Traveling & Quilting

Is it SAD that I can't go anywhere without thinking of quilting? I look for quilts everywhere, I look for places to "shop quilting" - and I look EVERYWHERE!!!

My DH and I recently went to Santa Fe for a few days. Thankfully, I could look on my dumb "smart phone" to find out if there were any quilt shops locally, since I'd run out of time while still home. Thankfully, there is a shop called "Santa Fe Quilting" in town - and it is open, even on Sundays! (blog title links to store's website)

I was grateful that DH agreed to stop at the shop on Sunday before heading to the airport. The shop was great - lots of good patterns, and tons of batiks - my favorite "stashable" fabric!! I ended up buying 3 patterns, and several batiks...



I loved the red batik so much that I bought 2.5 yards... I hope to do something with it sooner than later - I just LOVE it! I ended up with 1-yard pieces of 3 of the other fabrics, and 1/2 yards of the others. A few of the prints came from their "Santa Fe" shelf, which was somewhat filled with southwestern batik prints. While they had quite a few, and I bought 3 or 4 of 'em, I struggle to decide how to use these particular fabrics. Maybe I'll make some mug rugs for our new dining room table. Otherwise? I have no ideas...

I just love going to fabric stores when I'm traveling. I don't know if I'm looking for something new, some kind of specialized batik prints (got some fabulous pieces when on a trip to Alaska last May/June!), or what it is. Maybe I just want to fill up my "quilting passport" with unfamiliar shops? Heck - maybe it's just another reason to quilty-shop!! But, the truth is that I'm done with school (yayyy!!), and now that I'm able to sit down and sew some, I want quilty reminders of the places we go.

Is there a 12-step program for this?