Two weeks ago I identified 12 quilt shops between Houston, Austin and SA (San Antonio) that I would consider visiting for the fabric hunt.
The furthest east one, The Quilted Skien, is in La Grange (not all the way to Houston) and it is a 2 hours drive each way. I was there 3 years ago when I was driving around as part of the Hill Country Yarn crawl. La Grange is a VERY old town with the court house in the center square and big ol' Victorian style homes AND the Texas quilt museum is there so i figured that now that I was "fully" vaccinated, I would drive out there to look for fabrics and visit the museum as my first stop on the fabric quilt hunt
This weekend I went out to La Grange on local roads passing many classic large Texas ranches, big stone gates at the driveway, cattle grazing on the acres and massive ranch homes off in the distance; plus wild flowers dotting the fields. Along the way you also pass a lot of little towns of just a post office, gas station and market. The roads while in good condition are only 2 lanes but have a speed limit of 60 mpg; I was doing 50 so I could look and would be passed, on the double yellow line, by big ass dual wheel pick up trucks and getting flipped the bird; but what ever.
I arrived in La Grange to find many shops around the square closed (out of business); I had called a head and knew the quilt shop was still open. The shop was empty so I spend some time looking at the selection of fabrics before looking specifically for the quilt; so I knew where to focus. The shop owner asked about what I was looking for and I explained the quilt and showed here the pattern. She agreed that a tone-on-tone would be good for a modern quilt and pointed me to some fabric collections that I like. During this time we also talked about the Snowmageddon, from last February and the hail storms just 3 weeks ago. I looked at several other collections to see if I wanted to mix up the fabrics but never found anything as good; I then selected a white-on-white. She carried the bolts to the cutting table, I got a package of needles for my machine and bought 3 spools of 100% cotton sewing thread and checked out. 1.hours later, I was done with the fabric hunt then I was done with the "great" wedding quilt fabric hunt. I did not think it would be that easy. I was expecting to visit at least 2 or three quilt shops.
I then wandered over to the Quilt museum and saw an exhibition of blue and white quilts. Unfortunately no photography was allowed but I saw some really nice quilts.
I have completed the fabric hunt in one weekend thinking it was possibly going to take at least 3. Now to clean up my sewing area and get to cutting.
The furthest east one, The Quilted Skien, is in La Grange (not all the way to Houston) and it is a 2 hours drive each way. I was there 3 years ago when I was driving around as part of the Hill Country Yarn crawl. La Grange is a VERY old town with the court house in the center square and big ol' Victorian style homes AND the Texas quilt museum is there so i figured that now that I was "fully" vaccinated, I would drive out there to look for fabrics and visit the museum as my first stop on the fabric quilt hunt
This weekend I went out to La Grange on local roads passing many classic large Texas ranches, big stone gates at the driveway, cattle grazing on the acres and massive ranch homes off in the distance; plus wild flowers dotting the fields. Along the way you also pass a lot of little towns of just a post office, gas station and market. The roads while in good condition are only 2 lanes but have a speed limit of 60 mpg; I was doing 50 so I could look and would be passed, on the double yellow line, by big ass dual wheel pick up trucks and getting flipped the bird; but what ever.
I arrived in La Grange to find many shops around the square closed (out of business); I had called a head and knew the quilt shop was still open. The shop was empty so I spend some time looking at the selection of fabrics before looking specifically for the quilt; so I knew where to focus. The shop owner asked about what I was looking for and I explained the quilt and showed here the pattern. She agreed that a tone-on-tone would be good for a modern quilt and pointed me to some fabric collections that I like. During this time we also talked about the Snowmageddon, from last February and the hail storms just 3 weeks ago. I looked at several other collections to see if I wanted to mix up the fabrics but never found anything as good; I then selected a white-on-white. She carried the bolts to the cutting table, I got a package of needles for my machine and bought 3 spools of 100% cotton sewing thread and checked out. 1.hours later, I was done with the fabric hunt then I was done with the "great" wedding quilt fabric hunt. I did not think it would be that easy. I was expecting to visit at least 2 or three quilt shops.
I then wandered over to the Quilt museum and saw an exhibition of blue and white quilts. Unfortunately no photography was allowed but I saw some really nice quilts.
I have completed the fabric hunt in one weekend thinking it was possibly going to take at least 3. Now to clean up my sewing area and get to cutting.
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