After I wrapped up my two Carrie Nelson classes, sponsored by the Corn Wagon Quilt Company, I had a little time to visit some Salt Lake City quilt shops. So armed with a map, Garman, and list of 15 area quilt shops, I hit the road, my primary goal, to visit as many quilt shops as humanly possible in the course of 24 hours!
But before I could start my shopping spree, I had one little errand to run, to drop off Carrie at the airport, Carrie was heading back home.
So when Carrie asked if I could drop her off at the airport I was happy to do so. Since Carrie didn't mention which airport, the first thing I did was research airports in the Salt Lake City area. There were two, one boring airport with commercial jets coming and going all hours of the day and night, the airport where I picked up Carrie at the beginning of the week, and a municipal airport with rows of biplanes stored under carport type structures in a huge grassy field.
Well that was an easy call, I figured Carrie would prefer to head home in one of these.
I could just picture Carrie riding in the back with the wind blowing her hair, a scarf flying behind her back and Carrie talking to the pilot the whole trip. Well let this be a lesson to you, when someone asks for a ride to the airport, you don't get to pick the airport, THEY DO! Guess I missed that chapter in my Emily Post Etiquette book, luckily for me I was able to get Carrie to the airport of HER choice in plenty of time for her flight.
That's my story and I'm sticking with it, click here for someone else's take on my choice of airports.
I don't know this to be a fact, but I would be surprised to find an area that had more quilt shops in a hundred mile radius than Salt Lake City. In the span of a mere 100 miles I found 15 quilts shops, 15 amazing quilt shops. I was able to visit ten of them. Do you realize that I've never visited more than 10 different quilt shops in an entire year, yet, in the course of 24 hours I looked, shopped, swooned, and walked through 10 quilt shops! I can drive 100 miles any direction from my house and am lucky to hit 2 shops.
All the shops were friendly, encouraged me to take all the pictures I wanted, and even suggested bakeries, restaurants and ice cream parlors for little pick me ups. The raspberry stuffed iced sugar cookie was definitely worth the stop.
So here are a few random pictures that pretty much summed up my amazing day.
Is there anything better than a red and cream churn dash quilt?
Quilter's Haven was a just that, a wonderful quilter's haven.
I ran across new fabric companies, Riley Blake is huge out there, and new pattern designers.
Material Girls was packed with patterns and fabric,
everything amazingly bright and cheerful.
Naturally I like the colors of this quilt, but I was also drawn to those wonky stars.
This quilt shop, Pine Needles, was in a very interesting area called Gardner Village. All sorts of specialty shops are now housed in buildings that were once part of a mill town. I had to cross a covered walking bridge to get to the quilt shop and passed a bakery, candy shop and housewares shop on the way. You could spend all day shopping at Gardner Village.
I have no idea what that fabric is, but I love it, and the dog.
It was easy to pick out Piper's Quilts shop from the street.
All her quilts were amazing. I have a whole new appreciation and love for applique projects.
So that's the high points of my day of shopping, and it got me to thinking, if the Salt Lake City area can support that many quilt shops, there must be more quilters per capita in Salt Lake City than any other city in the world, or maybe just the US or maybe just Utah, but for sure, there must be many many quilters out there.
One post left of my vacation, yes, I did make it to Market and the French General shop in LA!
Thanks for stopping by,
