All Iowa Quilt Shop Hop - Day 5

The morning got off to an early start today, as I left the apartment with DD2 and she needed to be to work at 8 AM.  I went to breakfast at the Blue Bird Cafe in North Liberty. The food was great and the service attentive.  On a weekday morning, I think I was the only customer for a while.  Here is a Facebook link:  http://www.facebook.com/BluebirdCafeNorthLiberty.

The first shop today is also in North Liberty and within sight of the Blue Bird, Common Threads Quilt Shoppe.  A smaller shop with a more limited selection of fabrics and very friendly service.  The shop also does long arm quilting.

The next chosen stop is Kalona and the Stitch and Sew Cottage.  I had a couple of different ways that I could go, but chose to to this one next.  The road took me very close to the ongoing fire at the landfill for Iowa City.  Lots of black smoke today.  This thing has been burning now for about 2 weeks.  Stitch and Sew has lots of panels displayed and kits made up with the Northcott Stonehenge line using their panels.

Driving through this area you see Mennonites out with their horse-drawn buggies.  Kalona has hitching rails for the people to tie up their horses while they shop.  On to the next stop which is Inspirations in Hills, Iowa. The shop has lots of reproductions, but does have some brights and juvenile fabrics in the back room.  The shop for you if you like the darker Civil War type fabrics.

I have a little bit of driving to get to the next shop, Heartland Cottons in DeWitt.  This is a very new store, open less than a year.  They have a line of small paper pieced patterns from a designer in Davenport.  I picked up a little pattern for a mortarboard, now I just need to get home in time to make it!

Not a great picture of the shop, sorry.

Expressions in Thread in Le Claire is the next stop after a bite for lunch.  Should have stopped somewhere else. (insert sad face)  The meat was not cooked properly, which was unusual.  Have eaten at this chain before without incident.  Expressions in Thread has a wide selection of fabrics and lots of fat quarters and kits.  Nice sized classroom and they sell machines as well.  This is the view out the front of the store:

Looking across the river!

This is the store -

Back on the road and on to Muscatine to The Little Red Hen.  I was tangled up on construction in Bettendorf and then got lost trying to find this store in Muscatine.  Wasted a lot of time, dang that GPS unit! This shop is in a residential area and easy to miss.  The shop sells fabric and patterns, has gifts and sells flowers and has a greenhouse.  They are giving away a free potted herb, but I left mine behind as I am sure that it would be dead by the time I arrived home and I don't want to be a plant murderer!

I only have time for one more shop today and that will be Ellen's Quilting Corner in West Burlington.  This shop has a range of fabrics, not many juvenile prints. Many nice kits for sale.  They also have a nice classroom.  I know I keep going on about the classrooms, but how are we going to learn new skills or get new people involved with quilting if we can' teach them?

I drove down to Keokuk to spend the night and get an early start tomorrow by visiting Quilt 'N Etc. I can't believe that I did all of my blogging the day that I did my hopping.  I do want to give a shout out to my DD 2 who has loaned me her camera for the duration of the trip.  Thank you so much!