Travels to Iowa

I have just returned from a trip to Iowa with my husband on business. Along the way I got to check out many quilt shops and some very neat towns. I discovered that Indiana has a Quilt Garden Tours going on right now through October 1, 2009. There are 16 quilt gardens and 16 hand-painted quilt murals along a Heritage Trail Driving Tour. Unfortunately we did not have time to check them out, but I did pick up a flyer on them and have checked out their website. If you are in that area, go see them. If not, you can go to their website or blog and see pictures. They are absolutely beautiful!
Here is the link for their blog: http://www.amishcountry.org/quiltblog/


We also discovered a neat village which was the Bishop Hill Colony in Illinois. The Colony was established in 1846 by the Swedes. There are many of the existing Colony buildings still there to tour. They also have many great shops. One of them that I went to was called The Village Smithy which was a combination antique and quilt shop. I must confess that I bought a number of William Morris prints there and I also found a dish towel with a cute design on which has Wednesday as the day of the week showing it as a sewing day. I had to have it!


They also were raffling off a really neat quilt. I hope I win!