Quilt Shop: Be Sew Creative; Las Cruces, New Mexico

 Good afternoon, my friends. We had a busy day today. We visited both the MacDonald Observatory and the Fort Davis National Historic Site earlier this afternoon. I'll write a separate post for each venue tomorrow. But I promised you a quilt shop post, and a quilt shop post you shall have. 

I could have chosen from two different quilt shops in Las Cruces. This one was the closest to us, and it was a good one.

Here's how the building looks from the outside.

And this shop will go down as one of the friendliest shops I've visited. Walking through the front door, it looked like this:

There were two friendly women working there, who greeted me with all smiles. Ellen appeared to be the person in charge, and she was kind enough to point out this line of New Mexico fabrics to me. 

Turning around and walking to the other side of the room, these were all 108-inch fabrics.

To my right were these fabrics. 

Turning farther to the right were these solids and tone-on-tones.

The store didn't have a lot of fabric. It was also a sales and repair store for sewing machines. Walking to a larger room toward the back, they had scads of thread.

And you know I love thread as much as I love fabric. Look at these pretty sparkle threads.

Turning directly around...now this is interesting. See those bags lined up on the upper shelf?

Here's how they were labeled. It was a Brown Bag Mystery. This sounds kind of fun.

They had lots of different kinds of notions.

There was a fancy Baby Lock embroidery machine set up. I had a Bernina embroidery machine for a while. Machine embroidery wasn't for me, and I ended up selling my machine and getting my current Bernina 750QE instead. I'm still interested in these machines though. Maybe if my hands give out someday, I might consider machine embroidery again.

They had Berninas for sale too.

And oh...be still, my beating heart.

If I had all the money in the world, this is the first thing I'd buy. Maybe I'll win the lottery someday, and then I'll get one. Maybe someday I'll actually play the lottery. Probably playing would vastly improve my odds of winning.

There were more machines set up there for testing.

There was a classroom and a class going on in the room farthest back. I took this picture through the door. 

This ruler interested me. It's really more of a template, but it also has markings for making a repetitive design and getting it nice and even. I studied it for a while, trying to understand how it worked. 

Then I noticed the price, and I put it down right away before I broke something.

Back at home, I looked it up online. I was curious to see if there were videos explaining how it work, and there were. Take a look right here. And it looks like a useful tool. I wondered if Amazon had it cheaper. And they did. But take a look at this caveat:

I read the reviews. Some people really liked it, but a high number reported that it arrived broken and that it was too fragile. I decided against it. You can decide for yourself whether this is a useful item.

So what did I buy? Well, Ellen told me that dia de los muertos is a big deal in Las Cruces. She said people wear make up and get into costume. That convinced me to choose this one for my regional print.

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Also, I liked this one as a backing for my Whimsical Garden quilt, but they only had a few yards left, and I needed four yards. Nevertheless, I got a yard of it. It's so pretty. It's another from the New Mexico line. Apparently there is a "humming bird season" in New Mexico, and you can see humming birds in this print.

Also, Ellen gave me this fat quarter as a gift. She held out a box for me to choose, and I selected the first one.

So this was a fun and friendly shop. I'd recommend a visit if you find yourself traveling through Las Cruces.