Quilt Shop: Cactus Quilt Shop; Tucson, Arizona

Our first after-breakfast stop yesterday was the closest quilt shop we could find. This was a good one. It wasn't one of the larger shops, but I was certainly greeted by some very friendly people. Nancy Landon is the owner, but her husband was also there greeting customers and helping out.

The shop was located in the corner of a large shopping center. Of course, my picture had to include the saguaro cactus growing in the parking lot. Sorry for the graininess of these photos. I took them with my phone, and I've figured out the easiest way to get images from my phone to my blog is to to email them to myself. Sometimes the quality suffers.

Stepping through the front door, it looked like this:

To my left was this unit of vintage-y looking fabrics.

To my right was a whole wall of regional prints. Beautiful stuff here. 

To the right of those there were more.

There was a whole wall of notions and patterns. Lots of fun stuff here. I can only assume those long narrow quilts hanging above were row-by-row patterns.

It wasn't a huge shop, but they had a nice supply of beautiful fabrics...a whole wall here.

And more in the middle of the store.

She had the most beautiful patterns hanging on the walls. These were all the original designs of the owner. She told me when she bought the store, there was almost nothing there to represent Arizona. She'd set out to change that, and my, oh my, she's obviously a very talented person.

I believe this next one is of the San Zavier del Bac Mission just west of Tucson. We visited on a previous trip. It's known as the "White Dove of the Desert."

 

Her designs are sold under the name of Cactus Cat Patterns. You can see more of them at the store's website. I can only guess she's a cat lover, since many of her patterns incorporated cats into the design.

This Christmas quilt was very tempting. Look at those kitties adorning the tree.

These next two tempted me mightily. Her husband told me she had adapted these from a woman who ran a trading post by the name of Goldie Tracy Richmond. That link I've given you will take you to some more information about Ms. Richmond. The store owner was an admirer and had done quite a bit of research into quilts made by Goldie Tracy Richmond. She'd adapted them for applique and created her own versions.

This next one was an adaptation of Ms. Richmond's quilt "Papago Activity," in which she'd depicted many of the activities of her trading post. The owner had searched for the original quilt, but been unable to find it, except in a newspaper clipping. She made this quilt as her own adaptation of the original. The original was eventually found...a long story, I was only half listening...and eventually, the original quilt made by Goldie Tracy Richmond was found and donated to the Arizona State Museum. You can see the original and read commentary about it right here. As for Nancy Landon's version, this is hanging on the wall of the quilt shop. 

Here are a few of the blocks so you can see the attention to detail.

They also had a book for sale about Goldie Tracy Richmond. She was an imposing woman at 6'3" in height. Just for grins, I looked for the book on Amazon.com. It's for sale there...just one copy left...at the bargain price of just $93.75 (Cough.)

Okay, so let's just get back to the fabric, shall we?

This row was all batiks.

There were more fabrics beyond the cutting table. I put a mask on that woman standing there, since I didn't have permission to take her picture.

Oh and check this out:

They had a whole rack of these, and of course, I took one. It'll be a great little embroidery project. When I checked out, she made me promise to give it a good home. Of course!

So what did I come away with? Well...I bought a yard of this one. It was too pretty to pass up.

For my regional print, I picked up a fat quarter of this one:

And I picked fat quarters of each of the ones below to use in my vintage linens quilt.

This was a fun little shop, and the owners were very friendly and knowledgeable. It would be worth a trip just to see her beautiful quilts hanging on the walls and to learn more about Goldie Tracy Richmond. It makes me want to visit the Arizona State Museum just to see her quilt. We'll save that for another trip.

Okay, so now it really is time to get going. ATV riding is in our plan for the day.