Stash Enhancement Road Trip

Yesterday 3 friends and I went on a journey into the Bay Area of No.California in search of Crazy Quilt Goodies. We made up our own little Shop Hop, but in the end only made it to 3 places. Place #4 in Berkeley was a bit of a dud because of a function in the nearby park. We circled a 2 square block area three times and were unable to find a parking place. So, we reluctantly gave up, headed towards home and stopped for dessert at Marie Callenders aka Marie Calories.......I had cheesecake!!!!

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Our first stop was a quilt shop called Quilt Fans in Alameda, California which was a new place to all of us. It's a wonderfully friendly quilt shop with a high ceiling, tons of natural light and even has it's own resident cat called Bella. The first above is of a Fall-themed panel I purchased. Also you can see a peacock feather print and a coordinate for the panel. The panel has 4 small images which I plan to set at each corner of the larger panel and then in the center of the sides and middle I plan on doing a rectangle of crazyquilting. I plan this to be my next crazyquilt project after I finish up my Take It Further blocks from last year.

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The other pictures shows the beads & spool of gold Nymo beading thread I got at our 2nd stop in Alameda called Bead Inspirations. It's a great little shop with a very VERY unique inventory that was also new to all of us. A tad pricey compared to other bead shops across the country that I've visited, but I saw things there that I have NEVER seen before. The beads I bought, 2 flowers, a starfish and 2 lady bugs, are all cloissone. The rings, squares and rectangle are hammered shiny brass and copper and I will be using them as bases for ring motifs. I'm actually glad we included the shop on our jaunt because we never made it to another beads shop we'd heard about in Berkeley. When we couldn't find a parking place at Lacis, I was majorly bummed and the general consensus was that we were getting tired, so we just packed it in and headed west over & through (tunnel) the hills towards home.

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I purchased all the threads shown in that same picture (and also the 4 cards in the fabric picture) from Needle in a Haystack aka (for me) Thread Heaven! It's a hard shop to visit if you are unfamiliar with different threads or on a budget. For some reason they never mark prices on anything and I know for a fact that they lost some business on the 4 of us because of that. 2 of the group had never been there before and said at lunch afterwards that they would have bought more probably if things had been marked. Me? Well, you can see that I just go in there every time with my thread inventory and get a little of everything.

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Yesterday I decided I would treat myself to 6 each of Rainbow Gallery's Elegance silk pearl, Rainbow Gallery's Splendor 12 ply silk floss and Caron's Wildflower cotton pearl. The 4 cards laying on the fabric are Kanagawa silk and were the last 4 in their $1 sale bin. They have decided to not carry the Kanagawa anymore and they have also discontinued the J. L. Walsh silk threads which are so wonderful and which have been my main & favorite embroidery threads for years. They won't even do special orders, but they have been kind enough to tell me of another place where I might get them.

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The 2 skinny spools are Trebizond silk pearl. The color names on the spool are Cinnamon & Brown, but they look like gold to me. It's a thicker thread - more like a size 5 pearl. There's also 2 spools of black Anchor pearl cotton in size 8. I needed this because I have a UFO project tucked away because I ran out of that black pearl cotton. I can't find it locally at all.

I also got 3 hanks of Gloriana hand dyed 13 mm silk ribbon which is very nice. I have known the owner/dyer of Gloriana threads & ribbon since high school. Her stuff is very high quality. She used to work at Needle in a Haystack before she became "big time!"

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We left at 9 a.m., put 107 miles on my van and got back about 5 p.m. stuffed with goodies from Marie Calories and each carrying our little bags of wonderfulness.

Off to pre-wash my fabrics and "file" my other goodies!