Quilt Shop: Suwanee Valley Quilt Shop; Trenton, Florida

My friend Karin urged us to stop off at this quilt shop in Trenton. Her advice was spot-on during our visit, and so we checked it out. We were talking and drove past initially. When we got turned around and headed back into town, it became obvious when we saw the quilt blocks on the side of the building. There's a wealth of information about this shop online right here.

Here's how the store looks from the front. Check out that painted sidewalk in the entry. And, yes, there is a cafe inside.

It has an interesting history in that the quilt shop took over the Coca Cola Bottling Plant after it closed. You can read about it right here.

And, I don't know about you, but I like a quilt shop that gives quilters the respect they're due before you even get in the front door.

Walking in through the front door, the shop looks like this. The cafe is off to the right and left of this image. The quilt shop is through those doors toward the back.

And right away I saw something I liked here among these delicious stripes. I picked it up and carried it around with me throughout my visit. Care to guess which one it is? I'll let you ponder it while I show you around the rest of the shop.

They had fabrics for everyone here. Name a quilting style or color preference, and you would find it here.

This room contained all their Christmas fabric, and it was all 25% off.

In this room, there was a sort of soda fountain, presumably a part of the cafe.

Turning around 180 degrees were these shelves loaded with fabric that was on sale.

Back out in the main part of the shop was this hallway loaded full length on both sides with all kinds of notions.

Here's something I hadn't seen before. These red glasses will help you accurately gauge color value. At around $21 they were a little rich for my blood.

Oh but wait...there was a clip-on style too...still $18. Yes, I know it's possible to do this via computer, but the glasses would make it oh, so simple.

At the end of the hall was a room will stencils, patterns, batting, and stabilizers, among other things.

Back in the Christmas room, they had this display. The store featured lots of panels for Christmas, and pretty much anything else. All the panels were hung for looking, but they were also numbered. If you saw one you liked, you could look for its associated number and find it already cut right here.

This was their Halloween fabric. It too was 25% off.

Organization was this shop's strong suit. It would have been easy to find whatever you were looking for. They had a great supply of fabric for men's quilts.

And pretty much every "genre" was represented, including Australia and Africa.

They had some very pretty Fall fabrics. These too were 25% off.

There was a big supply of Kaffe Fassett fabrics. I love all that color.

Does anybody do polka dots better than Kaffe Fassett?

There was a huge supply of beautiful batiks.

They were arranged by color. Rounding the corner there was another whole wall of them. Look at those yummy colors stacked on top.

I'd been hearing this fellow talking while I strolled through the store. When I approached, he eyed me suspiciously.

He didn't speak again until I turned my back and walked away. Then, he let out with a very loud, "Me-ow!" which made me laugh out loud. I turned back and asked him, "Oh, have we met? Does my reputation precede me?" It was hilarious. I tried to video him doing it again, but he refused to speak while I stood eye to eye with him. He would only talked when I turned and walked away. As it turns out, he has at least three versions of "meow." There was no barking, but I wouldn't doubt barking is in his repertoire.

So while I stood there with the bird, I thought I'd seen the whole shop, but no. Looking off to my right were two more rooms of fabric. A smaller room in the middle had 108-inch bolts.

Beyond that, a whole room of children's fabrics.

And there was a wall of books. I rarely purchase books in a quilt shop, but I like to page through them.

This little nook had cat and dog fabrics, food fabrics, sewing fabrics, and all those miscellaneous novelty fabrics.

By this time, I was on the hunt for my regional fabric. At the right of the image below were their bird fabrics. I was really wanting to find some manatee fabric, but the birds would be a good choice too. I scanned through them, but didn't really find any birds that were representative of our visit here.

Nevertheless, I did find a couple I liked. I got a yard of this one...only because y'all convinced me I'd messed up when I didn't get more of that bird fabric back in South Carolina. You enablers you.

And I got a yard of this one. The lines there in the feathers are metallic gold. It's very pretty.

Neither of those were my preferred regional fabric, however. As I rounded the corner, I noticed a grouping of beach fabrics, and I spent some time looking at those. When I stood up, right on top of the shelves was a single bolt of this. Ha!!! It was exactly what I wanted, and so I picked up a fat quarter of this.

And did you correctly choose my favorite stripe? It caught my eye. It reminded me of a pretty beach awning or one of those fabric chairs. The bolt had just over a yard left, and so I took the whole thing.

And that was my visit. Thanks, Karin, for putting me onto this shop. If you find yourself in Trenton, Florida, you simply must stop in. It was a very fun shop, and if you're looking for something in particular, I'll just bet you can find it here.