Shop hopping across Iowa

If you read yesterday's post, you know that I spent all day Friday visiting some shops in central IA, joining in on the All Iowa Shop Hop. Our third stop on our adventure was Quilter's Cupboard in Ankeny, just north of Des Moines. You know you are here when you see the blocks on the fence out front!

It was a great shop, with lots of beautiful fabrics and inspiration. It was fun to see all of the different things people came up with to use their Iowa Shop Hop fabric. I wish I would've taken more pictures of those, but I had to do some shopping!

I found these pretty batiks in this shop....I know they aren't red, but I can always use more greens,too!

We then headed into Clive to Creekside Quilting. Whether you are on a shop hop or just out for a great day of fabric shopping, the Des Moines area is definitely worth traveling to!

Karen isn't tired of shopping yet!

Lots of eye candy here and friendly faces! They had a nice variety of many different types of fabric, so a great place to shop, expecially for a group of people. Everyone can look at what interests them.

West Des Moines boasts two shops on the same block, though At The Heart of Quilting is more of a machine quilting business and doesn't really have fabrics to sell. 

She does have some threads and other things for the machine quilter.

The Quilt Block is right down the street and is chock full of luscious prints. They had lots of purses, and other quilty items made up, which makes picking out fabrics so much easier, or harder, depending on how you look at it!

Our final stop on our way home was Adel Quilting and Dry Goods in Adel.

Jacque came out and greeted us when she saw us taking pictures out front! She was also taking pictures of all the quilters who came to visit!  SHe has a cute shop  and did a tutorial on making a cute bag using our 6" squares! 

We visited seven shops on Friday and had a great time. We all found things we couldn't live without! These are the 6" squares we collected during our visits. I had been to Cut Up and Quilt the day before and if you say the magic phrase there, you get a fat quarter! You might remember my post back in September when my friends Kim and Becky opened this shop. I will have to do an update post soon, their shop has grown by leaps and bounds!

I'm not sure if I will make it to any more quilt shops during the shop hop, but it goes on through June 20th, so you never know! Now, what should I make with my Iowa fabrics? hmmmmm......

   

All Iowa Shop Hop

 I spent Friday on a section of the second annual All Iowa Shop Hop with friends. There are 82 shops sprinkled around the state, and there is no way I will get to all of them, but what a great chance to visit some new shops! All of the shops had the chance to order some special Iowa Counties fabric, so everywhere we went we saw lots of cute things made up using it. I preordered mine at Cut UP and Quilt. Most of the shops are out of this limited edition fabric now. (They still had some left at Cut Up and Quilt as of Thursday.) Every shop you visit has a different Kona cotton 6" fabric square, so you can collect them as well as stamps on your passport. You can see many of the cute quilts, bags, and other items made using the Iowa Shop Hop fabric if you go to their website.

We headed east and decided to start at the farthest shop on our list and work our way back. So we headed for Quilting Connection in Ames. It is a HUGE shop with lots of gorgeous fabrics. The clerks were all wearing Shop Hop fabric aprons, I wish I would've gotten a picture!  I managed to find a couple batiks I couldn't live without!

 I mean, really, could you have passed this one up?

 I will definitely head back to this shop again in the future!

 Block Party Studios in Nevada was our next stop....what an awesome place!  I tried to post a link to their website, but it just won't load! They are on Facebook, too.

 Dianne is excited to be here!

 They print lots of their own cute sayings, and have patterns and kits to go with them.

 Yea, we found a few things here.....don't worry, Karen, your husband doesn't read my blog!

I grew up on a farm in Iowa, and we always had Farmall tractors. Plus my husband worked for International Harvester for many years, so I really HAD to get his fabric!

 They gave us a little saying with our shop hop 6" square....it will make a cute mug rug!

 I love these fabrics and really need more reds in my stash. I don't tend to use red as much as other colors, not sure why.  Plus I love the little girls ironing, that is one of Block Party's prints.

We saw some Snap Happy bags made up using fat quarters here and I knew this would be perfect for one! So skipping ahead to yesterday, I did get one made!

 I have enough fabric left, so I just might make a little one too. We visited seven shops on Friday, so more on that tomorrow. Off to quilt!