Quilting Adventures ~ The Friendly Store for Everyone Who Creates With Fabric!

This week’s product of the week is our yo yo makers! They come in three different shapes which all come in multiple sizes: hearts, flowers, and traditional round yo yos. We’ve come up with some great ideas for things to make with these, including some awesome embellishments for clothes. As part of our product of the week “deal” all yo yo makers are 10% for this week. And since there are so many other gadgets that help out when you’re making yo yos, we’re also putting our desk needle threaders, our dome needle holders, and our critter cases on sale!

Here’s a picture of our medium sized yo yo maker:

And a cute pair of flip flops with some flower yo yos on them:

As well as one of our cute critter cases, with yo yos in its mouth!

I love fabric postcards.

Vicki Welsh has been doing a Fabric Postcard club at the shop, and asked me to share a link to her blog where she’s posted some of the cards she’s gotten in the swap. So click here to see those.

This fall, Phoebe and I will be taking over the Fabric Postcard Club – click here to read all about it! On that page, you can see some fabric postcards that I’ve made. And no, it’s not too early to sign up.
We’ve done some previous blog entries that include postcards – our Valentine’s Day contest and another contest last fall and Phoebe’s 18th birthday postcard contest.

So now I’m asking you to please try your hand at making postcards! Our Quilts for the Cure event on September 13-16 will include a fabric postcard “sale” where all the proceeds go to the Richmond Affiliate of Susan G. Komen for the Cure. For each postcard you donate, you will receive one chance to win a $50 gift card to Quilting Adventures. This is one time where I’m going to say that employees, too, may enter to win, all except for me. And I’ll be sure to have lots of independent witnesses when I pick the winning name.

If fabric postcards just aren’t your thing, please consider making a bag to donate to the auction. We’ve got some great bag patterns to choose from, and I know that we can bring a good price for some of the bags I’ve seen you all make, and again, ALL the proceeds are going to a good cause.

The headliner of the event, of course, is the four pink and white quilts we made last year and the additional blue and white (totally HAND made) quilt donated by one of our customers. These will be auctioned off during the event, too, so please help us spread the word! I will be posting pictures of all the quilts that are up for auction soon (as soon as I take the photos). And we can accept your donations of postcards and bags any time. As always, thank you for your generosity!

I’ve got photos that customers have sent me as much as two months ago (probably more!) that I’ve been wanting to post to the blog. So this entry should be a long one with lots and lots of photos, great eye candy!

First, these from Tim – he took one of the classes from Carol Taylor back in March and applied some of what he learned to a commission project that he did. These pictures are of his class project, then a pillow, and then the commission piece:

Here are some photos from two of the learn to sew classes this summer with Cathy Tyler:

And now, some photos from the May Art Quilt Study group session. I’m afraid I don’t know who made which, but if you email and let me know I’ll gladly add credits to the photos:

This next show and tell is one of my favorties -  Maggi made this adorable skirt with the Spotzville fabric for her adorable daughter:

So, I think that catches me up on customer show and tell stuff – at least for today.  Keep them coming!

Here are photos of the quilts made my QA staff as part of a challenge by the Evil Boss.  Customers voted on the ten quilts during the first two weeks of July, and they selected Susan’s as their favorite.  And Susan will be teaching this class this fall – more info on that here.

Here’s Susan’s quilt:

Karen was an overachiever and did two of them:

Betty and I didn’t realize until we were finished that we’d picked the same fabric in two different colorways!  Betty’s is the blue one, mine is the red/pink one:

Mary was also an overachiever; she had hers quilted and bound by the original deadline (a month before the rest of us!):

This one is by Rey and is only her *second* quilt:

Nina used a gorgeous fabric from the Tuscan Wildflower collection:

Pattie took a different approach with her medallion quilt:

And last, but certainly not least, Cheryl is another achiever, having quilted and almost finished the binding or hers:

Our latest Christmas collection arrived on Tuesday, and this is one of those groups that could really be much more than just “Christmas.”  Here are some pictures of these awesome pointsettias:

I knew we had another line of Christmas fabric on the way because A) I’d gotten the bill and B) Thursday’s box said “box 3 of 3″ but we’d never gotten box 1. It arrived yesterday, and it’s *so cute*! It’s Sugar ‘N Spice from Maywood Studios, an adorable group with kittens and coordinating prints that look very 40s (more the feedsack-ish look rather than the cuties 30s look). I can’t get a direct link to the fabric group, but if you go to Maywood’s website you can find it by “browsing fabric.” Also, if you go to their Quilts & Projects link, you can see some patterns made up out of this group (if you want to special order any of them, just let us know).

Ricky Tims’ first fabric line for Red Rooster Fabrics, Rhapsodie Coloree, is here!  It came with pattern sheets and a great slide show to give you ideas on how to work with the fabric.  We have the slide show running continuously at the front counter (as long as we don’t need our second register).

When I spoke to Ricky at Quilt Market, I told him that he needed to be sure that I got his fabric before his Seminar came to Richmond, or he’d need to reschedule – so I guess the show is on! 

Here are some photos:

I’ve been tinkering around with plugins and code for the last several days, and I’ve finally got all the kinks worked out (I hope!) so that you can subscribe to our blog.  That will allow you to get an email notifying you when we’ve posted something new. 

To subscribe, you can click on the link on the left, or you can click on this link right here.

For our first product of the week, we’ve chosen the Flip-Flop template. Designed by Kathie Alyce of Waterfall Quilts, this one template allows you to make an endless array of quilts from Kathie’s patterns! The curves make the quilt look oh-so-complicated, but trust me – you can do this! Come for one of our demos next week as follows:

Tuesday July 10 at 6
Wednesday July 11 at 2
Saturday July 14 at 11 and 2
Sunday July 15 at 2

Here are some photos of some Flip-Flop blocks in progress:

Come see the demo, and you’ll see why these are so much fun!