I will do a complete blog post on that tomorrow with pics of our tour. I am waiting for the final pics to post of the finished project.
I promise, my dear RV readers, it will be an interesting post!
We woke up at 6 am to tornado watch alerts... but all storms soon passed around us to the south or the north, and we were just fine. But just in case, we packed an Evac Emergency Bag with laptop, meds, purse, wallet and phone. Both dogs were on harnesses and leashes, and we had on shoes were ready to grab the dogs and bag and run to the big building if anything was happening nearby.
Paula and Mel, fellow Safari-ites who have been at my mom's with us these last two weeks were with us too. They are having a window fixed on their rig as well.
While we are waiting for our windows to get done, Paula found two quilt shops in the area! Imagine that! One was closed and moved to another location further away. But the other sounded interesting..... We googled for directions, and found this delightful place tucked back in the Florida woods. At first we were not sure if we were in the right place, till we saw all the cars parked by this adorable little building set back in the trees.
We came into a wonderful shop full of fibers, fabric, tools and lots of friendly chatter. That is a sign of a Good Quilt Shop! Sometimes you walk in and people stop and stare, but this one was busy!
This is the first shop I have been in that has it's bolts of fabric displayed sideways on hinged racks. You can page through the bolts like pages of books hanging on a wall! What a great layout display idea! All the prices and manufacturers were readily available on the ends of the bolts, and you could still see the the fabrics (AND TOUCH THEM) as you paged your way through.....
All around the store were interesting displays of finished projects
inspiring with a lot of ideas!
(I know my mom would want to see the bears!)
Towards the back of the shop was a class room. Instead of a sign that said "keep out" this one had a sign that encouraged you to "peek inside"!!! How refreshing! We saw a number of ladies working in a class, with a lot of wonderful items on display too.
I saw some beautiful looking new machines... these came out in honor of Singer's sewing machine anniversary. How cool is that? Everything Old Is New Again? I told the ladies that I do most of my piecing on a 102 year old Singer treadle machine.
Since we are RVer's,
this display of little blocks was pretty cute....
In another room, off to one side, were a couple long arm quilting machines. This gal was from out of state, but was here "renting" time on this machine to do up her quilts. This is where the pieced quilt top is sandwiched with the batting and bottom fabric. Then she can make the patterned quilting stitches all over the smooth quilt layers and have a finished quilt (all she has to do now is sew on a binding around the edges) .
She worked so fast (even with me interrupting her) that she was already loading up another quilt to get worked on before we were ready to leave! She sure is doing a great job.
I haven't had the need yet for a machine so big, but never say never!
Another cute idea was this bobbin holder!
We looked at a lot of fun stuff. I was on the hunt for a certain book, but she didn't have it. I guess I will have to order it from Amazon. I was hoping to find it in a little shop, so I could have fond memories of buying it from a special place. Oh well, instead I bought some fabric that "spoke" to me when I first came in! Quilters know that feeling.....
The top one is the speaking fabric!
Paula helped me pick out two other coordinating fabrics to go with it....
I found some little sections of fabrics called "fat quarters" for my mom. She likes to clip out little patterns and figures of fabric and glue them to cardstock. She makes wonderful note cards and greeting cards, and sells them at craft shows. Now when she reads this, she will see the ones I picked up for her.
Paula had some fabrics cut up too,
and we both left the shop with big smiles on our faces.
It was a great outing,
and next time we are in the area,
we will be SURE to stop back!
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Sounds like a wonderful shop! Thanks for sharing...If I ever get up that way, will be sure to check it out!
ReplyDeleteIn the west branch area where we camp Quilting is popular and when you drive around the area you will notice quilt patterns painted on the side of barns and other buildings. Also where We live here the wife dropped her wedding gown off at a local quilting shop they use the Wedding gowns to make dresses for babies that are still born in the whole state of Mi. They had one of those huge sewing machines. All computer controlled I had to have the lady show me how it worked and it was basically the same to set up as my machines I ran in the shop while working at GM.
ReplyDeleteI love stopping at quilt shops on our travels and picking up something to remember.
ReplyDeleteWe had a window replaced at Suncoast last year and are really happy with that shop. No experience with the quilt shop, though. ;c)
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