Day 2: Lisle to Rockford

Our first full morning together, we checked out of our hotel so we could be at the first quilt store, The Quilt Basket, when it opened at 10:00.   It was a cute little store with a lot of variety and the owner couldn't have been nicer.

Next, we went to Pieceful Hearts in Lisle.  This beautiful James River Blues quilt stopped us in our tracks the moment we entered the front door.  We each grabbed a kit (can you say "sew along?")   Pieceful Hearts was a wonderful store with something for everybody - reproduction fabrics, modern fabrics, batiks, flannels, lots of samples on the wall and kits made up.   They were having a lively quilt class in their beautifully set-up classroom.  The entire store was wall to wall eye candy.

Our next stop brought us to Docia, The Quilt Merchant - the first place we were accused of being Carrie Nelson stalkers.   Who?   Us?   It seems that Carrie had been there before we arrived and was spreading vicious rumours about the 3 of us!

Docia's shop was fabulous - I'd done some online business with them in the past, but seeing the shop in person was a special treat.  Docia and her family couldn't have been nicer, the store and fabrics were incredible, and we had the pleasure of meeting her very talented daughter-in-law Beth, as well.  Beth designed this awesome Nottingham Star quilt that was just inside the front door.  What a stunning quilt.   We all bought the pattern for this one, too.

She had also just received the new Jo Morton line, Annandale, and though it wasn't even out on the floor yet, Docia allowed me to purchase some of the large red floral from that line (swoon!)

Our next stop was Quilter's General Store, who was sponsoring the class we were taking on Saturday.  The shop was beautifully arranged with room after room of fabulous kits, displays and fabrics.  One of my favorite finds was this kit displayed behind the cash register.

Our final stop of the day was at Acorn Quilts.  I had searched every store we'd stopped at that day in search of orange wool for a Halloween wallhanging I'm planning.   I found the perfect orange wool at Acorn Quilts!  They had the most amazing selection of wool of any of the shops we'd visited, or the ones I've seen in Washington.

I was also intrigued by this tiny beautiful grey and black quilt and bought some of their fabulous selection of grey fabrics to plan something like this on a larger scale.

The very sweet gal that helped us took our photo next to their beautiful wool quilt.   Amazing, isn't it?

We ended our day with dinner and returned to our hotel room.   Nicole and I had this adorable bunny made out of towels in our bathroom.   We were able to preserve Towel Bunny both days we were there - he was much too cute to use!