Fabric shopping

I got to spend an evening recently at craft night with some of the ladies from church - so I was able to work on my current quilt project and hang out with other grown ups! Wow! It was a fun evening. I was asked where I get my fabric and if I have a favorite store. When we lived in Colorado I had a whole bevy of fabric shops that I liked and I enjoyed making the rounds to find just the right fabric for each quilt. Well, I'm sorry to say that I haven't found many fabric stores here yet. We've already lived here for, um, eight months (?) and I think the very first thing I did when I found out where we were moving was to Google fabric shops in the area. (Yeah, and then I looked for the grocery store - priorities!) You would expect me to have all the shops in the area checked out by now, right? Me, too. And um, I found a Jo-Ann's that's 45 minutes and a toll bridge from here. Instead, I have found a whole world of fabric on the internet. (I can go when I want, and I don't have to drag my kids with me. It's what works right now.) So I thought I would share!

Some of my new online finds:

Fat Quarter Shop
The Calico Cottage Quilt Shop
A Counterpane
Sweet Peas & Angels
Desperate Quilters


And here are a few of my old favorite fabric and quilt shops from around the Denver area (I am glad that some have online ordering so I can still shop there!):

Denver Fabrics (They don't carry much quilters' cotton any more, but I find all sorts of great solids, plaids and stripes there that the quilt stores never have.)
The Great American Quilt Factory
Calico Corners
Quilting Hands
Tomorrow's Heirlooms

Of course, I do find things at the big chain stores - Jo-Ann Fabric, Hobby Lobby, and even Wal-mart sometimes. I have been (pleasantly) surprised this year to find a lot more variety and more things I like in the "nursery" fabrics at Jo-Ann's. One of the big problems that I run into when fabric shopping is the lack of nice, appropriate fabric in the colors that people are using for their nurseries. (Not that people are picking odd things, but that the fabric world and the baby decorating world apparently don't talk to each other.) The other thing is that I am always (OK, not always, but usually) looking for nice plaids, stripes, ginghams and tiny floral calicos and they're a lot harder to find than you would think.

I have to say that I am a lot more picky about getting exactly the color/pattern/style that I want than the stores that I shop in. I like to get higher quality fabric when I can, but I am also shopping on a tight budget. So I get the best color, fabric, and price I can, whatever that may look like today.

My kids with their quilts

I took a couple of pictures this week of Elijah and Molly with their quilts:



I had to wash Elijah's again this week, and I am pleased at how well it has done so far. He's been sleeping with it consistently for a year and a half now and I've washed it several times, and it still looks like new (and as far as I can tell, all the seams are still rock solid). It is really important to me to make quilts that are washable and durable as well as beautiful, so I am thrilled that my own personal tests are turning out well so far!