An early start and an hour and a half driving through gods own country and we arrived at the small town of Perham.
There was a four-day celebration underway at the Bay Window Quilt Shop re-cently named as one of the top 10 quilt shops in the United States.
Walking into this shop sure gladdens the heart.
You know the feeling.
“Which way to I look first” sort of thing.
There are 5 or 6 rooms upstairs featuring different genre in quilting, and then a huge basement downstairs.
Moda, Moda, Moda….. it always takes my eye first and vintage is heavily featured once again this year. There are little nooks and crannies full of the most interesting things like kitchen linen fun totes and they are expertly displayed. I would love to be able to do that in my house, I try, I must admit.
I’m always asked the question, what’s the trend in the USA?
I think it’s almost impossible to say, fabric trends change from region to re-gion, however Bay Window gives me a good indication because of the amount of stock in store.
Children’s prints are no longer fufu pastels and bold bright flat colours. I purchased the full range of American Jane by Sandy Klop. Re-creations of 50’s story books. The florals in the range integrate with other fabrics of that genre and they are bright mellow colours of aged paper. There are wonderful funky prints for older children too and patterns for children’s wear, tote bags and even pyjama pants.
Muddy candy colours reminiscent of the harlequin colours of the 50-60’s are wonderful and there are a lot of spots and stripes that integrate well with the multi florals.
I purchased a reproduction bark cloth for cushions for my downstairs upgrade.
I haven’t seen this fabric in Australia.
Kaffe Fasset inspired designs have had a big impact as well. Amy Butlers big florals are in the same design genre.
Downstairs the basement was abuzz with sound. Holly Taylor one of the fab-ric designers for Moda was giving a presentation on how she designs fabric.
It was really interesting, but the fabric will never be shown in Australia be-cause it is predominantly North woods designs. Deer, Elk, loons and the colours of the Minnesota North Woods.
She described how she would use the colour cards from paint shops for inspi-ration for choosing colours and explained that the base colour we love so much from Moda achieves the density of colour through multi base layering of colour.
The country colours continue to be popular through the Thimbleberries ranges and has a great following with Thimbleberries clubs meeting monthly in many quilt shop venues.
The further north you go, the more you see this sort of fabric.
Sherri K Falls showed us her designs for using fat ¼ bundles and the new Jellyroll bundles. Her patterns were simple and great for beginners and dedi-cated piecers.
After several hours of we walked to a small café that we visited last year. It’s delightful and I’ve put up photos on the web page under Long Prairie Diary.
The wooden tables had glass tops and inserted under the glass were quilt blocks. Quilts hung from the ceiling in huge quilt frames just like I’ve seen in Amish houses. The quilts are hauled to the ceiling when quilting is finished for the day making you feel like you are in a splendiferous tent. I would love to do that at home on my ceilings. They had wooden ladders wrapped in strips of chenille bedspread. Sounds strange but it looked wonderful.
In all an interesting Day