Row-Hopping, Day 3

Made it to 6 stores this past Saturday in the NW part of the metroplex - only 110 or so miles of driving this time!

In order, the first store I stopped at was The Old Craft Store in Carrolton.   Lots of wonderful fabric, although it was a little bit of a pain to get to because of construction.  Their row has this cute quilter's train on it.

Found another sky fabric and two lovely batiks for block backgrounds.   The two upper fabrics were in the clearance fabrics.  The alphabet one will go with my alphabet fabrics to be used in making kits to sell and the other is a batik.  Might use a bit of that for binding on the flamingo quilt, although I'm not fond of hand sewing batik binding down.











Store #2 was "Minding My P's & Q's" up in Denton.   Not a huge store, but a decent selection of fabric.   They were celebrating the store's 2nd birthday so had lots of sales going on.

Fabrics were buy 2 yds, get one free - So I ended up with part of the tan one for free.   The scrap bag is the size of a typical pattern bag and yes I stuffed it full - but managed to get it closed w/o it popping open.  =)

Smaller scraps here - precut triangles of the same fabric line in the red and blue on the left.  The green and yellow in the middle were just 8" and 7" by WOF, and then some squares and smaller scraps on the right.

The striped piece on top of the pile on the right is earmarked for the flags in this row that I got at Cabbage Rose Quilting.

Next into the scrap bag went this panel featuring different scenes from Texas.

And the last item that I managed to get into the scrap bag was this panel.  The print is by Jim Shore and there's nothing wrong with the panel that I can see.  This panel alone was worth more than the cost of the scrap bag ($5).   Can you tell that most stores who sell their scrap bags don't make money off of me?

Will take and finish this and then sell the quilt.

Store #3 was "Material Girl" which is also in Denton.  It is about 4 miles or so east of the previous one.  Their row was this cute one featuring a family of chickens.

Picked up two 1/3 yd pieces there for teddy bears.














Store #4 was "Quilt Country" in Lewisville.   I loved this store and would be happy living closer to it....ok maybe I don't need to given the size of my stash, but still.....lol.    Close to half of the fabrics that they have are batiks which I drooled over.  There was also a good selection of all the others that are on the market these days.

They also have 4 APQS long-arms that people can rent time on at a reasonable price.....just gotta take the $150 class to learn how to use them first.   Very tempting thought for me as I have some bigger quilts to get quilted coming up.  Their row features sail boats because the town is between two different lakes (aka reservoirs).  I'll probably put this one in my row quilt, but instead of having 'Quilt Country' on the building I'll put either "Bait" or "Marina".

Found a cute little wall-hanging and bought the kit because it was a reasonable price.  Alto got water fabric for the row, a scrap bag (prefilled) with more fabics that will work for the sky in rows, and a FQ that I'm may use in a row with Balloons if I can find something with city buildings on it.








Store #5 was "Must Love Fabric" in Grapevine.  Small store with an ok selection of fabric.    Google maps did not want to route me to the right place for the store so I ended up wandering trying to find it for 15 minutes initially.   Finally made it though.

Picked up another batik for block backgrounds, a blue for skies and blackberries for potholders (planned gifts).   And got a cute little key chain as a gift as well.

Store # 6 was "Quilter's Dream" in Colleyville.  Store was a decent size in square footage, but has a tiny selection of fabric.   There might have been 150 bolts all total of fabric - far less than what is in my stash!  One room was a classroom, and there was another room that I didn't see into that has her long-arm.  Given how little fabric was there I suspect that is what the owner makes a living on doing.  

She also had a room set up as a 'Quilter's garage sale'.  Quilters from the area (or her?) can sell their unwanted fabrics, books, patterns, etc there on commission.  Did find three pieces in there that I bought.

The grey on the right is one that I've had a piece of for years - the grey swirly print makes great fur, santa's beards, etc.  Middle one is a piece of Fairy Frost in a color I hadn't seen before, and then the pink/blue one I thought might make a good border for the flamingo or maybe binding.  Haven't laid it out with the quilt yet so don't know if it'll work or not.

The day of shop-hopping wrapped up with me getting caught in a horrible thunder storm  on the way home (or as I posted on FB - a "bad, bad, ugly bad" storm.....lol).   The best way to describe it is that if you take a blizzard with white-out conditions and then raise the temp so that you are dealing with rain instead of snow, you've got what I was trying to drive in.  I ended up pulling off the road twice because the rain was so heavy I couldn't see to drive.    Was finally able to drive again after about 30 minutes of combined waiting and within 5 miles had driven out of the rain. Texas storms can be so hit-or-miss to say the least.

Gratitudes:
1. Safe travels in the storm I was in on Saturday

2. As bad as it was, there was no tornadoes associated with the storm.