Oroville Quilt Shops, pt.1

The travel for NSGW with DH is starting up in earnest now. We spent the weekend after my birthday in Oroville at the Discovery of Gold event.

DH had board meetings. I visited quilt shops. 😉

"Oroville" Quilt Shops
“Oroville” Quilt Shops

The first thing I did was search Google when I got to the hotel. My search was (without quotes) “quilt shops oroville ca”. I was thrilled that I found quilt shops, but confused that none of them had towns listed. Could that mean there were a ton of quilt shops in Oroville mere steps from my hotel?

Too good to be true. There were no quilt shops in Oroville listed in the Google search results. All of those listed in the box (image above) were in different towns. I found one called Mary Jane’s, but I couldn’t actually find the physical place and all the images seemed to be bedspreads so I didn’t go and don’t know what that was about.

I decided to visit three shops. The driving would be about an hour. Sadly, no other NSGW wives seem to be interested in quiltmaking so I am on my own in these endeavors. Two of the shops were in Paradise and one was in Colusa. There were a few more in the surrounding areas, but I thought three was enough was enough to visit in one day.

As soon as I saw DH off, I headed out. It was raining, but not too bad and the drive was easy. I did make on wrong turn, but got to the first shop with no problem.

Morning Star Quilt Shop

Morning Star Quilts, Paradise
Morning Star Quilts, Paradise

Of all the shops I visited, this was my favorite. The samples and the fabrics on offer were my style. I wasn’t expecting much when I got out of the car, except to get out of the rain, but I was very pleased. The place was big, bright and airy and the ladies were friendly. The store was also clean – to the point of gleaming!

I remembered that I saw them vending at Quilts in the Garden in Livermore a few years ago.

Morning Star Quilts, main room
Morning Star Quilts, main room

I saw a lot of organization in that store. There wasn’t stuff laying around and very few bolts of fabric just around. Of all the samples they had on the walls, each one had a tag that said that there was a kit available. I am not a fan of kits, but many people are and they are great for stores. Also, most of the fabrics seen in the samples was still available. I didn’t ask whether they took down the samples when the kits and fabrics were no longer available but it seems like the kind of place where that practice would be standard.

There were other samples besides quilts as well: little girl dresses, pillowcases, embroidery and wool felt projects.

Crabapple Hill Studio
Crabapple Hill Studio

The embroidery projects were very intriguing. The ones that really caught my eye were from Crabapple Hill Studio. I actually don’t know if the shop had other brands’ embroidery designs. I don’t really do embroidery so I really just glanced at these. After I got home I looked at the Crabapple Hill Studio website and the designs really make me want to do embroidery. There is a sense of the traditional embroidery designs that we learned needlework on as children, but with more color and a little more whimsy. The pattern shown as an example gives you an idea of the style.

Morning Star Quilts: Front to back view / front of store
Morning Star Quilts: Front to back view / front of store
Morning Star Quilts: Back to front/ front of store
Morning Star Quilts: Back to front/ front of store
Morning Star Quilts: Purse hardware, notions/ front of store
Morning Star Quilts: Purse hardware, notions/ front of store

The front of the store had batiks and bags. I know that sounds great, but they also had fat quarters and Aurifil. 😉 Morning Star Quilts had organized their batiks together in the front of the store. On the other side of the front of the store were purse and bag patterns as well as bag hardware. I was impressed at the number of bag patterns and equivalent samples.

View of Morning Star shop main area
View of Morning Star shop main area

That was something that Morning Star did really well: patterns with samples. I mentioned this along with kits above, but it was impressive how well this was done. The color sense was also excellent. I loved the fabrics they used in the way they put quilts together.

They had a small curtain in the window, which was a light diffuser. I didn’t see a pattern, but I liked the idea. You can see it in the photo directly above in the upper left hand corner.

Morning Star Quilts long arm
Morning Star Quilts long arm

I saw a long arm, but I don’t know if they rent it out or if they do long arm quilting for customers.

You can see a lot of embroidery floss behind the longarm. Some of this is Cosmo, which I have never seen in that quantity before. I was thrilled and it was very hard not to buy it all.

Morning Star Quilts: Seating area
Morning Star Quilts: Seating area

Nobody was sitting in this little seating area, but it is cute and this was the area where they had wool felt patterns and supplies.

You can also see the light diffusers in the windows at the top of the photo.

I would recommend that you visit this shop if you make it to Paradise. Definitely go out of your way to visit this shop if you are anywhere nearby.

Morning Star Quilt Shop
Address: 43 Pearson Rd, Paradise, CA 95969