A North Central Alberta Fabric Journey...

Summertime and the living is easy .....This is one of my favorite summer songs from " Porgy and Bess"...

On Thursday, a dear friend Lou and I went off fabric shopping in the Edmonton vicinity...
Our first stop was a lovely little shop in a town called Mundare. Mundare is about an hour's drive north-east of Edmonton and the home of some great Ukrainian sausage. The shop's name is "The Chicken Coop". Here you can see the shop from the street. Come on in and meet the owner.

The owner, Val, has some lovely home decor pieces, decorative ware and fabulous fabrics and patterns. She is as friendly and welcoming as her smile.
Don't you love the beautiful wall hangings that you can see on the wall behind her!

I loved her wonderful selection of batik fabrics- the colors were rich and sumptuous-(some of them are seen in the bottom row) we wanted to buy them all.. There were some great chicken designs and fun applique patterns that had been made into samples.

And how about that cute baby quilt with the animals on the wall... It would look great wrapped around a sweet little one..

Here are our two piles of treasures that we found in the shop stacked in front of Val. My choices to add to my stash are the pile on the left, and ,the lovely lady with Val. is my dear friend Lou. She found some real beauties too. I love the gorgeous sunflower batik fabric she chose that is on the top.


Here you can see the Mundare grain elevator. These elevators used to be common sites around the province of Alberta. However they are quickly disappearing. My mother bought me a quilted wall hanging of a grain elevator a number of years ago. It hangs in my sewing room and reminds me of my prairie girl roots.
We stopped in a little place in Lamont and I found " The Hungry Caterpillar panel and fabrics. They had almost all of the fabrics but I am still looking for the fabric that has all the fruit and food on it. If I don't find it locally, I will check on line for it.
I love Eric Carle's books and would like to make the quilt for my kindergarten. He also did the illustrations for " Brown Bear, Brown Bear" and I have fabrics to make that quilt too. Looks like my project list is growing still...


I thought you might find some countryside interesting.Here in Western Canada, we are known for our prairie sky - you can see for miles on a clear day.

After we left Lamont, we stopped to get some lunch from Tim Hortons, a sandwich and donut place that is famous across Canada. We have Starbucks and Second Cup but when someone says they are going to Tims, it usually means coffee where you can get a double double... ( I think that means two cream and two sugar in a large coffee-) I am a tea drinker- Tim's is famous for having a contest called Roll up the Rim to win... By the way. Tim was a hockey player for the Toronto Maple Leafs in the 60's.


We are back driving again and we passed many beautiful fields. This canola field is ripe- it has quite a powerful smell and is a gorgeous yellow. We left the country highway to join up with a ringroad called the Anthony Henday. It is a ring road around the city and so we drove from the North to the South and headed West to another community called Stony Plain. The metropolitan area of Edmonton and surrounding communities is about a million people. It is quite the contrast of city and countryside.

After about an hour, we arrive in Stony Plain, where there are two quilt stores there - one is called Sawdust and Tangled Threads which has lots of country and civil war type fabrics. The shop is in an big rambling house which seems fitting for the fabrics they have for sale. I have bought the Buggy Barn patterns in their shop. On this day, I bought a wildlife panel of bears which I am thinking of using for a quilt for my father.
The other shop is called Sewing with Class and, while we did not buy any fabric there this time, we admired the gorgeous samples on the wall. They had some quilts made in patterns we already owned, but have not yet found the time to make.

I seem to have more than a few of those sorts of patterns in my collection. Some even have the fabric to go with the patterns. So many ideas running around in my head - I sometimes feel like the hamster running around on one of those wheels. You know that hamsters can go very fast in the wheel but they don't seem to get very far... LOL

This past week I have been pretty low key. I had not been feeling well so I needed to do those things one does when one doesn't feel well. You have to go get checked out. Everything came out fine and I am feeling better.

In between doctor and dental checkups, I have still been putt-ing along cleaning out spaces that don't get cleaned out often during the school year. The house is beginning to look better, the sewing room tidier, and, perhaps I might still get to my current quilt projects. VBG
I have finally chosen a border for one of my quilt projects- I auditioned more than a few pieces, for this particular couch quilt. I will show you a photo when I post next time.

Today's mail brought a lovely giveaway package containing some handmade pocket mirrors made by Ebony love Thanks so much for the lovely mirrors - they are too cute and perfect for a purse. Do stop over to her blog and check out her lovely things.

Lastly, don't forget to stop at my post yesterday and check out those wonderful giveaways going on in blog land. The blog posts are interesting and the bloggers are all wonderful writers sharing their life and their loves. The giveaways are really a bonus. I continue to meet so many wonderful people through my blogging experience.
Thanks for taking the time to stop by for a visit. I am always glad to hear from you.
Your comments are very much appreciated. Until next time, be well.
Warmest regards,
Anna