All Southeast Shop Hop – only two shops left

August 10, 2026

Completing the two regions that include the greater metro Atlanta area is enough for me. I still need to make the trek down I-75 to Macon & Byron (with a stop @ Buc-cee’s) to complete the Central Region shops. The North Central Region shops were completed with my 7 hour road trip on Saturday.

One of the benefits of shop hopping is to get a feel for different quilt shops in a region. Each shop has a unique vibe. You’ll quickly learn which ones best meet your needs. And realize that your short list of shops will likely need adjusting every year. Life changes can mean an owner choosing to close, sell or bring in a new manager to run the business. Trends and the need to increase sales may have your fave quilt shop now carrying bag making supplies, cross-stitch/embroidery supplies and even yarn. As you stop to collect your passport sticker and fabric square, take 5-10 minutes to really look around the shop. Take a shopping list with you and try to buy a little something at each shop – a FQ or two, pack of hand sewing needles, travel size ironing spray in your favorite scent, pack of EPP papers or even a replacement cover for your favorite pair of turquoise handled scissors. Bonus: some shops offered additional swag for those who made purchases. I really appreciated the 2-1/2″ x 6-1/2″ Creative Grids ruler and chocolate from Mountain Quilts in Hiawassee.

Things I’ll definitely keep in mind:

Needle Down quilt shop in Ringgold carries a lot of Lori Holt merchandise. There’s also a really cool antique mall in the same shopping center. I’ll make time to stop in the next time I visit Chattanooga. (Important to me because the two shops that carried a wide selection of Lori Holt fabric either closed or have new owners and now carry different fabric lines.)

Sew Senoia recently purchased a circa 1905 home in Turin, GA. The shop will be moving about 25 minutes south of its current location. It’s dog friendly and the new location is in a really pretty part of west-central Georgia. They also host weekend retreats a few times a year. With the current westside perimeter road projects, it would be totally worth spending money on 2 nights of hotel to attend a retreat once the new location opens.

Photo by Tahir Xu0259lfu0259quliyev on Pexels.com

All Southeast Shop Hop – Progress so Far

August 6, 2026

Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina are all divided into different regions. There are anywhere from 6-13 shops per region. True, some participating shops are clustered somewhat together (Greater Huntsville, Metro Atlanta, Coastal Georgia) but there’s still a LOT of driving involved to hit all of the shops.

Random observation: The Stitching Atlanta and Middle Georgia Shop Hops provided the nucleus of participating shops for the North Central and Central regions of the new All Southeast Shop Hop. If you are trying to visualize it on a map, I-85 is basically the dividing line between the two regions.. I decided to concentrate on these two regions because they are closer home. There are 24 participating shops in these two regions alone.

Today, I hit 5 shops in the northeast Atlanta area, bringing my total number of shops visited so far to 13. This took about 3-1/2 hours with traffic, road work and rain. Getting to the remainder of the shops in these two regions will require another 1/2 day like today, plus two full days.

New-to-me quilt shop discoveries that I’ll definitely visit again: And Sew She Did quilt shop in Ambrose (S. GA) and Needle Down Quilt Shop in Ringgold (NW GA).

Will I attempt another region? Let’s see what September brings. The Quilted Cow in Gulf Shores, Alabama has been on my list for a while. A little beach time while collecting a few more passport stamps? Sounds like a possibility!

Collectible fabric squares from today’s visited shops.

Tip: Use Google Maps to create sample routes to make the best use of your travel time and gas. It may make more sense to split your shops into smaller groups and catch them over multiple days. With all of the road construction around Atlanta, this is what I’ve had to do. I’ll catch the Fayetteville and Hogansville shops in one trip, avoiding the Northeast GA on another day and points Macon & below (picking up 2-3 south GA shops I haven’t been to previously).

The signs were already there three years before I finally left

August 6, 2026
Finding your happy place

Hindsight’s always 20-20. This turned out to be one of my most stressful years as a teacher. I suffered a bout of Bell’s Palsy in late April, which was directly attributed to all of the stress I’d been under. Knowing I had the Featherweight retreat to look forward to in June was the only thing that got me through that awful year.