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My great road-trip-mate for this PR weekend was Connie of Couturesmith who is not only a blast, but she’s multi talented, she’s raised 5 lovely daughters, lots of pigs, made wedding dresses, plays guitar and, of course – sews.  Turns out she also reads, plays baseball, golf and has a great sense of humour.  Of course, I knew all of this when suggesting a 6 hour road trip. 

I had only two hitches; first I forgot my camera, so was reduced to my Blackberry Camera – the second was my bank card which was ‘compromised’ the morning of the trip.  This after alerting the bank I’d be in the US, checking funds, making sure that I could use interac and also finding out which ATMs I could use for free!    So no interac and they would only release my bank card when I was actually at an ATM to get some cash.  Luckily it probably reduced my purchases, although I’m still thinking I should have bought more at Fields!

Oh, did I mention Connie’s also a great shopper?  She had mapped out 3 detour shopping highlights on our way down.   The first was the Fabric Gallery, in which the owner displays the gorgeous fabrics in colour co-ordinated groups.   This jewel of a shop is one of the stores you see in the “finefabricstores.com” ad in Threads magazine – in fact the owner told us she organizes this group of independent fabric stores.  I was a bit hesitant to spend all my money in the first store, which I could easily have done.  I did end up with the gorgeous breton stripe ponte rayon knit in black and white (below)

Red Stretch Cotton & Black and White Breton-stripe Ponte

Our second stop was Fields Fabrics.  Totally worth it – as a matter of fact probably worth a 4 hour trip from Toronto for a shopping day there.   The store we were in was about the size of two Fabriclands.  They had a great selection of knits especially.  Connie got some great Polartec print fleece that’s printed on one side and some laminated Amy Butler fabric.  The have a huge selection of quilting cottons in designer prints (Fabricland here doesn’t carry the licensed, expensive lines).  The other wonderful thing was that both the Fabric Gallery and Fields carry extensive pattern collections from independent pattern companies like Amy Butler etc.  and books, which was great to see.  All I got there was a Kwik Sew pattern, which was 20% off:

 
 
 
After Fields, we headed to a nearby Target, not sure if we would see another (sure enough there was one about a block from where we were staying smack dab downtown!) I scored a genuine pleather metallic gold messenger bag for $12, a notebook and a make up highlight cream $1!!  We enjoyed looking at their Calypso designer wear which was quite lovely and had great embellishment details.   By then it was after 3 and we hit a drive through Burger King for much needed sustenance. 
 
After a detour around an accident, 7 incidents of venison roadkill, $8 in toll roads we finally made it to our destination!!
 
I’m blogged out now-more later!  But I leave you with the rest of my purchase pics:

Rayon Crepe, Linen Knit, Silk Ottoman

 

Soutache Ribbons PurchasesPatternswap Haul