Women sorted through colorful fabrics at Quilting Bits & Pieces while the shop ladies talked about quilting patterns with customers checking out.
On Friday, as the Ad Astra shop hop ended, the first Kansas Nebraska shop hop began. Quilting Bits & Pieces co-owner Christina DeArmond said she doesn’t know what to expect from the Kansas Nebraska event from April 1 to May 31.
However, the Ad Astra shop hop does a months-worth of business in just four days, usually seeing about 600 customers.
Between Kansas and Nebraska, 79 quilting shops are taking part. Each state is separated into regions so that the shoppers can accomplish completing sections.
Each customer travels with a “passport” that has a list of every shop taking part. A stamp from each store makes the shopper eligible for prizes. The Ad Astra grand prize is $50 to each of the 11 stores in Kansas taking part, totaling to $550, along with other gift card prizes.
There are multiple grand prizes for the Kansas Nebraska shop hop, ranging from new sewing machines to quilting blocks to prize baskets.
While passports are free, there is a magazine sold for $9.95 that includes the shops by region, maps, patterns, fabrics, stories and descriptions of ways to get to every place.
Quilting Bits & Pieces has sold 58 out of 60 magazines so far, DeArmond said.
The event was created and organized by two quilters who have organized statewide shop hop events for numerous states, such as Wisconsin, Iowa and North Carolina/South Carolina.
Each shop is required to make and display a quilt that is in line with the theme of the shop hop that year. DeArmond said she spent 30-40 hours crafting their shop’s quilt for Ad Astra. Co-owner Eula Lang made the Kansas Nebraska quilt.
“We are splitting up who gets little sleep,” DeArmond said.
In addition to the hundreds of patterned fabrics, the shop is decked out with cookies, a wheel to spin for prizes and a demo station.
A bus carrying 60 women from Omaha, many of whom wore the shop hop T-shirt reading “eat, sleep, shop hop, repeat,” visited Quilting Bits & Pieces on their way home Saturday. The shop was busy and exciting, co-owner Kaye Spitzli said.
Spitzli was born and raised in Eudora and has been quilting since she was 11. She meets many of the women passing through as she mans the demonstration table, showing how to make half square triangles.
Some women enjoy shop hops casually, like Joyce Grosko from Kansas City, Kansas. Grosko shop hops with two of her close friends from Columbia, Missouri, and Gardner, Kansas. They are less concerned with the passport and making it to every shop.
“We do a little bit of shop hop and then we go home and quilt together,” Grosko said.
Other women take the passport seriously. DeArmond said she met a woman from Salina, Kansas, who created a rigorous schedule in order to make it to all 79 quilt shops on the Kansas Nebraska Shop Hop by the end of April.
She said the woman had time slots for everything from drive time and time spent in each shop to estimate breaks for lunch. The only detail left out of the plan — a budget.
“That’s my kind of planner,” DeArmond said.
DeArmond’s favorite part is seeing familiar faces over the years.
“Quilters love to go around. Every shop is different,” DeArmond said. “There’s so much out there, you can’t even begin to carry half of it.”
Visit the website to find out more about the Kansas Nebraska Shop Hop.
Reach reporter Daisy Bolin at [email protected].
