Road To California Day 1

Well, I've been retired three days now and I'm already on my first trip.  Yesterday I got up at 3:30 a.m. which was about 2 hours earlier than I thought I would.  Since it was clear I wasn't going back to sleep I decided to go ahead and start on my trip to California to visit my daughter.  I was on the road by 4:40 a.m. a full 1.5 hours earlier than I had planned.  Luckily there was a full moon so the windy curvy roads weren't quite so dark.

I had my trip planned so I could stop in some quilt shops along the way.  Since I got such an early start none of the shops were open by the time I got to Tulsa but they were just opening when I pulled into Oklahoma City and I had time to visit 3 shops.   Don't you just love it when a plan comes together.

Oklahoma Quiltworks

First stop was Oklahoma Quiltworks which is a terrific shop.  They have thousands and thousands of bolts of fabric and books galore.  The store is well laid out with patterns scattered throughout to keep things from being overwhelming.  They have a whole wall of quilt books, hundreds and hundreds of book titles organized by topic.  Heaven!!!!!!!!  Even better is they have a comfy couch and arm chairs for you to sit and peruse the books.  There are great samples all over the place and tons of notions and tools to choose from.  They even have some kits available.  I scored a Jelly Clip purse frame from Leicen which I had been coveting since I first saw it on Red Brolly's site.  The one I bought was orange and the directions are in Japanese but I'll figure it out.

There was a great sample of a small stack and whack that I was really attracted to but right now I'm trying to concentrate on using what I have in my studio so I didn't buy it. This shop is one of the few around that carry Zebra Pattern's Holiday House Patterns which I love.  I made the August Block for the Round Robin in my quilt guild.  Can hardly wait to get it back!!!

Oklahoma Quiltworks is also participating in Row by Row.  I definitely recommend this shop.  

Savage Quilter

Next up on the itinerary was the Savage Quilter and this is another really nice shop.  Tons of fabric.  Samples galore on their large expanse of walls as well as kits to go along with most of the samples.  Gotta love a store that actually has the fabric to make the samples.  It is one on my mom's pet peeves to go into a quilt shop, fall in love with a quilt they have hanging on the wall and then find out they don't have the pattern or the fabric available.  So kudos to Savage Quilter for having current samples. While checking out the notions I noticed some special embroidery needles from Japan so I bought some to try out since that is the handwork I brought on the trip. The staff was helpful and I would recommend this shop as well.  

Sew & Sews

Sew & Sews was nice too but didn't have as large a fabric selection as the other two but the fabric they have is very nice.  They are a Viking dealer and much of the shop is dedicated to machines but they do have same great samples up on the wall and if I lived in Oklahoma City they had a sampler class that I would be very interested in taking.  Have to say, their Row by Row pattern was the best of the 4 I picked up during the day.

So after a quick lunch at a Thai place I found on Yelp I was on the road to Amarillo and if I didn't stop for something to drink or a bathroom break I just had time to get to one shop that was open until 5:30 p.m.

Sisters' Scraps Quilt Shop

Oh this shop is pretty.  My mom loves to check out quilt shop bathrooms to see how they are decorated.  She would approve of this one, very cute.  Lots of samples and most of them had kits available.  Sister Scraps Quilt Shop had a very nice embroidery selection as did Oklahoma Quiltworks and Savage Quilter.  I was tempted to buy a thread kit for the Campy Cowgirls tea towel embroidery set that I already own but the $57 price seemed a bit much.  I'm sure the thread was excellent but I'll just go with DMC.  They had the cutest pattern to display a row by row license plate which I had to have.  I loved the bright colors and happy feeling.  The staff was very helpful and I found at least three patterns I loved but I'm retired now so I have to watch the money a bit more carefully.  (Yea, like that is gonna happen.)