celebrate handmade

Sunday, July 20, 2008

SoCal Quilters' Run!

OK....I procrastinate. I admit it. BUT!

I've been exercising with Linda every other day in her pool. The woman is a hard taskmaster, but I've actually begun looking forward to those sessions & feel so virtuous afterward. Yay us!

AND We did 1/3 of the Quilters' Run over the last 2 weekends, ending with 6 San Diego Co. shops yesterday. I'm whipped! It was a lot of fun, even though I was totally unprepared: no bars, no snacks, no camera -- what was I thinking? So I don't have pictures for you, but I will tell you about our favorite shops. And the adorable charms the shops were giving out -- too cute. Check out the charms at my flickr badge.

Our very favorite of all the stores we visited (13/39) was Cozy Quilts in El Cajon (www.cozyquilt.com) where we laughed till we cried, Elaine got a sweet deal on a new Bernina with bsr, & we were fed chocolate chip cookies, warm from the oven!!! How could we not love this place & these women, I ask you?!? This was the best fun we had at any of the stores, & we did have a lot of fun on this run, I assure you.

There were only a couple of clinkers in the bunch, but I won't bore you with those. I'll just tell you that the best non-machine deals to be had were at Temecula Quilt Co, where sweet Nicolette gently coerced us into buying the darling mini-bundles to make the wonderful little quilts in the booklet. Ten bucks for the booklet, ten bucks for the bundle & the backing muslin was thrown in as a bonus. Of course I came home with several, & I have it on good authority that the owner of another shop actually made a special trip to TQC to collect some of this tiny goodness for herself! True Bill!

There is one San Diego County store that I've now visited twice, & I won't be going back. I just didn't feel the love either time, so too bad, so sad. If ever there was a time for the staff to put themselves out for their customers, it would be during the Run, but no! They just couldn't do it. Ah, well. Their loss. I'm a loyal girl, but there has to be some love first, you know?

The final stop of our personal Run was in Santee, at Memory Lane (http://www.memorylanequiltshop.com/). What a lovely store, & the owner, Chris, is darling. Beautiful skin, too, but I digress. She has designed a number of nifty quilts & her patterns are actually for sale in the store, with some terrific samples to show them off. Her husband was on hand to do lots of the scut work, & he maintained a happy attitude throughout. Mind you, this was LATE on Saturday night, the next-to-last day of the Run. These people were TIRED, but they were a lot of fun, nonetheless. We had a great time there, & when we left, we were content to call it a day. None of that 'feeling like we missed something' for us!

The full list of shops we visited is: Calico Cottage, Quilter's Coop, Temecula Quilt Co., A Time to Sew, Bears Quilts, Stars & Scraps, Quilter's Paradise, Quilter's Cottage, Sowing Sisters, Quilt in a Day, Flying Geese Fabric, Cozy Quilt Shop, and Memory Lane. There were 26 more shops on the Run, but we were out of time & way past out of money, so 13 was darn good, I'd say. whew! Good thing I don't plan to go to Long Beach next week, huh?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I love the little charms, Jay! Such a neat idea - I've never seen them around Illinois. They remind me of the pins I used to collect when I went to different ski resorts. Sounds like you had a fun time "running" around!

MoxyIdeas said...

I also got a couple of the bundles and the little booklet at TQC...very cute idea. I really love (and respect) their eye for good desktop publishing skills and their usefulness in a small business. Those little books (just like all their printed materials) are gorgeous. And I don't even like making little quilts!