Tag: Quilt Shop

I hadn’t been to Lancaster County, PA in a long time, so SIL was kind enough to drive me to Philadelphia and stop at some fabric shops along the way. We enjoy shopping together. We have the opportunity to catch up as we drive around. She never does that trip to Lancaster County alone, so I get to help her renew her fabric.

We mapped out 8 or so shops, but only made it to three. I was happy to find enough food fabrics to make the Disappearing Nine Patch. One of the shops had a lot.

In general, I did see a lot of brown and muddy colors. I tried to be careful and not buy those. I also tried to be cognizant of the light. It is hazy in that area when it is hot and that affects how I see the fabrics.

We started out with a list of stores on the Quiltart website. Thanks, Judy! We used SIL’s GPS to find directions to all the shops. The GPS made us make a lot of left turns, which wasn’t always easy.

Dutchland Quilt Patch
This was a two story store with a lot of Amish looking gift items and a lot of potpourri. Two Amish women were working there (one was in training). The fabric was upstairs in a light aqua room. They had fat quarters and a large number of bolts of fabric. I bought a few pieces, some FQs for a friend and some embroidery needles. Their colors were a little on the murky side for me. I did enjoy talking with the young woman who cut my fabric. She commented on the motifs and colors we chose and talked a little about her own sewing.

Fabric Shack, formerly Lapp’s Dry Goods
Next we went to the Fabric Shack, formerly Lapp’s Dry Goods. This is a quilt/fabric store in a former house in the middle of a bunch of farms, e.g. it is not on a commercial strip of stores. SIL and I have been to this store in the past. I like the former name better. There is something unappealing about the word ‘shack’. It didn’t matter because the first thing I saw when I walked in were the Farmer’s Market food fabrics. This store also had LOTS of fabrics. In addition to regular quilting cottons, they had the pre-quilted fabrics, a whole room full of flannels, Moda pre-cuts, books and FQs.

We had to wait a long time when we went to check out because the lady in front of us was buying multiple cuts of 10 yards each! She told us she was making Stack-n-Whack or One Block Wonder quilts and was buying so much fabric, because she was stocking up for the summer! Later, SIL explained how the technique worked and I looked at her book, but am not sure I’ll be making one using that method.

One of the things we saw, which was not a surprise to me, were Amish buggies everywhere. Obviously, people had to get around and they were using buggies. I enjoyed watching them drive by as we waited in the Fabric Shack to check out. The horses were gorgeous and looked sleek and well taken care of. Next door to the Fabric Shack was a mini buggy parking lot.

Zook’s
Zook’s had the most fabric of any of the Amish stores we visited.  They had arranged all of their fabric by manufacturer, which I thought was an interesting way of arranging it. It seemed to make it easy for them to find fabrics when people called.

We spent the next 2.5 hours in traffic getting to Philadelphia. Bleah! I would have liked to have gone to Sauder’s, but I found plenty of fabric on this trip.It gives me something to which to look forward in the future.

I also saw these scooter bikes everywhere in Lancaster. I don’t know if they are really called scooter bikes, but that is what they look like. I seriously thought about buying one for the Young Man, but didn’t have the energy to figure out how to ship it home, so I left for this trip. Perhaps another time. I thought they would be very useful for getting around  a college campus. I am not sure how one would compare to a bike as I have never tried one out.

While in Philadelphia, I tried to go to Spool Sewing. I looked up their hours, walked over within the specified time and they were closed. 🙁 Oh well. Perhaps I’ll go to Philadelphia again and they will be open.

A few days later, I drove up to New Jersey to co-host Mark’s radio show. As I drove, I wondered why there were no quilt shops with big signs on the side of the road that I could see from the highway. If I could see it, there was half a chance that I could stop at the store. 😉

Pennington Quiltworks
Wishes do come true, because not 5 minutes after thinking that, I saw a huge sign for Pennington Quiltworks. How could I not stop? Pennington Quiltworks was bright and cheerful. When I arrived the place was buzzing with activity. There was a large group of ladies having fabric cut and getting ready to leave. I found out later that there were 17 of them in the group and they were working on a very bright and cheerful friendship quilt.

