Hubby and I were out and about a couple weeks ago and I begged to have five minutes at LouAnn’s Quilt Garden and Retreat in Oelwein, Iowa while he was pumping gas….
Well, five minutes turned into about 45 minutes which isn’t surprising knowing me and knowing LouAnn. Fist let me say LouAnn is the sweetest. She nice and genuine. She has the perfect personality to be a shop owner!!
This is shop and just to the left of the shop is the retreat center. That room is all set up to host quilting retreats along with accommodations upstairs. I am going to schedule a day with LouAnn coming up and take picture of the retreat center as I am sure many of you would love to see it…honestly it’s GREAT!
LouAnn has lots of samples in her shops and I am a sample lover…I shot lots of picture and I am going to show them in two posts as you all who have dial up will be ready to strangle me.
Unfortunately Hubby was with so I couldn’t take time to jot down the names of patterns.
If there is something you fall in love with, you’ll just have to give LouAnn and call and she’ll help you out with a pattern name or order.
Here’s her phone number in case you need it. (319) 283-5165. Aren’t the fussy cut centers on this quilt perfect?
She has a Facebook page but not a website yet.
LouAnn has lots of fabric mostly with contemporary feel…modern..but not too modern. This was an in progress quilt that I really liked.
LouAnn does a great job with displays…
There is a nice balance of fabric and books.
Being Hubby was with I had to take time to show him how LouAnn hangs many of her quilts. I would love this along the inside of our west garage wall…..you can imagine what he said, “Quilts on the garage wall?!?!?!?’
Of course I was thing…”YES…in fact, quilts on EVERY wall!!!” I wasn’t brave enough to say it though.
There is a nice selection of batiks. Oh, I still want to make a quilt from batiks.
I often get bags of crumbs from people and every time I do I carefully pull out the batiks and put them in a pile…one day I am going to have enough to make a quilt! I have vowed not to start purchasing them as then I’d have to find a whole other spot to house them!!
There are projects for beginners like the one above and projects for more advanced quilters.
I wish I would have had longer to browse.
Maybe it’s a good thing I didn’t have time to look more or I’d have spent more money!!
That’s it for this edition of the shop tour…I’ll show you my favorites from the shop tour and share some news in my next post later this afternoon.
LOL. Are you sure you were only there for 45 minutes? :)
FUN!!!!
It is so cool that you have fallen in love with Lou Ann’s just like my friends and I have. She runs such a lovely shop and retreat center. You will have a great time at your Bonnie Hunter retreat!
Cool Photos and tour of LouAnn’s! We attend every spring and fall and have been going there for about 5 years now! two years in a row we attended three times! We love it! Can’t wait til October! I met you once, when I was there on retreat. You were shopping in her store!
Wow – what a great store! I think one of these days we will have to do a tour of Iowa with our son, who is 5 now, and will have to make some quilt shop stops along the way.