Quilt Shop: Quilt Stitches, Beatrice, Nebraska

Amazingly, there was a big quilt shop in the small town of Beatrice. We stopped in after visiting the Homestead National Historic Park.

Walking in the front door, it looks like this. But this was only half the store. In the image below, you can see a door on the left.

Walking through that door, there was a whole other store on the other side!

In the back, there was a classroom.

Heading back to the right side of the store, where I'd come in, they had their holiday fabrics out for Halloween and Christmas. 

This makes me think of a meme I saw recently that said you can tell Halloween is just around the corner because Walmart has its Christmas decorations out. (Sorry I'm always picking on you, Walmart.)

Behind me were some pretty florals and leafy fabrics. I thought I'd seen my regional fabric here, but I needed to look through the whole store.

Here were some pretty florals.

I'm always curious about patterns in different stores. Often, I see local artists that I haven't seen elsewhere. If I've seen these "sampler" and "theme" patterns elsewhere, I certainly don't remember them. It's a whole bunch of different hand-sewing patterns patterns by Jack Dempsey Needle Art. You can see their catalog right here.

There was a long wall of notions.

Here were grays, blacks and whites.

Fabrics were shelved by color and theme, for the most part.

Here are some pretty blues...

And more blues, blacks, reds, and pinks.

Here were more pretty florals.

They had a big collection of my favorite Creative Grids rulers. I kind of wish I'd spent more time looking at these, but it's probably just as well I didn't.

Here were their patriotic fabrics.

They had some nice sale fabrics. I didn't see anything here that I couldn't live without, but there were some good deals. The ones across the top are "skinny bolts." You get 50% off if you take the whole thing. The fabrics below and some outside the frame and behind me were also on sale at a significant discount.

Here we had some food fabrics.

Here were a lot of pastels.

Here are some neutrals.

I liked how they displayed their panel fabrics with a picture so you could see the panel without unfolding the whole thing.

Moving into the second room, there were some pretty and bright novelty fabrics.

Here are some more food fabrics.

These southwest fabrics were very tempting. I moved away quickly.

Here were some nice landscape fabrics, bricks, and boards.

And more novelty fabrics. There was just a whole lot of fabric in this store.

Okay, so you didn't think I was leaving without this, did you? This is a great pattern..."Kittens."

It will make a perfect take-along project for our next trip. The pattern is already stamped onto white cotton. I just need to add the floss, and the blocks are already prepared. I'll also add some kind of backing fabric. This fabric seems a little thin, and so I'll probably use a white muslin to give it a little more heft. The image below shows just six of the 12 blocks. They're embroidery with a whole lot of cross-stitch thrown in.

Also this one. I had some pretty pansy fabric at one time.

You might remember I used it in one of my Stitched Inchy quilts.

I liked this fabric so much, and I used every bit of it. So I grabbed myself a full yard of the one I found at this store.

And if you guessed this one would be my regional fabric, then you were right. It reminded me of the acorns all over the campground, and the changing autumn leaves.

So, this was a great shop. I really enjoyed myself there. Nebraska quilters have a great resource in this small town.

Last of the Zoo Animals

 I still have some more zoo animals to show you, but this will be the last of them. We were as impressed by the physical structure of the zoo as we were by the animal exhibits. I'll add that we didn't walk past the larger African animals (think elephants, giraffes, and other hooved critters) until we were leaving the park. I didn't take any pictures of them. I was pictured out by that time, and the other stuff was more unfamiliar and interesting to these zoo-goers. 

Let's just start with this Desert Dome. What a cool structure...but warm inside. It was a desert with desert critters who appreciated the warmth of their environment.

I can only identify a few of the animals. These below are mongoose.

This is a diamond-back rattler. It's too bad he's such a hostile critter because his skin is so beautiful.

What we really came to see at the zoo was the Lied Jungle (pronounced "leed") exhibit. Walking through the opening into the exhibit, it looked like this. There, running vertically to the left of center, was a large banyan tree trunk that appeared to support the whole structure.

Inside, we saw some precious small primates. They were a little shy and sleepy, and it was hard to get a good picture of their faces.

These are "flying foxes." I really should have taken a video here because there was constant motion in this cluster.

These are Malayan tapirs. They're a very large animal, about the size of a fully grown pig.

These next guy is a Fransois' Langur.

And this guy was so funny. He kept ducking down behind the lower part of the image so that we couldn't see him, and then he'd pop up like this, as if playing peek-a-boo.

These are black spider monkeys. We enjoyed their playful activity. 

This next one is a squirrel monkey. He was smaller than the rest.

And look at the tails on these! They were long and lovely, like a horse's tail.

This gorilla sat still as if in quiet contemplation. 

This is a red macaw.

To his right was a blue and yellow macaw.

And, oh my gosh...what a funny bird! I was wishing he'd raise his head for a better look, but he was too intent on pecking at his legs. This is a West African crowned crane.

We read every sign trying to identify the white birds here. I believe they are a kind of stork, but we never saw a sign to tell us.

This is a straw-necked ibis.

And this is a meerkat. He seemed sad and lonely, and appeared to be alone in his enclosure. I have a feeling his friends were probably out of sight and sleeping. That was the case with virtually all the large cats. Their exhibits were all empty.

This is a little klipspringer. He's about the size of a small goat. We saw him in two different exhibits.

And I'll finish out the zoo photos with one more video of the jellyfish. They are absolutely mesmerizing. (If you can't see the video, click on the title of this post to be taken to the actual blog. You'll be able to see it there.)

Okay, so I still need to tell you about yesterday's quilt shop, but that will need to wait for later in the day today or tomorrow. Right now, I'm going to get going on my slow-stitching. If I'm going to finish it today, I'd better get stitching.