On Friday, I had to choose between Mt. Vernon and quilt shops. Sigh! It is hard being a grown up. I really wanted to go to Mt. Vernon and see their new visitor center and the garden re-do, but I also wanted to go to quilt shops. SIL said I couldn’t do both, so we went to the quilt shops. 😉

Capital Quilts
Capital Quilts was our first stop. This used to be SIL’s local quilt shop, but I think that Patches (see below) is closer to her. I have been to CQ at least twice before. They have great fabric. They have a lot of batiks, more of the Kaffe Fasset fabrics than I have seen at other shops, some Philip Jacobs and Amy Butler. They also have machines. The thing I like about this shop is that they haven’t sacrificed fabric space for machines.

G Street
G Street has moved since I was there last. The space was a lot smaller and their quilting cotton inventory was quite picked over. I heard someone say that they were doing inventory soon, so I am guessing that the selection would have been a lot bigger if I visited next week. They had a number of interesting rulers. I found a few more food fabrics to add to my group. The store manager helped us and she said that RJR is only printing what stores order. Makes it hard to reorder a popular fabric.

Needles & Pins
This is a small Frederick, MD shop which I visited once before. In some respects it is what I think of when I think of the quilt shop in Marie Bostwick‘s Cobbled Court novels, except smaller. I remembered it as being quite dark. This time, even though it was raining, I found it to be quite bright and stocked some cheerful fabrics. They also had a small selection of the felted wool pincushions that I like. They had a great quilt hanging up in the shop. My problem with it was that it was made from Civil War fabrics. It was a BOM and each block came with the fabrics.

I found this situation to be the case in a couple of stores. A few of the shops were doing a BOM in Civil War fabrics and there was no alternative. A quiltmaker was not able to buy the patterns without the fabric and was not able to buy an alternative colorway such as large scale prints or batiks. Of course, everything about the Civil War is very popular in this area and the fabric seems to be quite prevalent as well. Not my thing, though and it makes me wonder if I am alone in this or if they are cutting out a bunch of potential customers. I assume these stores know their customer base?

Patches Quilting & Sewing
Patches was a great shop. It is also in a house right up from the Mt. Airy main drag. The people were really friendly and the place was crammed, CRAMMED, with fabric, notions, tools, patterns, rulers, thread, books and machines. There was no available space because every surface had something to look at or buy.

Did I mention rulers? This store had more rulers than I have ever seen at one store. They had the Quilt in a Day Flying Geese rulers that I mail ordered. They had the Clearview 60 degree triangle rulers that Pam, Sandy and I have been agonizing over in THREE SIZES! I was amazed. I didn’t even know that ruler came in 3 sizes. The shop also had the Starmaker ruler that Kaye Wood uses in the video on how to cut the hexagons from strips. I have never EVER seen that ruler. They didn’t have very many sizes of the Creative Grids rulers, but a person can’t have everything and I really have no reason to complain about their selection of rulers, if you couldn’t tell.

They had great fabric. I could have bought almost everything there, but just had to stop, because I was getting overwhelmed. The employees were very friendly, especially Pam who, in addition to telling us everything about the store, it’s products and classes also acted as local tour guide by telling us about local restaurants.

Sisto’s
Sisto’s was our next stop and it wasn’t as well stocked with fabric as Patches. I think it got the short end of the impression stick, because we went to Patches first. They had a lot of machines and I was able to finally buy some bobbins for my machine. Crazy that I have to fly across the country to buy bobbins! We talked to them for a long time about the HQ18 (I think that is the model). It is the HandiQuilter longarm machine. The woman we spoke with knew a lot about the machine and was very friendly. They had a lot of space in the shop, but most of it seemed to be filled with machines rather than fabric.

