Quilt Shop: People, Places & Quilts; Summerville, SC

Okay, so this is the last post I have to write to catch up on the days I missed. It seems as good a time as any to also tell you about our sewing/chill day. I'll tell you about the quilt shop in just a minute.

It was a chill day for Mike, and he caught up on some TV watching. I was doing mostly sewing (rather than cutting), and so I tried a different set up with the sewing machine. When I set up on the other side, I'm kind of in the way of the TV.

With my sewing buddies at the ready, I felt invincible!

You can see why, right?

Also, I had a great view of our neighbor. When we took off for Charleston, these two were sitting next to a burning campfire in the pouring rain, and they were under umbrellas. Not my kind of campfire sitting, but some people are hard core. On this morning, I could see her peering in through our RV window as if asking herself, "Does she have a sewing machine set up in there?" There's more than one way to be hard core.

As for the sewing, I was ready to start sewing together the center panel for the Hocuspocusville quilt. Recall that the finished quilt looks like this:

The nine patch square-in-a-square blocks and the setting triangles were cut. I just needed to start lining them up and sewing them together. One down, many to go.

Eventually, I reached the halfway point.

When I got there, I paused briefly to drink the Spanish Coffee Mike made for me. With rain falling outside, it was that kind of day.

And soon after that, I had it all finished.

And that was enough sewing for one day, but this one is on the home stretch now. Next time I get out the sewing machine, I'll start sewing together the embroidered blocks. They form a border around the center. Each seam will have a fancy machine stitch sewn over it, and then I'll be ready to sew on the final border and the quilt top will be finished. This quilt was started in July of 2015, which isn't such a long time, but it'll probably be at least July of 2018 before it's finished.

Okay...so now...the quilt shop you've been waiting for. My friend Anne told me about this place, and it was definitely worth a stop in. Here's how it looks from the outside.

Stepping inside, it was like its own little mini mall with rooms of fabric going off on both sides of the hallway and more at the end and up the stairs.

It was my favorite kind of shop with lots of color, cute displays, and lots of cute patterns. (As I'm writing this, I'm thinking that the quilt shop I visited in Decatur today was also one of my favorite kinds of shops. I'm hitting the quilt shop jackpot right now.)

So look at those little angels. Aren't they cute?

I was so enamored with them that I bought a kit to make three of my own and a spare bag of clothespins. I figure I'll have it down once I've made the three from the kit and I can use my own scraps at home to make more.

They had such cute quilts and patterns hanging all around. I love this one.

This one was cute too. I was thinking that if one made it up in Christmas fabrics, it would be a good way to display Christmas cards.

The pattern is in the bottom pocket. It's called Party Bags by Tracey Brookshier, and you can find it in her Etsy shop right here. There were lots of bright colors and children's fabrics in this room. The ones below were all flannels.

If I had a youngster to sew for, I would have had me some of this koala bear flannel.

And I loved this quilt.

The crabs, fish, and turtles' bodies are all made up from large yo-yos. Very clever.

Here's the pattern for that one. I cut off the name of the designer, Marcia Layton. You can find her pattern right here.

These wall-hangings for different campers were cute.

And I fell in love with this quilt too. It's embroidery and applique, and it was designed by the store owner.

I liked it enough that I picked up the pattern for that too. (Can you tell I'm spending a bunch of money in here?)

There was another hanging on the wall to the right, and I liked it too, but less well. Still, I took a picture because I liked the way the blocks were set. I'm filing it away in my unreliable memory bank for future reference.

There were yummy stripes and polka dots.

I loved the bolt of fabric toward the back of the next image.

I was on the hunt for palmetto fabric or else some cardinal fabric, and so when I saw this little wall-hanging, I almost picked it up too.

I decided against it. It's really more for y'all South Carolinians.

This was a Janome-loving shop. I know some of you have Janomes that you love. The one I had caused me nothing but grief...it was a basic model, and I ended up donating it to the Coffee Creek Quilters a while back. You can read my sad story of the Janome machine right here, if you're interested. Be sure to have some kleenex nearby. Now I have my Pfelicity for when we travel. Nevertheless, I'm sure Janome makes some good machines and this shop clearly loved them. They had a whole section of the store devoted to them.

I zoomed in on that poster where the Janome History is so you could read it a little easier.

They had all sorts of Janome feet and other attachments.

Also, a cute display that included Janome machines.

This was their sewing-themed part of the store, and they had some cute sewing-themed fabrics,

and quilt patterns. This one tempted me mightily, but I have some similar patterns at home.

If you're interested, this is the pattern.

The image below was a quilted tote, but I loved that fabric.

There was a nice classroom. It would have been a comfortable place to take a class. Look at the fabric seat covers on those chairs.

By this time, I'd made my way to the stairs.

And there was more cute stuff up there. Here's a doll bed. Sigh. I think there's one in my future when we get back home again.

Here they had some of the civil war style prints.

The ones below were wool.

All the quilt shops have their Christmas fabrics out now, and I fell in love with this little wall-hanging.

This one also used a lot of yo-yos. It's from the same designer as the Ocean Frolic quilt pattern, and you can see it below.

Of course, they had a good supply of books, lots of cute patterns, notions, rulers, thread...definitely a full-service quilt shop. And I loved the displays. In the image below, you can see the little mini quilts hanging from a clothesline. These were hanging all around the shop.

Turning around I found the largest of the fabric rooms.

Folks in the store were friendly and welcoming. There were so many fabrics I liked, I could have gone completely nuts.

When I saw the cat fabrics, the one on the right side was irresistible.

There was absolutely no reason for me to buy two yards, but I did anyway. Life is short.

Also, I found the palmetto fabric I was looking for. I got a fat quarter of that for my Quilty 365.

And since I was photographing birds during this part of the trip, I liked this one too. I got a fat quarter of that.

And now I've caught you up on the posts I couldn't write while we were out of range. Today's journey took us to a quilt shop in Decatur, and I'll tell you about that tomorrow. Also, we found one of the country's best burgers for our lunch, so there's lots more to tell you. The last load of clothes is in the dryer right now, and so I'm nearly caught up on all fronts! There are no flies on me...and no ladybugs either, although we are *still* finding them in the RV, brought all the way from Canada, we think.