Shopping in Skagway

We arrived in Skagway at 7 AM. We were very amazed to look out our stateroom window to see that there were 4 cruise ships docked in Skagway!! This is a town of 800 people.

We were schedule to go on a 3 hour White Pass Railroad train ride at 8:30. We quickly got ready and off to catch the train. Then the plan was after the train ride we would go to the two quilt shops in town. We sat on the train for over an hour waiting for it to get moving - about 9:15 there was an announcement that the first train out of the station broke an axel on the track about 5 miles out and all the morning trains would be canceled. There were probably 6 trains waiting to go out with a lot of people - with nothing to do but head into Skagway and shop. Was it ever busy in Skagway!! The best place to be was probably the quilt shops.

There are two quilt shops in Skagway - almost next door to each other, The Changing Threads also carries cross stitch patterns and wool and such as well as fabric. The Rushin Tailor carries mostly fabric. There was a lot of Alaskan theme fabric and kits.




Here are the men standing outside the Rushin Tailor waiting for the women :))

Jim was quite happy to join me in the shop and decided to pick out a couple of Northern themed kits and said they were my birthday present ( I thought the cruise was my birthday present - but I certainly wasn't about to argue the point -LOL)



I got two kits in the Rushin Tailor. The kits are all made up with the Hoffman batiks and good quality fabric. The Quilt Alaska "Sun Seekers" was the one that Jim chose. It comes with buttons as well but I have some very old "Mother of Pearl" buttons that Jim's mum had collected. The salmon tablerunner is a pattern by Lisa Moore and her husband Dave Moore from the Sitka area. It comes with beautiful Mckenna Ryan fabric.

I also bought a few half yards of Northern themed fabric. I just love the Hoffman batiks that were in the shop - with the native artwork as the batik design.



Changing Threads -- just two doors down -- making shopping very easy!!




I bought some more half yard batiks and some half yards of Northern Light fabric - very pretty and I bought a Barbara Lavallee quilt kit -- "Three Sheets to the Wind" She is an Alaskan artist and some of her work is becoming quilts. Both shops were great places and well worth the visit.

The streets of Skagway were just packed with people and we left the quilt shops and wandered over to the Skagway Brew Pub for a pint and a nice lunch of Fish and Chips for the rest of the afternoon while we waited for our bus tour. We didn't rebook the train trip but instead took a bus up to the summit of the White Pass. It was beautiful - we had lots of stops along the way to take pictures - saw a few Mountain Goats. The trip goes into B.C. and then back into Alaska. It was another beautiful sunny day and I took lots of pictures.