New locale seems to be lacking

I moved to Rochester, Minnesota, one year ago next month. I moved for a job and to be closer to my family. It is a great place to live and I'm starting to dig in to community life and various activities. With a population of over 105,000 people, I had some expectations when I moved here. Quilter's expectations.

It's been a bit disappointing. The Twin Cities (Minneapolis/Saint Paul) has abundant resources for quilters with some of the best shops I know of. 

There is only one independent quilting shop in town and it has completely unrealistic hours. They are open Monday through Friday 10 am to 5 pm and Saturdays from 10 am to 2 pm. For those of us who work full-time jobs, those hours don't work. You basically have four hours on Saturdays. (Unless it's the Labor Day weekend because they're closed the entire weekend)

I guess since they have a big online store, they're not really concerned with non-virtual customers. 

Said quilt shop also doesn't offer any classes. I love taking classes. (I checked out Community Ed and they don't offer any quilting classes either!)

Plus I love being able to quilt my own quilts on a long-arm machine. However, there is a catch: I don't actually own my own long-arm. I've been driving up to the Cities to rent a machine.

But there is hope. I just have to be willing to drive a bit further.

I've discovered a very welcoming quilt shop (All In Stitches) in the small town of Stewartville, just south of Rochester.  They have sane hours and classes. I'll be doing their block of the month starting in September and they're starting a "Groovy Girls" group.

If I want to travel north of Rochester, I can drive up to Cannon Falls to a cute quilt shop (Fourth & Main) that just opened up a sewing studio last week. I'm already signed up for a couple of their classes.

Rochester has a quilt guild and I'm planning on attending their next meeting on September 12th. I've never been a member of quilt guild before, so I'm trying to erase all my assumptions about guilds as grannies having a quilting bee before I join up.  They also have quilt show in October and hoping to get my big quilt in to it.

But the best bit of news was my discovery of a long-arm rental service nearby. (o2bquilting.com) And when I say nearby, I mean about 25 miles away. I've scheduled my first appointment for September 19th and now I just have to narrow down which quilt tops will be selected for quilting. So many decisions.