Thimble Pleasures ~ A full-service quilt shop

‘Not long ago, I told you about visiting three quilt shops in Marietta, George using my GPS and my Quilter’s Travel Companion book.  Well, Chris and I recently drove to Crystal Beach, Canada on vacation and yes, we visited two really nice shops along the way!  Most importantly, I had my camera this time and took some photos with permission of the shop owners.

The first shop is The Mt. Pleasant Quilting Company in York, New York.  Barbara J. Miller is the owner of this adorable shop located between Batavia and Rochester, NY.  In the heart of dairy farm country, surrounded by fields and pastures, this shop started out as the attached garage to Barbara’s house and grew with an addition into the lovely shop it is today.  How nice to get up each morning and open the door to your garage and “walk” to work!  I LOVE, LOVE the fabric in this shop, along with all the great ideas!  (This s actually my second visit to this shop…….).  Barbara’s shop offers fun things for her customers, too.  There is a “shop hop” organized annually that takes a group of quilters by buss to three different shops in one day, starting with coffee and breakfast at Barbara’s, then lunch out and returning to The Mt. Pleasant shop for dinner!  New in the shop on this visit was wool felting kits – I bought several!

The second shop we visited was outside Pittsburgh, PA, in a lovely community called Allison Park.  ‘Having read about The Quilt Company and its owner, Karen Montgomery, in several magazines I had hoped to see this shop last year, but our travel timing didn’t work out.  So, I was determined to make it this year and we were not disappointed!  Karen and her husband custom designed this farm-house style shop.  It’s open, bright, and airy, with high ceilings for showing quilts and definitely a “destination” quilt shop.  Karen designs her own quilts and fabric.  She has a series of 10X16 inch pillow patterns that are seasonal themes and feature button embellishments.  This summer’s pillow is a beach scene with surf boards standing upright in the sand and the buttons are three pairs of flip flops!!  Too cute! The patterns include a snowman, firecrackers, etc. – all avaialbe on their website www.thequiltcompany.com .

 Karen’s Golden Triangles quilt had just been featured in McCall’s Quilting America Quilts Hometown Favorites (Spring 2010) magazine and was displayed in the shop with pattern and kits available.  Karen writes a blog off her shop’s web page and tells of her travels and quilt projects. She is the originator of the 9 Patch Project on Facebook.  There are nice places for lunch or ice cream near the shop and it’s located next to the golf course where the US Women’s Open golf tournament will be played. A lovely area just 11 miles from downtown Pittsburgh.  Put it on your must see list!

Importantly, support the independent quilt shops!  They keep our passion alive!

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 31st, 2010 at 6:46 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.