Lancaster Trip

The trip to Lancaster was just a blast.  Cathy & I had great traveling weather straight to Ladyfingers Sewing in Oley, PA.  A terrific shop owned by Gail Kessler of Andover Fabrics.  Gail & her staff are sweet and quite helpful!  After knowing Gail on facebook for quite a while I enjoyed meeting her in person.  I did not know that there are 123 colors of Dimples!  Oh my goodness I needed a bib in this place.  Okay, yes that happens a lot in quilt shops.   I very nearly talked Cathy into purchasing fat quarters of the entire line.  Almost.

I purchased a deep dark rich purple batik and an incredibly bright orange and some Superior Thread – an Emerald Green Metallic for “Moon over Manhattan”.  For some reason as I type the purple might be for Brooklyn…”Bridge to Brooklyn” seems just right and ideas start floating through my head… I see more thread shopping in my future.

Superior Threads will be debuting their new silk line “Kimono” in the spring, I’ve heard June.  Oh dear…I foresee another shopping trip for me!

Thursday night we met up with some folks from the old Alex Anderson message board.  Meeting Howdy and SmileDarlin‘  finally was terrific.  We’d been playing tag at Neen’s for a couple of years now.  Both Cheryl and Lori are just welcoming and sweet.   After dinner the group had show & tell, I dashed out after the 3rd person because I was staying with Julie that night and wanted a chance to chat with her.  Julie is a new quilter and is quite the natural.  She’s getting quite good with her Bernina 440QE.  She had a quilt on the machine while I was there and her skill level is very good for a beginner.  I got to play with her machine Friday morning before we dashed out to the quilt show to finish a wee bit of quilting on her son’s quilt.  One of the best things about spending time with Jules is that she’s quite funny and tells great stories about her kids…she kept us laughing.  And kindly brought me to a store where I could get jammies because I’d left mine at home.

Our first quilt shop that morning was Piece by Piece where Cheryl works.  If you’re ever in Ephrata stop by, it’s a great shop with fabulous classroom space.  I purchased the 4 patch stacked posie by HD Designs to possibly teach at one of the local quilt shops.  I’m going to make a small one to get the technique as soon as I can.

Next stop – Liberty for the parking and shuttle to the main show.  We walked around these vendors were fab!  I purchased some of the Robert Kaufman Radiance line that a shop (not on line yet).  They purchased prepared for dyeing and dyed the fabric.  Oh my goodness!  I’m in love!!!  Totally.  I had Elizabeth Rosenberg & Benedicte Caniell laughing as I told them about the feel of the cloth!  I purchased some Aurifil thread that matches the color perfectly.  Saturday I went back and bought more of the Radiance.  I have not been so excited about a new fabric line since I was first introduced to Moda Marbles and learned about batiks!

I stopped by the Hobbs booth and purchased a queen size Tuscany Silk Batting. I have several things in mind for this including “Moon Over Manhattan” and the Radiance pieces.  I can hardly wait to see how this quilts.

I’ll get some pics up tomorrow or Saturday of who I got to meet in person, other stops we made and how funny Charlotte Angotti is!

Teri