions.  I am excited to be quilting along with you.  Be sure and post pictures of your blocks.