Trip to Fabric and Quilt Country

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Reported by Susie Ziegler

Mothers Day was coming up and my mom and I decided that for our celebration, we needed a getaway to a place we love where we can wallow in traditional crafts and foods. Our place is a few hours outside of Chicago in the Northern Indiana Amish country around Shipshewana, Indiana.

We deposited the husbands and kids at the hotel pool (not everyone there is Amish, after all) and we set off to begin our adventures at the local general store. Amish goods are available here for the locals:


For me, the real draw is all the fabric. Tons and tons of fabric! Mom was looking for a cute traditional cotton to use for curtains in a guest bedroom. There were almost too many choices!

*Gasp* I'm in heaven! There are a few large fabric and quilting stores and I took a lot of photos to show you.

This little corner of batiks is like stepping right into a rainbow. Look at all the finished quilts on display!

I love the saturated large scale prints by Kaffe Fasset:



This is a literal boatload of fat quarters. A fat quarter is an 18"x24" rectangle of fabric and is a very convenient size to collect:


These fat quarters are folded into these cute star packages.


Fabric manufacturers, particularly Moda, offer up a whole collection of fabrics in these Jelly Rolls. You can sew up a lot of cool projects with these collections of 2.5 inch strips.


Way down on a lower shelf, I discovered these tea towel panels. I'm pretty sure these were a nice linen/cotton blend.

It really is easy to get overwhemed by the choices. In that case, you can just pick up a quilt kit.

In the shops we went to, every quilt on display on the wall was available as a kit or pattern.


Here are some little doll panels to sew up.

Some quilters and stitchers are ready to branch out into other fibers. We found this gorgeous hand-dyed wool felt:

We found beautiful yarns in a little shop we hadn't seen during our previous trips:


Shipshewana has one of the best antique malls around. Look at the vintage linens available:


Here is a vintage granny square wool blanket. Granny squares sure are hip again!

I love the fabric yo-yo's used here on this applique coverlet. I reviewed some yo yo makers for Craft Critique HERE:

This vintage quilt store is one of our favorites:

I loved this needlepoint pillow:

Then there are all the tools and notions! Look at all the hand quilting templates. You lay these down on your quilt top and mark it with chalk, disappearing marker, or a light pencil and hand quilt to your heart's content:

Many of the quilts we saw for sale were hand quilted, probably using templates like these.

You can also hand quilt in straight lines. Hand quilting is very meditative. I have finished just a few hand quilting projects, but I have since switched to machine quilting.


These looked like some very cool looking rulers:

Doesn't every crafter have a button and ribbon collection?

We saw all of this in just one Saturday! We did take a couple breaks to have coffee and pie, and we picked up the rest of the family for the family-style chicken dinner at one of the local restaurants.

Where do you go to sample the local handcrafts and traditional artistry in your area?