Visit Your Local Quilt Shop Day– January 24th

A blog-tour is starting off this weekend to encourage everyone to visit their local quilt shops on the 24th of this month.  Some of your favorite bloggers will be talking this weekend about their favorite brick and mortar shops and why independently owned quilt shops are important to them. 

I’ll tell you, I enjoy the convenience of shopping online, but I’m someone that has to see and feel in person to really know if a fabric is what I want.  I fully support my local online shops, but I give equal support to our brick and mortar shops as well.  My favorites locally are Bolt and Cool Cottons.  I love them both for different reasons.  Bolt carries such a wonderful array of fabrics, that I always come home with a unique blend of interesting pieces.  They always end up being my favorite pieces in my fabric cabinet, and always the hardest to use.  Cool Cottons always has me walking away with a colorful assortment.  Somehow, everything I buy there ends up working in a quilt together without it being my intention.  The stack above was bought on the same day from both shops.  I didn’t have any plan in mind, just grabbing fabrics that “spoke” to me.  Walking into a shop and picking bolts at random, that suit my fancy, always has me leaving with the best choices.  It’s something I can’t replicate when I shop online. 

The Buggy Barn in Reardan, WA. Charming inside and out!

My mom and I have traveled for years on girls road trips and we always make it a priority to stop at the hole-in-the-wall towns and find their quilt shops, because there always is one.  I might not walk away with what is considered the “trendiest” fabrics, but some of my best pieces come from these shops.  Each owner has a unique taste that is reflected in their selection and most local shops also find it important to carry fabrics that match the local feel.  Montana and Wyoming always have the best cowboy fabrics.  Because our trips tend to be in the fall, we also find a wide assortment of seasonal and holiday fabrics.  Before quilting online grew to such proportions you didn’t always know what all was out there, and I would find fabrics that I had never seen before locally.  That was the best part.  To this day, my very favorite shop I’ve ever visited was Dakota Quilt Company in Spearfish, South Dakota.

My mom holding a baby Brice in 2008. Bear Paw Quilting at their old location.

I love exploring our local shops to see what treasures I can find.  I don’t really keep up with fabric and what’s out there, so it’s always a surprise to me when I enter a shop.  If you’re ever in Portland, be sure to stop at Bolt and Cool Cottons.  If you find your way a little north in the Kelso/Longview area of Washington, and love primitive/reproduction prints, be sure to stop in at Momma Made It.  I find all of my favorite Jo Morton fabrics there. 

Here is a list of some of my favorite shops I frequent, local to me and otherwise:

• Bear Paw Quilting – Coeur d’Alene, ID (LOVE this shop!)
• Bolt Fabric Boutique – Portland, OR
• Buggy Barn – Reardan, WA (down a lonely country road outside Spokane)
• Cool Cottons – Portland, OR
• Drygoods Design – Seattle, WA
• Fiberworks – Billings, MT
• Glacier Quilts – Kalispelll, MT (we like to stay in the Hoilday Inn across the way when heading to or from Glacier National Park)
• Greenbaum's Quilted Forest – Salem, OR
• Holly Hill Quilt Shoppe – West Linn, OR
• In Between Stitches Quilt & Gift Store – Livermore, CA
• Let's Quilt – Oregon City, OR
• Mill Ends Fabric – Portland, OR
• Parkland Parish Quilt Shop – Tacoma(ish), WA
• Quilter’s Corner – Deer Lodge, MT
• Quiltique – Henderson, NV
• Sew Many Quilts – Bend, OR
• Speckled Hen Quilts – Wilsonville, OR
• The Stitchin’ Post – Sisters, OR

And so many more that I’ve visited over the years.  I encourage you to get out and explore while on road trips.  Most of us have smart phones now, and my favorite thing to do is pull up my map app and search for “quilt shop” along our route.  Find the links to the blog tour here.  I’m looking forward to learning about more local shops I haven’t had a chance to visit on my travels and hope to schedule them in to future road trips.

Tomorrow (Saturday) is my foundation paper piecing class at Modern Domestic if you are local and happen to be interested in taking the class.  There are just two spots left!