Colorado Quilt Shop Tour

Hi all -

To celebrate my last few days of freedom before starting my new job, my friend Cindy and I decided to take our dogs and hit the road for a tour of quilt shops and dog parks in Colorado. So I picked up a copy of the Quilters' Travel Companion and we hit the road on Thursday morning.

We started at her house in Louisville and went first to the dog park to tire out the dogs for the long trip. Then on to Golden to visit the Golden Quilt Company. Unfortunately, we didn't pay attention to the clock so we got there before the shop opened. Fortunately, I realized that we had left the Quilters' Travel Companion back at Cindy's house, so we went back to Louisville and the quilt shop was open when we got back to Golden. :) It was a really nice shop so we were glad we didn't miss it.

After Golden, we headed west to Idaho Springs. There used to be a quilt shop there, but it wasn't in the book and we couldn't find it so we continued on to Georgetown. In Georgetown, we visited The Quilted Purl. This is a quaint little shop with some quilting and knitting supplies, but they didn't have much that was of interest to us. So we had lunch and headed to Leadville to visit Mountain Top Quilts. This shop was much bigger than it looked on the outside. It was 3 rooms packed full of vintage fabric, buttons, patterns, linens and much more. It was a lot of fun to look around!

From Leadville we headed to Buena Vista to visit Bev's Stitchery. This shop was bigger than the others we had visited so far. It had quilting supplies as well as other needlework supplies. From there, we headed to Fringe in Salida. This is another shop with knitting as well as quilting supplies. We really liked this shop as the fabric selection more closely matched our tastes. Our next stop was Canon City, but we arrived there after the quilt shops had already closed, so we headed to Colorado Springs for the evening.

Cindy was in charge of finding us a nice, dog-friendly accommodation and she did a great job! We stayed at the La Quinta Inn in southern Colorado Springs. The room was reasonably priced with no extra fee for the dogs and breakfast was included. Once we checked in, we went looking for a dog park. That search wasn't so successful and a bitter cold wind was blowing, so we decided to eat dinner and just walk the dogs around the hotel. We were all pretty tired after our long day of driving, so I think we were all happy to call it a day. We hadn't hit very many shops, but we'd traveled a lot of miles and had seen some pretty beautiful landscape, so it was a great day.

Friday promised to be a different type of day. Now that we were on the populated front range, there would be many quilt shops to visit. In fact, we started out with a list of 19 shops and headed out to see how many we could hit. But before the shops opened, it was time to find a dog park. Cindy found a great dog park near where we were. It was a fenced in 25-acre area that included a running stream. It was wonderful and the dogs had a great time! Now we could get down to business....

This was a really full and fun day. I'll try to get the places right, but we did so much that my memory might be faulty. I apologize for any mistakes. We definitely started at the Quilter's Gift Shop. This is the place that publishes the Quilters' Travel Companion. They aren't a true quilt shop, but instead sell quilting related gifts. Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately for my wallet), most of their stock was packed up for an upcoming show, but I did find a couple of gifts for friends and also got a couple of Jim Shore figurines on sale for $10, so I had to have them. I just love his stuff!

From there we went to Nana's Quilt Cottage. This shop was okay, but nothing out of the ordinary. Next was Mill Outlet Fabric which was huge! By the look of the place, I expected to find good prices but they charged the going rate for fabric. Luckily, they were having a 20% off everything sale while we were there and I found some nice discounted fabric, so it was a good stop.  Then we moved on to LadyBug Hill Quilts. We both really liked this store and wished it was closer to home. It was much bigger than it looked from the outside and they had a wide variety of wonderful fabrics. I will definitely go back if I'm ever in the area again. High Country Quilts finished our time in Colorado Springs. I'd been to this store before, but it'd been something like 10-15 years ago. This is another shop that is on my return list if I get back to Colorado Springs.

It was time to head north to Monument to Find Homespun Hearth, which wasn't in the travel guide but Cindy found it on her Ipad. We drove around in circles quite a bit, but we were never able to find it so we moved on to Castle Rock and Sew-Ciety.  The name is certainly creative, but the shop was nothing special, just okay. Of course, my memories of this shop might be a little warped by the ladies who work there, who I found a bit annoying.

Our next stop was High Prairie Quilts in Parker. This is another shop I'd visited before, many years ago. It's really nice to see these shops that are able to stick around! High Prairie Quilts is another nice shop with a good selection of fabric, samples everywhere and a lot of nice patterns. Time was starting to get tight, so now we rushed to Holly's Quilt Cabin in Centennial. This was another good shop with plenty of fabric to choose from. Finally, we rushed to the Creative Needle in Littleton. I wanted to visit this shop because they sponsor the quilt shows on PBS and I really appreciate that. Our luck ended here and the ladies put the "closed" sign on the door as we were walking up, so we weren't able to go inside. So this shop will go on our "next time" list.

It was a really fun couple of days on the road with a good friend and our little best friends. Well, her little best friend and my big guy I guess would be more accurate. Sorry there are no pictures. I did bring a little camera, but I was having fun just relaxing and enjoying the trip so I never took it out.

Now I've just finished my first week at my new job. I think it was a really good change for me. I really like all of the people there. It's nice being in a smaller organization again. I'm just the 11th employee at Global Weather Corp (globalweathercorp.com). They just moved into some nice new office space right before my start. The new space is right next to a nice dog park and Lance (my dog) is welcome in the office, so that's perfect. It'll take a while for me to come completely up-to-speed, but I was able to make some contributions in my first week, so that's a nice feeling. I'm in a cubicle, which is a bummer after 23 years of my own office, but I have some nice headphones and there aren't very many people in the office, so it's not a big deal. And I'll be able to telecommute a lot once I know enough.

Happy quilting!

Nancy


Nancy