So I know I haven't been posting much recently but the school year has started again and I've been in Dallas, Texas all week for the Pfaff convention. (More about that later though) We drove to Dallas on Tuesday night, and got here a day before the convention to make stops at the Moda/United Notions and P&B Textiles warehouses to shop for the quilt shop before we had to go to classes.

We started at Moda/UN at about 7:30 am. First of all, it's a beautiful building, and the lobby is nicely decorated with many of the Moda premade house things and many of the sample quilts are hung off the balcony upstairs.

We of course started in the clearance section, where it almost looks like a normal everyday fabric store. Bolts on racks, flat folds, notions, and fabric headers all for sale (other than you have to buy the whole bolt!). So we did a bit of shopping, picking up some more pieces of the Roman Holiday Collection, and picking a lot of more random fabrics to fill in some holes on the color wall. Everyone who works there seemed really happy, and they all wear thouse cute Moda aprons. Even better several of them were riding around the warehouse on tricycles with big baskets filling orders. We also bought a bunch of great jelly rolls for the shop since they've been so popular recently (Monkeys, repros, and great trendy prints)!

We also hit the United Notions side of the warehouse, picking up lots of odds and ends for the shop, including scissors, books, and Mary Ellen's Best Press (If you haven't tried it you have too- it's amazing and it smells nice. It also doesn't leave crap all over my iron).

Above the United Notions warehouse is their showroom. As one of the staff members explained it to us, it's their idea of a perfect shop, and it's even better because no one messes it up! I've included a couple of photos, but you can find more in my flickr account! They've got one of the coolest classroom spaces I've ever seen, and use it for business meetings and conferences. It seats 12 students, all at their own table and chair with lighting that's independent from the rest of the shop area. You can also see it's in the middle of the area, so everyone shopping can see how cool the class is.

Just off the showroom was possibly the coolest feature of the whole place. They have a Moda fabric library, where they've kept a half a yard of every fabric Moda's EVER PRINTED. It was awesome to look through and see fabrics that I have and love, or remember seeing in the stores or in great quilts. There are literally thousands of pieces, labeled by name and the year and month they came out!

The P&B warehouse was hot, way smaller than the other, and not quite so customer friendly (Though I do understand... it is a warehouse after all). Though the awesome part was that there were people working while we were there putting fabric on bolts from the hug commercial runs! They were working on these big awesome machines that I'm not sure what they're called (Folders?) that take the big commercial bolts, folt the fabric, and spin it on the cardboard ones we all know and love.

More tomorrow on sewing machines and convention!