Driving Around Western Montana

I made a quick run to Missoula yesterday—I have a whole list of people who have expressed interest in accompanying me on one of those trips, but sometimes my decision to go is made at the last minute based on what’s happening here. Also, I try to leave by 7 a.m. I didn’t think that was enough lead time to ask someone to ride shotgun. Don’t worry, though, I likely will be making a few more trips this summer and I’ll try to plan the next one in advance.

It took me a bit longer than two hours to get there as I had to stop at one of the farm stores and pick up a new chicken waterer. The one for our big chickens sprang a leak. Elysian brought over a spare and set it up for our chickens to use until I got home with the new one.

The weather was lovely for a drive, but, tourists. Ugh. So many tourists. I wouldn’t mind them so much if they would just go the speed limit.

Joann Fabrics was my first stop, but I didn’t find anything on their remnant rack. Just behind Joanns is another strip mall with a new-to-me Janome/Bernina dealer and fabric store. I am not sure how long they have been there, but I haven’t been to Missoula in a while. Perhaps it is my age, but I get very annoyed when I go into a store and no one greets me, or when I have to stand and wait for service while two or three employees mill around trying to find anything else to do besides help customers. An elderly lady came in to the store a few minutes after me. She went to the counter and said she had called about having a machine serviced. The woman behind the counter said, “Okay, go ahead and bring it in.” I looked at this petite lady and thought she might need help (which ought to have been the responsibility of the store employee!), so I asked her if I could help her bring the machine in (it was a huge, computerized Bernina). And finally, after another five minutes of me wandering around looking at stuff, someone hollered from the back of the store and asked if they could help me find anything. I said, “No, thanks,” and walked out.

On to the next stop.

Quite a while ago, on one of these trips, I stumbled upon a quilt store in a very strange location. It is in the basement of what looks like a typical office building. The first floor of this office building is a gym. The only way to get to the basement level is via elevator. (There has to be a set of stairs somewhere, to be compliant with fire code, but I haven’t been able to find them yet.) The elevator leads to a store with bolts of fabric on shelves and in piles. Off the main room are a couple of smaller rooms with shelves containing even more bolts of fabric, some of which have never been unwrapped from their plastic coverings. I think the store owner makes an attempt, at least, to keep fabrics together in their collections. Other bolts of fabric, though, are stacked here and there with no organization whatsoever. I have to make about three trips around the store to orient myself.

[My mother may remember a yarn store in Aurora, Ohio, which had a similar stocking system of bags and bags of yarns piled everywhere, including the much-beloved Brunswick Germantown…]

The likelihood of finding out-of-print fabrics in these kinds of stores is higher than normal, which makes shopping at them great fun despite the chaos. I had in the back of my head the possibility of finding some of the background fabric from this quilt block:

I lamented that I had made this block from some remnants and had no idea where the fabric came from. Alas, the store had none of this particular fabric, but I recognized a bolt of fabric from the same collection—a different print—and was able to look at the name and designer. It’s from the Soho Chic collection by Sandy Gervais. A quick Google search when I got home yielded up the name of a fabric store in Texas that still has stock, so I ordered a few yards from them. I probably won’t be able to find that green dragonfly fabric, but I likely can find something similar (and perhaps a bit more sedate, because this is awfully busy, much as I love it).

I did buy a couple of yards of Kona at that store, in a dark gray that will be great for binding.

By then, it was time for lunch, so I headed to the Good Food store. This is a huge grocery store along the lines of a Whole Foods or Wegmans, but it’s local to Missoula. I remember it in its previous, much tinier location. They moved about 10 years ago and took over an old grocery store and the hardware store next to it. I got some curried chicken salad and a drink to go and also picked up a few specialty items I can’t find here in Kalispell.

After lunch, I headed back to downtown Missoula to The Confident Stitch. This is fast becoming one of my favorite stores. It’s not large, but Kate, the owner, is a savvy businesswoman who is earning herself a solid national reputation. The customer service is on point, both in person and by mail order. The Confident Stitch carries some higher-end quilting cottons, but they really shine in their garment fabric selection. I bought enough of a soy/cotton/spandex knit in a lovely grass green to make a T-shirt.

Missoula has one other quilt store that I did not visit on this trip. I needed to leave Missoula early enough to have time to stop at the Amish store between there and home. I go to the Amish store mostly to buy fabric, as they have a respectable selection of Kona (although they, too, were out of black). Last summer, when I was there with Margaret, I bought one of those pincushion/thread catcher combos. I was hoping to buy another one to keep by my industrial Necchi, but they didn’t have any in stock. The Amish woman who was cutting the Kona for me said they would ask the lady who makes them to make a few more, so I have a legitimate reason to go back in a couple of weeks. I also bought some chocolate-covered espresso beans for the husband.

I came home, unloaded all my treasures, set up the new chicken waterer, and made a big salad for dinner. I have a lunch date with a 6 year-old today, and I think it is going to be great fun. Details tomorrow.