I've only been to one quilt shop: the one here in town. Pretty much have been going to it since it opened a couple years ago. Found a small ad in the paper about it and just HAD to go. Haven't had a bad experiance there. The owner is friendly. She usually greets me right away. Only time she doesn't is if she's inside her house taking a smoke break when I come...I don't drive and usually walk to the shop so she doesn't hear me "pull in". lol. I get along with her and we'll talk about quilting and what's going on in our lives. When I've seen other customers come in and get fabric she'll take a look at what they're buying and ask what they're working on. If she has something on the longarm I'll end up checking it out. I haven't asked her a lot of questions, but she was really helpful the last time I was in and helped me decide what kind of embroidery floss to get to tie my quilt with.
Sometimes I feel intimidated by her, but I think its just me and not her. She's a lot more experianced with quilting and I'm fairly inexperianced and I do some crazy unconventional things just to get a quilt out (quilting with no table---I sew on a TV dinner stand with the occasional dry erase board flipped upside down on top of it if I need a larger space, ironing with no board, sandwiching layers by pinning layers to the wall, I don't even know how to square up a quilt and doubt I have the space to do it properly). I guess that's why I get intimidated, like if she found out she'll think I have no idea what I'm doing. She did like my original designs, though.