Lancaster Pennsylvania Trip

My friends Pam, Deanna, and I recently visited Lancaster, Pennsylvania on a quick 2-day trip. My it was great fun! While there I wanted to do two things:  visit the Old Country Store to see the special quilt exhibit that included some of Jo Morton's quilts, and eat a fresh baked pretzel! Pam's list included visiting about 6 or 7 quilt/fabric stores, and golly, didn't we have to go with her ;-)

The Old Country Store is a delightful shop with lots of wonderful fabrics, kits to make wall quilts or tote bags, pottery, cookbooks, local candies, candles, and fabric crafts.

Upstairs on the 2nd floor of the OCS is a smaller gift shop and the special quilt exhibit area. The last time I visited, they had quilts made by Maryanne Fonz and Liz Porter--they are also 2 favorite quilting "mentors" of mine.

I have been a Jo Morton fan for 12 years now, I led her first Little Women Group 1 in 2000 in St. Charles, Missouri. I have led the Jo Morton Little Women group at JoJos in Chesterfield Virginia now for 4 years. Her quilts are just little gems, so I was delighted to finally see some of them up close and personal.

This is a pretty big quilt by Jo's standard, a beautiful Ocean Waves quilt in red/green and white. Her tan border is so unexpected, yet it finishes off the quilt very handsomely.

One thing that surprised me about Jo's quilts are how flat they are! She uses Blue Mountain Mist batting, which I continue to search for and am unable to find anywhere! The quilting is done by several different long-arm quilters, and in each quilt it is exquisitely done.

This tiny quilt sitting on a shelf was made by one of the employees at the Old Country Store as a tribute to Jo. The redware pottery is locally made, and the 3 pieces of fabric--red/cheddar/green--represent a typical historic Lancaster PA area quilt color scheme.

The next 2 photos are of the "Log Cabin Quilt Shop", which I think was my favorite shop of the ones we visited. They had this beautifully quilted quilt hanging outside the shop:

Even though we had our trusty Garmin with us, we managed to take a wrong turn, but look what we found! An incredibly beautiful covered bridge! The beams inside were just amazing, I couldn't resist getting a photo. What you don't see is the beautiful stream under the bridge, and the beautiful open field next to the bridge with a horse grazing in the distance. ah Pennsylvania! I can't wait to get back there!

We found a little pretzel shop next to a quilt shop...what's not to like about that? We noticed they were priced at 3 for $xx, so we had to buy 3 of them...1 for now, 1 for later, and 1 to take home to hubby. My favorite is the cinnamon/sugar kind. Yum! When we ordered the woman behind the counter asked if we minded waiting for 5 minutes while they baked our pretzels...fresh and warm from the oven, they were wonderful!

I am excited about planning another trip to the Lancaster area. They are holding the Quilt Odyssey quilt show towards the end of July in nearby Hershey (yes, Hershey of the Hershey chocolate fame), and another one of my quilt mentors--Bonnie Hunter--will be there teaching classes. Hopefully I'll be able to attend!

Till next time, keep stitchin' and enjoy those pretzels!

Mary