I asked about Anna Maria Horner patterns at a couple of shops and was shocked to find that they had never heard of her or her patterns. I found it odd, but, again, I think that the shops must know their customer base. I didn’t check to see if FreeSpirit had any fabric in these shops. Perhaps FreeSpirit doesn’t have a rep in the area? Odd, though.

During the drive to Long Beach, one of our stops was in Paso Robles, which has 3 (!!!!) quilt shops. We tried to find the shop and initially failed. We were starving so we went to lunch  and then tried again to find Birch Fabrics, which has the online store name of FabricWorm. Due to the success of the business, the owner, Cynthia, has had to move three times in the past few months. We were about to give up finding her brick and mortar shop and move on. I spotted the address on a building, but not the ‘unit’ number. TFQ was ready to give up, so I said I would just walk around the corner and see if I could see it when I saw the sign. The experience was totally worth the hunt.

Cynthia Mann is the owner of Fabric Worm/Birch Fabrics and she is the nicest, most welcoming person I have met in a long time. She spent tons of time with us, showed us everything, talked to us about our trip and her fabrics and upcoming fabrics and more topics than I can remember.

I never thought about seriously reviewing shops and creating categories within the review on which I could rate shops, but if I did, for Birch Fabrics, they would be:

Scale: (worst) 1-5 (best)

Staff Friendliness: 5

Space: 5

Fabric Selection: 5

Customer Service: 10

This wasn’t just a walk in and select some bolts, cut and leave kind of shop. We spent about an hour talking with Cynthia and her staff. She not only has the brick and mortar shop and the online store, but also has a line of organic fabrics which she is distributing. I like the way she has built her business and grown it organically.

I mentioned, here, a fabric pack in which I was interested about a month or so ago. I actually was able to see it at the shop and swap out certain fabrics I knew I already had. One of the issues with customer service, generally, I have is that people aren’t flexible. Birch Fabrics has priced their fabrics in such a way that customers can swap out fabrics from their fabric packs if one or two don’t suit their needs. Cynthia wants happy customers. We are happy customers.

This turquoise sewing machine and bolt of fabric (defective, so they refused to sell me any, which I thought showed good ethics!) are in the front window inviting people into the shop.

They have a couple of interesting displays in the front of the shop, but the rest is fabric storage. Cynthia has the same kind of encyclopedic knowledge of fabric lines and designers that TFQ does, so they talked nonstop the whole time. I was looking at everything, entranced by the visuals.

The space is awesome! If I could have any kind of space I wanted, Birch Fabrics space would be transported to a spot near my house and the shop would be my workspace. The space is light and airy, bright and clean. There is plenty of horizontal space for laying out and gathering fabrics. They don’t have a lot of display quilts and projects, which keeps the visual clutter to a minimum.

Cynthia showed us her storeroom on one visit and I saw a lot of packages destined for international locations. We had a big discussion about fabric choices and offerings. TFQ thinks that many shops are missing a whole population segment by not offering more bright and modern fabrics. Cynthia has a lock on that market right now. (BTW, I tried to get TFQ to write a guest post about this and many other topics, but she politely declined)All of their fabric are modern and bright. They put interesting packs together and move the fabric through their shop.

Upstairs, the staff have the space for classes and are starting to have sewing classes for the local population. If the shop were near my house, I would be sewing there frequently.

There are plenty of cutting tables and one of Cynthia’s staff, Arlene, cut fabrics for us and for orders the whole time we were there. She is obviously integral to both the physical and online businesses. Another thing I liked is that Birch staff are fast and accurate fabric cutters.

Like the group I found tempting a month ago, the above group was also tempting. One thing I liked is that Birch staff puts together groups of fabrics by different designers that go really well together and will make interesting projects. In the group above, the scale and designs of the fabric are different enough to distinguish the fabrics from each other while maintaining interest in the potential project. I was filled with inspiration being in the shop.

