What Are Quilters Blogging About Today?

 I was going to name this blog post "Lesson Learned".  When I first opened the shop in 2003, Jinny Beyer fabrics were a 'big thing'.  I ordered the entire fabric line.  The shop was smaller and the only wall space I had to hang samples was the distance between the top of the fabric racks and the ceiling.  I was scrambling to get samples made and found this pattern that showcased all of the fabrics in the line.  It was perfect and I was excited to get it made up and hung.

A group of ladies came in to scope ...

 Hello friends and beautiful people!  I pray you had a Merry Christmas!  Ours was full of faith, family and friends.  Thursday night we had our large family dinner with the kids and grands.  Friday night we had friends over for dinner before we all headed to church for our Christmas Eve service.  It was quite relaxing.

I did finish quilting and binding this quilt called "Fancy Baskets".  It is another older Thimbleberries pattern with Thimbleberries fabrics.  The fabric line was called Cottagewood and I really loved it - especially the plaids.  (We do have one pattern left on our website, and ...

 This one was waiting to be custom quilted.  I've always known how I wanted to quilt it.  So, I waited....I finished quilting it last week and got it bound last night.  I was originally going to bind it in the green.  After I quilted it, I felt like it needed a *pop* of color, so I grabbed a red!

Believe it or not, I am all caught up on my Christmas longarming.  All of my customer quilts that were needed for Christmas have either been picked up or mailed and business usually dies down for the rest of the year.  It's a time to get caught up and catch my breath before the first of the year.

I loaded more of our allover designs on the Facebook page and am getting ready to load some more fabric and patterns on the website.  Then, it will be time to start paperwork for the accountant.  I love year-end!  Truly I ...

Remember the Quilt Diva UFO I got quilted earlier this year?  This quilt was designed by the same designer.  It's called Pumpkin Divas.  This was another quilt that we had just as much fun picking out the fabrics as we did making it.  (Look at the 'stars in their eyes' fabric in the glasses.)  Adding the buttons and turning a couple of them into spiders - well that just added to the whimsy of the quilt.  It's been hanging in the shop as a flimsy for quite a while.  I pulled it down off the wall to get it ...

In my quest to finish up more of the UFOs, I grabbed this little guy off the hanger.  He's been hanging out and beckoned to be ready for the holidays.  The name of this pattern is Straddlin Santa by The Wooden Bear.  

There are a lot of quilts hanging in the que that hang there for a long time.  I have it in my head that I want to custom quilt them.  I don't want to tie up the machine for that long because of customer quilts, so they just sit there.  I've always had it in my head that I wanted to custom quilt Eureka.  It told me it wanted lots of feathers.   Momma was in the shop about a month ago and was looking at it.  She thought it would look great in her lake house.  (That's ...

If you Google "Quilt the Seasons", you will see that a LOT of designers have coined a book with this name.  (I know it is hard to come up with something unique, and I get it.)  By far our most popular book was the Quilt the Seasons book by Pat Sloan.  We whipped up samples of a few of the projects to sell the books and sold out of books long before we even thought about getting them quilted.  Sadly, the book is no longer available.  I regret not grabbing one for myself.  :(

I've mentioned this before...we keep ...

We are still in the process of remodeling....Hubs finished his bathroom and mine is gutted.  Tile is laid and grouted.  Putting the tile around my tub is next.  Our house hasn't been updated since it was built in the 70s.  EVERY house we have lived in - we have remodeled.  It seems like we just get them finished and we have had to move.  *sigh*  Between job transfers, Pops getting sick, etc. there has always been something.  This little farm is supposed to be our retirement home.  We started with the outside because that was important to us.  Through ...

I spent Saturday longarming in the shop.  Truth be told, I couldn't wait to get the quilt that was on the allover machine done so that I could put my Vacation Houses quilt on there.  I had an allover in mind.  I had been eyeing this allover for a while waiting for the 'right' quilt to put it on.  Finally I finished the beast of a quilt, got the customer invoice done and was ready to load my little quilt on there.  I just didn't want it to end up in the UFO pile for you to read ...

 With all this crazy weather, we can all dream about vacations right?  We can dream about sitting on the beach with our toes in the sand watching the tide come up just far enough to tickle our feet, then rushing back from whence it came.  We can dream about the smell of suntan lotion or the rays of the sun kissing our skin just enough to give us a golden glow.  We can dream about that drink in our hand with the little umbrella floating off to the side - I'm thinking sweet tea with lemon.  We can dream....

I ...

I still am of the opinion that Eleanor Burns (Quilt in a Day) has some of the easiest directions out there.  We've taught a lot of her classes and have had her trunk shows in the shop more than once.  While she does 'waste' some fabric, she makes it easy for a beginner quilter to accomplish intermediate construction.  I've met her at several shows and she is NOTHING like she is on her TV show.  She is the kindest, sweetest person ever, but she doesn't have that 'baby talk' voice in real life that sends my Hubs ...

I wanted to have this one up for Veteran's Day, but my binding fingers just weren't fast enough.  When I was quilting Gilly's Stars and Stripes, I was thinking 'this quilt doesn't look like what I remember it looking like'.  Ummm, that's because I was thinking of a different quilt!  I had totally forgotten about that one and was thinking of this one when I thought about that allover design.  Funny thing is -- this runner hasn't been hanging up for a long time.  It's relatively newer.  They say the first thing to go ...

Don't you just love a good "A-Ha" moment?  You know the one....you are going about your day and an idea just smacks you upside the head.  I love them!

I had just finished doing a snowflake allover design on a customer's Christmas quilt when I looked over at the flimsie rack.  This little guy was over there whispering for me to come get him off the rack.  After some cRaZy negotiating, he convinced me he didn't want to wait to be custom quilted.  He wanted to just have snowflakes.  I was a pretty easy mark, as ...

Yup - I finished another UFO!  This was a class I taught - I'm pretty sure it was one of our mystery quilts.  I miss those Friday Night Mystery Quilt nights!  We had so much fun.  Usually, we brought potluck.  Class started at 6 and went until midnight-ish.  The best part of it was the fellowship.  Why does this virus have to take away our fellowship?  *sigh*

I do love batiks.  I go back and forth between traditional and batiks when it comes to fabric.  I think that's why we stock so many.  (We have hundreds of bolts in stock ...

There was a trend years ago where everyone was making mason jar quilts.  This image was taken from Google.  (I chose one with the website listed to give credit to the maker/designer.)

This one is called Lemon Zest.  I just quilted and bound it.  It's another flimsie/UFO that is now finished ...

As a shop owner one of the things you are tasked with doing is making samples to show off new fabric lines.  We used to carry all of the Thimbleberries - all of the fabric, all of the books, all of the patterns.  At some point the 'groupies' for a certain designer/style start to fall off and they try to adapt to current trends.  Makes good business sense, right?  Lynette Jensen tried to do just that when she came out with the Cottagewood line.  I'll be completely honest here - I was not a fan of the focus prints for ...