Road Trip!

Yesterday 7 of us headed out on a stitching/quilting road trip to celebrate Marilyn's and my April birthdays. This was organized and executed by Jen1 - owner of a 7 passenger/3 row mini-van.

Jen had prepared goodie bags for each one of us. There was also a mini Mars bar but I ate it.

Our first stop was Cindy's Needleart in Richmond Hill. It was a very impressive shop with very expensive needlepoint canvases, threads, and many, many samples.

Most of the patterns are designed by local artists. Anyone who likes canvaswork in addition to needlepoint would love this shop. I bought a skein of pumpkin-coloured hand dyed floss for my Cinnamon Stars project.

We then moved on to The Enchanted Needle in Woodbridge.  There was a wide variety of books, kits, threads, patterns and fabrics.

We then headed to Port Credit to have lunch and go to Gitta's. I've only ever been to this shop's booth at the CreativFestival (back when I used to attend). We spent quite a bit of time looking at all the lovely things. Here, we finally got a shot with Jen1 in it.

Behind me: Marilyn, Sue, Barb, Jen1, Jeanette, and Poppy in the back.

This shop carries almost anything one could want and if they don't have it, they can certainly order it.

Since we were so close, we walked down the street to Linda's Craftique - a yarn shop. The salesperson was very apologetic that the store seemed emptied out because most of their stock was being set up in Toronto for the Knitter's Frolic. Some of us chose to explore the basement for discounted items and (ahem) the restroom.

This was another shop whose booth I've only attended at the Frolic. It was here I found a bottle of Flatter smoothing spray that I was looking for in anticipation of making my jelly roll rug. I had purchased and downloaded the .pdf of the pattern the previous evening.

We then piled back into the van and headed 1/2 hour northwest to The Hobby Horse Quilt Shoppe -  in a barn north of Georgetown.

There we oohed and aahed over many of the fabrics and patterns. I purchased a bunch of felted wool scraps

and a jelly roll for my first jelly roll rug.

These are the patterns in the roll of strips.

It's probably a good thing I don't live closer to this place as it could certainly be disastrous to my financial security. I also bought a couple of  fat quarters

to go with the lovely fabric Jen1 gave me for my birthday.

I'll be using them to make a Bionic Gear Bag in the very near future.

There were also 4 little pumpkin cross-stitch kits

and a sheep kit that were deeply discounted that made it home with me.

They're complete with fabric, full skeins of Presencia threads (new to me), pattern, instructions, and needle. For the pumpkins, I'll toss the Aida fabric and stitch them vertically on evenweave or linen as a bell pull. The fabric with the sheep kit is the aqua colour in the background so unless I can find evenweave this colour, I'll stitch it on the coloured Aida.

Two paper-pieced quilts on display that really caught my eye were the poinsettia quilt

 and the poppy quilt. They both measured about 2' x 3'. I'm very intrigued.

As none of us had any constraints on our time, we decided to go to Len's Mill Store on Orfus Rd behind Yorkdale on the way home. Thanks to Sue's Waze app on her phone, we managed to avoid standing still in Friday rush-hour traffic.

This store had been totally redone and most of the cheap junk has been moved out. Its primary stock now is sewing/quilting/upholstery/drapery fabrics , yarns and accessories. It is spread out more and well organized. Most of us augmented our fabric stash. I bought some evenweave fabric for stitching which I plan to tea and coffee dye, thread for my jelly roll rug, and some discounted fabrics.

We got out of there at about 7:45. By the time we got back to Jen's place it was 8:30 and most of us had been on the road at least 12 hours. What a wonderful way to spend a day - shopping with like-minded crafty friends. So much fun! And we're not done! Tomorrow several of us are going to Jeanette's for stitching most of the day.