Fabricworm/Birch Fabrics
1244 Pine Street, Ste. D
Paso Robles, Ca 93446
corner of 13th and Railroad
805-239-8888
fax: 805-239-8807
fabricworm [at] gmail [dot] com

If you are anywhere near this excellent shop, I would recommend a detour to stop by.

SIL is in town from back East. As I have said before, she likes to quilt also, so we spent the day driving to some quilt shops. These quilt shops are across a bridge from me, so I don’t go and visit them very often. We were planning to do this on our way (as my excuse?) to pick up the Young Man, but he got sick and didn’t end up going to visit his grandparents. We went shopping anyway. 😉

Yes, I bought some stuff, including fabric. I looked hard at the notions and I have to say that the stores don’t, in general, have good selections of notions. I don’t know what I was expecting, but I really wanted to see a large number and variety of rulers and pins and other notions. I did find a few things I was looking for including a teflon pressing sheet.

Cotton Patch

The first stop was the Cotton Patch, a long time favorite. I bought fabric for my first quilt there . At that time I bought mostly solids and the day we went they had lots of dots in the room where solids used to be. They recently bought my Janome dealer, which used to be across the street. I was eager to see how they crammed the Janome machines in with the Berninas, fabric, notions, cutting tables, etc into their limited space.

The shop used to be a house and they did expand upwards at one point, but the shop is still really small. They gave up some fabric in order to fit the Janomes. I used to like seeing all the feet displayed and I didn’t see that this time. Now they are also closing out the Madeira thread, which is a shame. I don’t do much embroidery, but when I do I always liked the Madeira thread. My SIL has a dedicated embroidery machine, so I will have to talk with her further about thread. Until I get back on the embroidery saddle, I don’t think I will be buying much more thread. They also don’t have as many Janome machines on display. Perhaps, if I wanted to look at the 11K, they would bring it out for me to try. Patty, the lady I liked who worked at the Janome dealer is still there and that makes me happy.

I saw this book, which had some interesting projects. I’ll have to see if they have it at the library.

I was really influenced by the way they had the fabric arranged, which is why you see the different red dots. I could see using those dots all in one project, perhaps the Anna Maria Horner Multi-tasker Tote? Yes, I think I have some of them already. Oh well, you can never have too many dots, right?

I bought the Martha Negley Grapes fabric, though it looks like Cherries to me, that I talked about in Thursday Misc. The one I bought is very red and the one I posted looks much more pink. There is another colorway called Plum that I think I should have bought.

The mural on the back wall is new and I like it. It has similar impressionistic brushwork to what Monet et al did. I think it is a nice touch.

Next, we went to lunch, because I hadn’t really had much breakfast and it was lunch time. I really enjoyed my tostada salad. My stomach is feeling much better after the treatment I did at the beginning of the holidays, so I could actually eat a salad! We ate at a place in Danville called Father Nature’s. I liked the service, and the room was light filled and open. It would make a great workroom.

Wooden Gate Quilts

Thus fortified we headed off to the next shop. Wooden Gate Quilts was formerly Quilters Inn. Bari J talks a little about the switch on her blog. I had never been to either shop, but we mapped it using Quilters Inn and then had a little bit of trouble finding the actual place when we got there, because it seemed to me from the outside that the shop was selling quilts. It is also on the side of a larger building and we couldn’t see directly into the shop. The area has a lot of historical buildings that look nice, so it was pleasant.

The shop was worth the wandering around. They didn’t have a lot of fabric, but the fabric they had was cheerful. Not too many ‘heirloom’ fabrics, as my SIL kindly phrased it. I saw the fabric line below at a couple of different shops. While I didn’t buy these particular fabrics, I did want to remember the color combination for future reference.

Most of the fabrics in this combination, Flower Sugar are from Lecien. One of the prints (not pictured in above photo) is a border stripe with big dots. The colorway I liked is made from a nice cherry red. I am not fond of the border stripe, but wish they had designed a companion print with those luscious pinky-cherry red dots (#30050-30). Oh well, as if I need more dots.

