Quilt Shops Of Luling And Lockhart Texas
Summary
Quilting Contessa took a short quilt shop visiting trip in southern Texas near Luling and Lockhart Texas. She details the shops she visited along the way.
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Quilt Shops Of Luling And Lockhart Texas
Traveling with QuiltingHub's mapping feature (called the Quilter's Trip Planner) offers a whole new adventure in driving to our daughter's house in southern Texas. Quilt shops seem to be closing nationwide, but in her area, there are several clusters within a 20-mile radius of one another. We set out to find out how they were surviving.
Editor's Note: The Trip Planner can be used to find quilt shops, guilds, museums, quilt shows, and sales around the world. If you are a quilt shop you will get better results by getting ratings and adding your sales and classes.
Thriving Quilt Shops
Yup, that's the reason they are thriving. All the shops had fabric, of course, and all had the basic needs such as needles, thread, pins, and other notions. They offered classes and had longarm services. They were active in their communities, which will be detailed below. I asked each shop owner what distinguished their shop. Why did people come to them to shop? And they gave me the same answer: the staff. Everyone we met was friendly, knowledgeable, helpful, and seemed to want to go above and beyond, if we would only ask!
Holly Dee Quilts - Luling, TX
Holly Dee Quilts is in an older part of downtown Luling. Luling is home of the decorated oil pumps and the annual Watermelon Festival. Although the outside of the building maintains its historical appearance; inside, it is upscale and modern. Denise Green, the owner, is a certified Judy Niemeyer instructor and has longarm quilted some of the quilts in the most recent Cynthia England book.
The shop was alive the day we visited. We admired the beautiful A-frame shelves built by her husband. Modern fabrics, such as Kaffe Fassett, were available as were kits, patterns, and lots of Texas fabrics, including watermelon. Many sample quilts hung on the wall. There were some pre-cuts, and some fur to make fuzzy animals.
We asked about a basket of canned goods by the door and learned that they have some donation days advertised in the local paper with a 15% discount. They provided leadership to form a quilt guild last summer and membership has already increased 50%. We got to see the fabulous guild Christmas raffle quilt and learned about a project to make pillow cases for local school children. The need grew from 100 to over 400 and still they met their goal!
Calico Crossing - Lockhart, TX
About 17 miles away in the city of Lockhart there are two shops. Calico Crossing has a homey feel like a place you would go to for quilting with your friends. As we entered, a young lady was sitting on the floor stringing fabric squares for holiday garland. Wanda greeted us and quickly shared with us her love of quilting and the community.
Calico Crossing has a more traditional feel with Moda, Benetex, and other traditional fabrics, but less on the modern end. This shop offers Row-by-Row, which Wanda says offer a good time to her customers. She also stocks "Cake Mix Recipes". Sometimes, she says, she sews one up and then cuts it up just for fun. She says she is not very "techie", but she does rent time on her longarm and also does a pre-check on sewing machines needing repair. If she can fix it, she does, but she "has a guy" with 30 years Bernina experience that repairs the machine that need to go out.
I asked about the book shelf in the rear of the shop and learned that some were craft and quilting books, while others were novels. But anyone could borrow one or bring one, for that matter. She also offers a list of the other quilt shops in her area on the counter in her store which she made up for her customers.
Calico Crossing is working on forming a Bee in Lockhart.
Simple Sewing Solutions - Lockart, TX
Our exciting day ended with a stop at Simple Sewing Solutions in Lockhart. They were, unfortunately, closed for the day due to an out-of-town funeral. We send our condolences but peeked in the window anyway. We saw shelves of fabric, some notions, and a pattern for a crochet baby outfit by the door. That crochet pattern told us that they, too, do something a little different than their neighbor shops.
Read about our other trips too!
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Glossary
- Calico
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A traditional plain weave cotton fabric popular for quilting, which is printed, with a small repeated design, often small florals or leaves.
- Notions
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Small sewing supplies such as pins, scissors, rulers, seam ripper, and so on.
- Raffle Quilt
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A term used by Quilt Guilds and other groups to describe a quilt which is raffled off at a show or event.
Same As: Opportunity Quilt