how silly do i feel! i have been green with envy reading other bloggers entries about all the great quilt shops they frequent, the whole time complaining to myself that the only fabric stores in the area are joann fabrics and hancock fabrics. (totally not the same thing!) well i am a dummy because wouldn’t you know, there IS a quilt shop in my area! DUH! and you know what makes me feel even more silly?! it’s not even 10 minutes from my parents house! yes, that’s right, the same house i lived in for nearly 18 years!!! ok, granted, i don’t know when the shop opened and it is in a shopping center i never went to when i lived there, but still!

i did some research when i was shopping online for other fabrics and came across a “where to buy” for some of the designers i liked (yes, i really did this months ago but got sidetracked and just never got around to really looking into it!) in any event that is how i came to find The Artful Quilter! i decided to go look for it today when i was running some errands and was pleasantly surprised by how much they had! the people there were super friendly and it seemed that everyone that walked through that door they knew by name! and they were just listed as one of the top ten quilt shops in the Quilt Sampler Magazine! so they’ve just made themselves another loyal shopper! for my first trip i did really good and showed great restraint! (really only because i just spent a boat-load online!) i felt like such an amateur because i only had three bolts of fabric and the women in front of me had between 10-20 bolts! gosh, i only wish the day would come where i could justify spending that much money in a fabric shop in one trip!! well, that and i just wish the day would come where i had the room to store it all! haha!