Laume's Studio

I got an e-mail yesterday that the local quilt shop was closing it's doors. It's a small shop in a small town and I knew that the owners, who are friends, had been struggling to make it support itself. So, I'm not completely surprised, but I'm still sad for them. And for me. It was
nice to have a quilt store so close by (within walking distance if you've got a good pair of tennis shoes) for emergency quilting supplies (yes, there IS such a thing as an emergency quilting purchase!) or just when I wanted to drop by to chat and fondle some new fabric.

I stopped by the shop today to lend some moral support and discovered that everything in the shop was 40% to 50% off, so I ended up lending quite a bit of financial support as well.

I bought three Australian quilt magazines and a book on scrapbook quilting.

Five skeins of wool for knitting scarves, a purse... who knows. Maybe some felting. It was hard to select colors. I had so many colors in my arms I started to drop skeins all over the place. My friends thought I was very amusing. I finally chose to put back the mustard gold, pine green, and odd pinkish brick color yarn back.

Fabric was one yard cuts only. The large piece on the left is a green fairy frost, the middle is two yards of a bee pattern batik (I love bee images since I read The Secret Life of Bees this spring), and another yard of orange batik on the right. I almost didn't notice the lovely FQ six packs on the top of the photo. Same thing as the yarn, I started pulling out packages until my arms were full and then slowly but surely I put packages back in the bin until I was pared down to the "have to have's".

While I was there shopping and visiting, a woman came into the shop saying she was passing through town and was happy to hear that Susanville had a quilt shop.

My friend replied "Not for very long it doesn't."

The customer hestitated at the door and then asked "Well, are you still open for the next half hour?" We all laughed.

The customer was delighted to hear that everything was on sale and started piling up serious stacks of bolts. While she was shopping, my friends the owners and I kept gabbing and we started discussing this local business and that local business which has recently closed down.

The customer paused and asked "Did we arrive just before the entire town disappeared?"

No. We've had a few new shops opening up recently as well, but the town has definitely been shifting in the types of businesses it supports in the last year. It will be interesting to see what changes the rest of the year brings.
I didn't get this fabric at the quilt shop, I got it at Walmart a few weeks ago. But since I'm showing you new fabrics, I thought I'd throw this in as well. It's got these great multi-colored nubby lines in a rough tie-dyed cotton. I bought small amounts of the top three and several yards of the brown at the bottom to possibly use as a curtain or drape.


I had a book to return to the library and found they'd restocked (and raised the prices) of the Book Sale shelves. I still only paid a dollar a book so I can't really complain. I found these four art and design books plus a much larger stack of novels and nonfiction that I posted about over at Beach Treasure.