My Last Day in Australia

I know I know this is way late.  I've been home from Australia for a few weeks now and why am I just getting around to writing this blog.  Well I've been pretty busy as Mom and I and Juanita drove up to Des Moines to hook up with my friend, Twyla, at a retreat at Woodside Quilting.  More about that in the next post.  So I was gone from Thursday till late Monday and I finally got some down time for a few days which is my excuse for being so late.

Anyway, the last day I was in Melbourn Bre took the day off and we decided to go to some quilt shops I hadn't had the opportunity to visit until this point.  It was a rainy so shopping was a great use of the day.  All four shops were pretty close to each other which was good.

The first shop was Sewn and Quilted which is in the back of the owner's home.  But gosh she has a ton of wonderfulness packed into her shop.  A really nice selection of patterns, books and of course English Paper Piecing supplies.  Every shop I went into carried a large selection of EPP papers and templates.  The store was packed wall to wall and there were 8 or 10 customers there while I was there.  The clerk was very helpful and nice.  As I recall the fabrics were bright and happy and there were lovely samples all over the place.  I bought a little bag leather handle but there was a ton of other stuff I would have loved to have.  It really is worth a visit.

The second shop we went to was mainly an embroidery shop, Craftpaks, and they had samples of the most beautiful 3 dimensional embroidery that I'd ever seen.  Maureen Tarnok makes them and they are amazing.  She also teaches at Craftpaks.

I would definitely take classes at this place if I lived in Melbourne.  They had an amazing selection of embroidery floss and ribbon.  In fact, when the owner found out I was from Missouri she said she'd just shipped an order of floss there.    Small world!!!  I bought a really cute Christmas applique pattern.    They had some floss brands that I'd only seen in Australia and a really large assortment of ribbon.  Awesome shop.

After we left this shop, we were starving so we stopped at this French Patisserie shop and got a spinach pastry that was like a small quiche.  It was amazing!!!!!!!  They were small so we bought two each but they were so rich we could only eat one each.  So good.

Then we went to the largest shop of the day, Patchwork with Gail B.  It was a bizarre location for a quilt shop.  It was inside of a large tile shop.  (shaking head)   But don't be put off by this.  The shop had a ton of patterns which I purused for quite a while.

I didn't buy anything but they had patterns I hadn't seen at any of the other shops.  There were also two full aisles of notions and English Paper Piecing products.  There were aisles and aisles of fabric all very tempting.  They had some very nice smaller samples displayed but I did find the place a bit claustrophobic.

The last shop of the day was Lilly Patches.  The shop was small but cute.  The owner was very helpful and when I spotted a Doctor Who panel I'd never seen she climbed a ladder to take it off the wall since it was the last one.  Turns out there was a tear in the border section of the panel so she sold it to me for less than half price.  I had to have it!!!!

I loved my trip to Australia and hope to go back if Bre decides to stay.  I think winter is the time for me to visit as I enjoyed the cool weather even though it was a bit rainy.