My Best Friend’s Quilt Shop

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I’ve been mentioning “the shop” regularly the past months, and I thought I’d put together a post about it. This shop I talk about is my best friend’s Quilt shop – well, my Arabian best friend that is.. I have lots of best friends! But in a country where it is hard to meet the local people, Nora has become my best Arabian friend… and an awesome one she is too!

I first met Nora when we moved from the capital city to a smaller town on the Arabian coast. I had been quilting for a couple of years and was sad to move away from my quilting friends in the city. Little did I know who I would meet in that small seaside town!

Way back then… in 2006…. Nora was set up in a small house…

The First Quilt Shop

Her shop was called “Craft Kingdom” and she did all sorts of crafts there, not just quilting. Can you see the bolts of fabric on the shelves? She was just starting out, and didn’t have a lot in stock. But she had enough for us to go and sew every week, and that is where I also first started teaching quilting classes 🙂

Fast forward to 2011 and I was amazed at how much her shop had grown! From those few bolts of fabric to this:

and this:

Lots more fabric! And this was when, because she is my best Arabian friend, she let me buy fabric and other goodies at wholesale prices to start my own shop…

My Quilt Shop

That’s me, your friendly quilt shop owner, cutting fabric while my customers chat and browse.. hahaha!!

When I went back to Oz, I had a few big sales, then took the rest home with me…

In the meantime, Nora moved from the seaside town to the capital city, and guess what? Her shop had grown even bigger! And when I got back, since she moved there, I didn’t have to open a quilt shop again, instead she lets me enjoy hers and pretend that it is mine 🙂

So after all that back story, here are pics of “the shop” where I head to at least once a week…. more often in September when I’ll be teaching classes there again…

The shop is in a villa again, bigger than the one she had first way back when… Here the downstairs floor is dedicated to the shop, classroom and long arm quilting room (oops, forgot to take a pic of that! I’ll add it in one day!)

The Quilt Shop Now!

This is where all the odds and ends are, cutting table and where we pay our bills:

Lovely Dhell minds the shop….

Lots of goodies including these:

Hmm… now where did we get that idea from?!

Heading out of the main shop area into the main fabric area:

That brown thing on the left is the front door… Nora has run out of space in this villa, so she is using every inch of space that she can, even the hallways 🙂

The main fabric room:

Lots and lots of lovely quilting fabric!!

Now keep in mind that this is the only quilt shop in a city of 5 million people, and the next closest is a 5 hour drive… Pity quilting is not more popular or else we’d be run off our feet… or maybe that is a good thing!!!

So, now you know a bit more about where I work … er… play 🙂 How can quilting be work?!

This month, other than finishing UFOs, I am working on class samples… mind you, some of the UFOs are going to end up as class samples, so I am killing two birds with one stone.

Hope you enjoyed the shop tour and history, oh, and now Nora has changed the name to The Crafts Hub, so you can check out more about her there.