I loved this quilt. I love the colors (of course; see above) and the use of the little black pin dots. What I don’t love about the photograph is that the plus sign element of the piecing really stands out. It didn’t stand out as much when my eyes saw it. Yes, this is a pattern, though I didn’t notice which one. I have been thinking about that lozenge shape since my quilt adventure in July, so it was good to get a photo of another rendition.

I have to say that the people were really friendly there – chatty, cheerful and they looked like they were enjoying themselves. The colors of the shop were nice and the samples were really wonderful. They had two renditions of the basket quilt pattern (Going to Market #146 from Diana McClun and Laura Nownes new company “From Me to You”) I bought at PIQF and it was fun to see the colors they had used. I am not fond of the Asian prints used in the pattern photo and thought I would make it in my collection of aqua and reds, but the examples at Wooden Gate gave me some other ideas for color combinations. I really appreciated that they took the time to make two quilts from one pattern.

They had some interesting notions. I bought some fusible piping cord to finish some pillows. They carry a small selection of Aurifil there as well. I was looking for some bright orange, but they didn’t have what I was imagining. Of course, Aurifil may not make what I was imagining. I may have to put an Aurifil color card on my birthday list. The Aurifil suitcase is on my list, but I am skeptical that that will actually show up in my birthday gifts. They had a magenta thread colorway I almost bought, but don’t have a project for magenta thread at the moment, so I passed.

I also found a product there, sold by the yard, called Soft Fuse. It is wide, too – about 54″ and it makes your machine applique very soft. Wooden Gate also carried sheets of it that can be run through the printer! I really could have used this when I was making the Tarts. It is paper backed fusible web for hand or machine applique’. I bought some and will have to applique’ something to try it out.

Shockingly, I bought some chocolatey brown fabric with cream dots on it. I sincerely dislike brown, but this fabric was calling me. It is much more chocolatey than ugly brown. I need to make something with it quick.

In Between Stitches

Our final stop was at In Between Stitches in Livermore. In Between Stitches is on the old (?) main street in Livermore and the shop’s architecture has great details – wide pine floors, wainscoting, high ceilings. I would love that shop to be my workroom. This is Alex Anderson’s home shop and she has spoken about it on her podcast.

I had never visited this shop, because it seemed so far away. Once I was in the boonies, however, it wasn’t that far. 😉

The downtown area was very vibrant as well, which was gratifying. The retail space seemed full, the sidewalks were wide enough to encourage strolling and there was plenty of parking. Although traffic was busy, I had no trouble finding a spot right in front of the shop. Desiree has been very kind to me this December.

They had a pattern for a quilt by Verna Mosquera, which was very bright and cheerful. It is called Mon Ami and the colors really drew me in. They had cheerful fabrics (I bought the orange dots there), including the Lecien fabrics, but a lot of their fabric was of the reproduction/heirloom variety.

The basket design is a great pattern. I like the way they use the four patches for the middle of the basket. I might have to try a few. The fabrics are a good example of the fabrics they had at the shop.

They had a class going on where people were making the Plus sign quilt like TFQ is making. They were using horizontal strips and I am sure there was a method to the madness, but I couldn’t figure out how to make the quilt from just looking at their work. They classroom was nice and big.

I liked the patterns for the samples, but probably wouldn’t make them in the colors used by the shop staff. There was one star quilt (kit, I think) that I really liked. The fabrics were kind of French General looking colors, but it did inspire me to get off my duff for the Stars for San Bruno blocks.

In Between Stitches is where I bought the teflon pressing sheet. I am using it to make the Flea Market bag from Grand Revival Designs and I have to say it is interesting. The sheet looks like thick, slightly cloudy plastic. It seems to work as my fabric did not get scalded, but the sheet does get very hot, which is a bit deceiving because it doesn’t change color or anything.

