The Drive to Retreat

In spite of wanting to get on the road by 7 AM, we were not ready to leave my house until 8:45. This was largely due to me staying up way too late on Wednesday night and therefore setting the alarm for a little later on Thursday morning. I did not want to be driving on 5 hours of sleep. Regardless, once I got all of our things loaded into the car, we were on our way.

I think that the first words out of my mouth when I saw how late it was were, “We have got to shave the quilt shop stops down again!” In Becca’s exuberance to be travelling to a new location, she found 8 quilt shops between my house and Shipshewana and, after a little prodding, she narrowed the list down to 4. She agreed to drop 1 more shop from the list and we were on our way.

Well, we were on our way after a brief detour into McDonald’s for breakfast. No way am I getting up that early on a day off and not treating myself to a breakfast biscuit!

The first shop that we went to was The Engine House Quilt Shop in Berne, IN. I had viewed their website and it looked interesting so I was excited to stop there. Unfortunately, in spite of all of the people that were in the store, no one really acknowledged us the 10 minutes or so that we stood in the middle of the store and looked around. There were signs up showing some kind of deals, but it wasn’t very clear what was going on. There also didn’t seem to be a substantial amount of bolts of fabric and, after floundering in the store for a few minutes, we just left.

The next stop was Nancy’s Stitches in Kendalville. The shop was in the back of a small house and it appeared to be in a room that was added onto the house after the initial building was completed. The space was set up very well, but I felt like the store was a machine store with some fabric and notions added in. In any event, I found a couple of fabrics*** that I knew I would be able to work into my stash quite well.

The last shop was Caroline’s Cottage Cottons in Rome City, Indiana. What a great store!!! Four rooms of notions, books and fabric! And Moda fabric at that! And great samples scattered all over the house!

Luckily, the owner was working and she filled us in on the Shop Hop that was going on and had us sign up so that we could get the discounts that she was offering on everything. And here are the pictures that I took of the shop.

Here is Becca with the owner of the shop.

This shop ended up being within 30 minutes of the Inn where we stayed and we directed several groups of quilters to check out the shop. After visiting the shop, none came back disappointed. I would highly recommend visiting this shop if you are in the area! :)

*** All of the purchases from the weekend will be shown all together in a future post.