Quilt Shop: Sarah's Fabrics; Lawrence, Kansas

Good morning, my friends. We had a leisurely day yesterday. I spent some time reading email and playing my word games. After breakfast, I spent some time on my slow-stitching. I finished stitching the tail-end of the cat.

All that's left now is to stitch the tree trunk on the left side.

I couldn't capture the whole thing in my hoop, but I stitched a little more and finished off the bottom.

And now, I have just the upper part of the trunk to stitch. I had to switch to a smaller hoop. 

You might remember this pattern came with a pre-printed panel. 

The blocks were all cut from whole fabric.

Problem is, some of the stitching is so close to the cut edge, that it's hard to hoop it. Fortunately, I'm nearly finished with this one.

And how could I go wrong with my excellent stitching cat by my side.

It was a gray day and it rained hard several times during the morning. It didn't seem like a particularly good day for a hike. As I mentioned in yesterday's post, we needed a couple more things from the grocery store. We set out after breakfast, first stopping off at the adjacent Clinton Lake COE park.

We really just wanted to see the lake. We drove around to where we could park near an overlook. There we saw this mason bee house. Mason bees like to burrow into those holes in the wood. They also like to live in the cracks of our cedar shake siding at home. Fortunately, they are friendly bugs. They do a good job of pollinating the fruit trees, and they harm no one and nothing.

Also, I believe this is a butterfly house.

There was some pretty spiderwort growing in a planter box.

Also, lots of mint.

From the overlook, we could see the lake.

When you're in a COE park, there's more than likely a dam somewhere. This one is different in that it doesn't dam up a river, but collects water from many nearby streams, creating a lake and providing drinking water to the populace.

Zooming in a little closer for a better look. It looks like an earthen dam, and I believe there is a road over the top.

We felt better now that we'd seen the lake. From there, we headed into town to pick up our groceries. Also, my friend, Nancy, recommended a quilt shop in town, and sure! I'm always game for a good quilt shop. 

It was located on one of the older streets (by the looks of it) in Lawrence . There was metered parking, and all the shops were separated from the street by a wide sidewalk. I could only back up so far to get a shot of the front of the store. The "Sarah's" sign in the right front window was the only identifier aside from the street number. I couldn't back up quite far enough to capture the entire storefront.

Stepping inside, it looked like this.

There was a lot of fabric in the store, and it was well organized. I was amused when someone asked for some kind of fabric, and another woman yelled, "It's over by the dinosaurs!" Yeah...dinosaurs. In a quilt shop. Happens every day, right? To my right were some animal prints of all kinds. 

When I laid eyes on these bug fabrics, I was pretty sure I knew where my regional print would come from.

Moving a little farther to the right wall, there were some Kaffe Fassett prints. I love all the color in these.

In fact, about three-fourths of this long wall was all Kaffe Fassett. I like the fabrics. Generally, though, they're of such a large scale that I have a hard time using them.

I liked those big, big polka dots.

There were a lot of neutrals. I'm often looking for neutrals for embroidery backgrounds.

Moving to the left side of the store, fabrics extended all the way down that wall too.

Standing in that same spot, I took another shot of the store. And, whoa. There is just a whole lotta fabric in this store.

I liked this little fabric cat. They had patterns for sale.

In a back room, they had some extra-wide backing fabrics and upholstery and drapery fabric.

I love these colorful stripes and polka dots. 

There were more polka dots on the other side.

I liked this scrappy star quilt. Look closely at it. All the fabrics are stripes and polka dots.

So what did I buy? Well, I liked this black and white stripe. This will make a fun binding fabric. I've also used these kinds of fabrics in very narrow borders. They can be very effective used that way.

And oh...these lemurs. Are lemurs just about the cutest animal going? Aside from cats, of course.

I've been threatening to make a quilt from the image below, taken while we were visiting the Florida Aquarium in Tampa, Florida, some years back.

I've been stuck trying to decide how to do it. The lemurs aren't the problem. I could make this little knot of lemurs, but then how would I finish it off? Now that I have the lemur fabric, I have some ideas about it. Maybe it will motivate me to attempt this PINS. (PINS: Projects I Never Started.)

Ah, but the pièce de résistance was my choice of regional fabric. You might know I'm absolutely chewed up with bugs. The tick bite was only the beginning. Since that time, I've discovered several chiggers on my body and plenty of itchy bites. My quilt for this region will celebrate the bugs that have nearly eaten me alive. I won't miss them when we move on to less buggy pastures. The bugs here suck...both literally and figuratively.

As we drove back to the RV, we passed by the Douglas County Courthouse. Lawrence is the county seat of Douglas County. Sorry about the traffic light blocking the image. Looks like they’re doing some renovations of the building. It was all fenced off at ground level.

Here's a better picture I found online. I've grown to love those clock towers on this trip.

Back at the RV, we had some lunch and we took naps. It was getting late in the afternoon when the sun finally made an appearance. Smitty and I decided to take our shadow selves out for a walk.

He found an excellent patch of his favorite wide-blade grass behind the RV.

And then we stood for a long time, hoping something worth killing would come out of the grassy field.

Sadie kept an eye out from her catio.

After dinner, we were treated to a pretty sunset.

Day is done.

The sun is out this morning, and I think we'll see some better weather over the next couple of days. The kitties are soaking in the morning sunshine as I'm writing. Sadie is on her window perch.

Smitty is in his catio, still looking for something to kill.

We'll be moving on to another Kansas State Park in Sylvan Grove today. Our drive today is around 180 miles...a good distance. There's no rush to leave since checkout and check-in times at Kansas State Parks seems to be 2:00 p.m. We'll hang out here for a while so we don't arrive at the next stop too early in the day. It will give me some time to do a little more slow stitching. I'm hoping to finish off the 10th kitten today.

And now...it's time for breakfast. We'll be packing up and moving along in a couple of hours. You still have time for another cup of coffee, so go ahead. We'll wait.