I really like seeing new shops. I may not like everything about a shop, but I enjoy seeing the personality of the owner and the staff come out. I also like seeing the fabric in person. I just can’t tell the scarlets from the cherry reds by looking at a web photo. I would definitely visit all of these shops again. I am glad to see that new shops are hoping in the relative vicinity, even if ‘relative’ means 50 miles away!

I have to say I was fairly shocked at the prices. The regular price of all of the fabric I saw was $10.99/yard. I must be getting old, but I remember buying top of the line fabric for $5-$7/yard. I know I got my knickers in a twist at one shop during my summer fabric adventure because their fabric was $11/yard. I am buying larger pieces now, so the cost really adds up. I hope I don’t have to stop buying fabric.

Last week was a hard week, which culminated with me having to drive 3 hours north on Friday to go on a short vacation with my family. part of me wanted to go and part of me wanted to lay face down in my own bed all weekend. I wasn’t looking forward to the drive and was tight as a spring up until I got out of the City. I finally got to the lake and the first thing I did was look up quilt shops. The weather was not laying by the pool weather and I was determined to have some fun.There are two shops in the area I was willing to drive in: Shelley’s Quilted Treasures and Kerri’s Quilting.

The first shop I found and visited was in Kelseyville. Kelseyville is a small town with a main street that is pretty lively. There was an antique store, a bead store, a computer store, and a couple of restaurants in addition to Shelley’s Quilted Treasures. We also passed the public library on our way there.

The shop has been there for 12 years, but Shelley has only owned it for about 2.5 years. Brenda manages the shop and is knowledgeable ( I heard her helping someone select the right amount of fabric for a class project) and VERY friendly.

The store is large, bright and very cheerful. There were at least three other rooms behind the sales floor, one of which housed a longarm machine. The fabrics were fun, on the new side and who couldn’t love four shelves of dots? I found one of the Basix dots and bought the rest of the bolt. They had a lot of very appealing kits, including one with the above referenced Basix dot print and turquoise in a rail fence pattern. Normally, I am a bit dismissive of kits (the snob in me, I guess), because they appear to require so little thought. However, a combination of the Gabrielle Swain class and going to Shelley’s as well as the experience I had in a quilt shop with the woman who had finished all of the quilts in Quilts Quilts Quilts made me realize that not everyone knows how to design a quilt; not even putting blocks together with confidence. I don’t think it is most people, but I do think that a lot of people don’t have the confidence to try and fail. I think also there is an issue with “wasting” fabric.

The shop also had a great collection of pear pincushions. They had ready made pincushions for about $20 and patterns so you could make your own. I thought about buying one, but didn’t see one with a fabric combination I adored.

I found out later that Lake County used to be renowned for its pear crop, but that all of the pear trees are being replaced with vineyards.
The shop was light and airy with dark-ish brown shelves. they had a lot of new fabrics, but some golden oldies as well ( like the Basix). Shelley’s stocked other materials as well such as Tsukineko Fabric pens, a holder for my colored pencils, which I bought since I had been fighting with the organization of my colored pencils the day before.
Next, we drove to Lakeport. I had my MIL and SIL along who were very patient and didn’t hurry me along. We missed the Lakeport Memorial Day Parade, but stopped at Kerri’s Quilting, which is a nice little shop in a sad location. We were the only people visiting at the time. It is a small shop, but has a really nice fabric. I found a couple of dots and some 40s (??) pinwheel fabric in a different colorway than I had before. I saw an Artbin that held 12″ projects, but forgot to buy one. The owner was friendly and showed me the little sundresses she was making for her granddaughter. She had also juste received a small business award from the city.

The mall where Kerri’s resides has a lot of vacancies, including a restaurant space and the anchor space, which used to be a market, and is located behind an old, decrepit and defunct gas station. Lakeport looks like a nice town (larger than Kelseyville).

I hope that the day we were there was a slow day and that normally the shop is bustling.

These are my weekend purchases.

These are the purchases I made after the Gabrielle Swain class at New Pieces in Berkeley. The books were very spur of the moment.