Quilt Shop: Calico Cow; Delta Junction, Alaska

Good afternoon, my friends. I'm writing to you from Fairbanks, Alaska, this afternoon. I'll tell you about today's drive in tomorrow's post. For now, I want to tell you about the quilt shop in Delta Junction. I was surprised to find a quilt shop in such a small town. Apparently the long dark and cold winters encourage quilting. 

Here's how the shop looked from the outside. There was one other customer there when I arrived.

Stepping inside the front door, this is what I saw:

It was a long, narrow store, and small in size square-footage wise. Still, she made good use of her space, and there was a lot to see here.

Walking the length of the aisle above and turning the corner, there was more fabric, shown in the image below.

I'm really fond of these fabrics that feature metallics.

They had a good supply of notions.

Here was a pretty vintage sewing machine.

They also had a couple of racks of books.

These were mostly batiks. They had some pretty batiks with orcas. I might have purchased them if we'd seen any orcas. Maybe down the road.

These were mostly regional and landscape prints.

They had lots of pretty panels. I especially liked the one in the upper left.

You can see it a little better in the image below.

I really liked this sewing box. If I didn't already have one, I might have bought this.

Up front near the register there were plenty of solids.

So it was a fun store, and I always enjoy the stores I find in out-of-the-way places. I ended up purchasing that panel. They were $15, which was reasonable enough.

And, as I've said, I never know what to do with panels. I decided to pick up this pattern as a way to get me started. It's a different panel, but I'm can make it work.

The designer, Lisa Moore, is an Alaska quilter who resides in Sitka. You can see more of her patterns and read more about her right here.

And since this was my first quilt shop in Alaska, I decided on this fabric for my Shop Hop quilt.

If you're keeping track of the Shop Hop quilt fabrics, that's three fabrics down, three to go. 

As I mentioned, there are at least two quilt shops in Fairbanks. I opted not to visit today because of the protests going on in downtown Fairbanks. The protests look small and peaceful, but I'd still just as soon not get in the middle of that in an unknown city. Instead, I'll visit one in Talkeetna, which will be our destination in about six days. And I'm confident there are plenty of quilt shops down the road. As you might have noticed, I've had no problem finding quilt shops on this trip.

Okay, so that's all I have for you today. Just now I have some desserts baking in the oven. Better go check on those. More about that tomorrow.