Quilt Shop: The Fabric Farm

As you know, we headed over to the coast this weekend for a short vacation. When we left I-5 to head west, I brought up my trusty Quilt Shop app, expecting to find nothing. It's a fair distance to the beach at this point, and there are just a few little towns along the way. In fact, for most of this stretch of road, there is no cell phone service. I don't know about you, but when there's no cell phone service, I start getting all weird, nervous, and thirsty. I mean...what if our car runs off the road? What if I have a heart attack? What if we get abducted by aliens? With all of that on my mind, you can imagine how much more sanguine I felt when I discovered to my amazement that there was a quilt shop along the way.

"Could it be?" I asked Mike. Heck, they even had a website!

And in Drain, Oregon? One need only consider the name of the town to realize how unlikely it is that there would actually be a functioning quilt shop there. We looked up Drain on the internet (thank goodness, we still had coverage!) and found that as of the census of 2010, there were 1,151 people, 454 households, and 319 families residing in the city. To see Drain, that seems unlikely; although they do have two liquor stores, two churches (one would assume a church for each liquor store), and a Napa Auto Parts. (Napa is one of the benchmarks we look for before giving a town actual "town" status. No Taco Bell, however, so two demerits. Erik and Matthew came up with that one.)

According to the map, we expected to find it right along the main highway (along with the entire remainder of the town, one would think), and there it was!

Absolutely astonishing! Well, Mike had to remind me to wait for the truck to come to a complete stop before jumping out. When you walk through the front door, you can look off to the right and see this:

The door is right in the corner of the building, and so the only other way to look is straight ahead:

Cool!!!!

It's a small shop, but they had a surprisingly nice supply of fabric. And it was pretty stuff, much to my liking.

There was a good mix of styles, including a nice supply of landscape prints and some very pretty batiks.

They had a few books and patterns, and some quilts made by local quilters. This being the way to the beach, several had coastal themes.

And look at these funny little dolls printed on fabric panels for cutting and sewing. They made me smile.

And they had some woolen supplies as well. Some of this stuff would have been appropriate for needle felting, although that wasn't its intended purpose.

It seems the shop is incidental to the owner's long arm business, but she proudly informed me they'd been in business for five years.

I ended up purchasing these two versions of bricks. I thought I might be able to use them in my Doors of Ireland quilt.

And a couple of yards of this pretty batik.

So, wow! Just for being such a delightful find in a very small town, I give them five rotary cutters out of five. You've got to hand it to them just for staying in business for five years in such a remote location. It's definitely worth a stop if you find yourself driving through the area. Friendly folks, right on the main highway, and good parking, even if you happen to be towing a trailer.

*Disclaimer:  Cat Patches accepts no advertising, nor any sponsorships.  The opinions expressed on this blog are based on the personal impressions and perceptions of the author. They are formed  on the basis of one short visit, on one day, and may or may not reflect the experience of others visiting on a different day.  They are no more descriptive than a single snapshot image can be, and nothing written in a review of a quilt shop should be construed as objective fact.  The reviews are strictly the author's subjective opinion and should not be interpreted as anything more.