The Longest Day (part 1)

Last Saturday, my friend Linda and I started out at 6:00am fully commited to visiting the other nine Quilt Shops on the Hop. We drove straight through to Ceres, Ca. with only one quick stop (those of you of a certain age will understand what that stop was for). We arrived at Fields of Fabric just after they opened at 9:00am and there was already a line out the door. It was a cute little house with small rooms and due to the number of shopping ladies and the lack of good light, I only got these pictures.

Here's Linda in front of the shop

This is their version of the quilt.

As we were waiting in line to pay for our blocks,  I spotted this fabric and even though I knew I couldn't buy somthing at each shop except the block, I couldn't resist this cute fabric with baby sayings on it.

Soon, you will see it as cute little baby bibs and burp cloths for my baby Emmy. (No Jane, I didn't get anything made from this yet, but notice I said "soon" LOL)

You can click on the picture to enlarge so you can read all the cute little baby words.

We had decided to start at the fartherest site north and work our way back down the state.

Turlock wasn't far away.

They had a great front window display area and took advantage of it with quilts and antiques. Even though it is really difficult to get a good picture through a glass window, you get the idea.

Their Quilt

Thought I would explain about the quilt. Each store did a block for each of the 13 store's quilts, so each store has a finished quilt with one each of the store's blocks. Each store chose how best to put it together and sold the pattern for setting the quilt.

I will show you tomorrow which quilt Linda and I chose for our setting method. We have the 13 block patterns and fabric and will start on Friday at Strawberry Patches during a Sit and Stitch class.

This is the owner of Cloth and Quilts. She was really sweet and I wish I had written down her name.

She had her cute daughters helping with giving out the goodie bags and signing people up for the prize basket they had at each store. (There was more than one reason to try to make each store....you should have seen these more than generous baskets.)

Keeping with our commitment to visit all the stores in one day, we headed out of Turlock towards Hilmar, when our car just pulled over and stopped as we saw

this

and this

they were setting up tables like

this

It says Boutique Crawl. There was a stretch limo and carloads of ladies just like we were experiencing on the Shop Hop. How cute, an organized tour for Antique hunting.  We know about antique hunting.  We just took that wonderful weekend trip to the coast a few weeks ago. So I am afraid we slipped and fell off the "Shop Hop" wagon and spent some of our precious time browsing these stores.

Okay sheepishly, we looked at each other and agreed we needed to get on with the Quilt Shop Hop and leave the cute Antique stores for another day.

After getting directions to Hilmar (wherever the heck that is) we were off  and running again.  On the way out of Turlock I saw a couple of quaint churches before I thought about my camera. (Kinda have a church theme going here ) Here's one I caught out the window as we were turning a corner.

 

Sew Central Quiltworks in Hilmar.

These are petunias and they were huge and so pretty.

This store is a Gammill quiliting machine dealer and their emphasis was largely on machines.

This is their quilt. The center of the quilt was machine quilted, but you had to be up close to see that.

Leaving Hilmar and heading to Oakhurst, we could tell by the map, it was quite a ways and we  were feeling a little "faint" from all this shopping.  This sign caused our car to pull over and stop again.

Here I am.

We asked prices and each bought a small container to eat  in the car and as Linda collects Cherries to display and decorate with, we asked the price of a box (empty).  It was really a cute box. The lady at the stand kept saying $30.00.

We kept asking the price of an empty one (do you think she thought we were a  little strange?) She finally "got" it and said $2.00. Linda was pleased with that. Can you tell?

So off to Oakhurst with cherries to sustain us.  We thought we would never get there, but we did and tomorrow night I will post the other half of our "Longest Day".  I know these posts are long, but I just didn't want to leave anything out.  I have a cute story to tell about Oakhurst.