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

I’ve been avoiding writing this post for some time.

Many of you will remember Pat Moore as a teacher at QA.  She was one of the most talented needleworkers I’ve ever known.  Her work with silk ribbon was incredible; I have a fabric postcard of hers on my bulletin board as it is one of the most beautiful fabric postcards I have seen ever.  She was very giving in many ways, especially eager to share her skills and knowledge. The amazing North Pole tree skirt that was on display in the shop for a while?  Pat made that for one of her sons and generously loaned it to us for display (and encouraged me to create a class based on it).

I’m sure by now you see where this is going.  Pat lost her battle with cancer October 13.

Ellen K., another customer and friend of Pat’s, has been helping her family go through her things.  She brought me a box of new Inspiration magazines, the Australian needlework magazine, back issues in pristine condition (Pat used to own a heirloom sewing shop in NC).  She just couldn’t let them go to a yard sale.  I don’t feel right selling them and just keeping the money, so I’ve decided to sell them and donate the profits to CaringBridge (in accordance with Pat’s sons’ wishes).  Here is a link to Pat’s page on CaringBridge.  This was a wonderful way for her and her family to keep in touch with her many friends and well-wishers.

~Joyce

This week’s demo – Saturday at 11 and 2 – we’ll be giving you some tips on how to make the cute Rumpled Quilt Skins stuffed animal patterns.  The patterns are actually very easy and well written, and once you know the “secret” behind the rumpling, you’ll want to make them all!  Since I know that some of you can’t make it to our demos, I’ll put the samples and notes in a basket up front by the cutting table.  Just ask any of our staff to fill you in on it!

~Joyce

For our gift-giving event a couple of weeks ago, we made up lots and lots of samples.  We’re having trouble finding places to display them all, so I thought I’d feature some of them here on the blog.

One of our favorites is the Bag-Along pattern.  Betty and I both made samples of this, did all three sizes.  It makes a great bag that folds up into just a little roll in your purse, so it’s easy to have a bag handy all the time!  It’s also a great way to use some of the cool buttons we have in the shop, too.  In this picture, the largest bag is the one that’s rolled up:

Have you noticed all the buttons we have?  And we ordered more. 

Betty and I both recommend waiting until the end to sew on the button that’s to hold your rolled up bag closed.  Betty felt like one of hers was too loose, and since I used such a big button on mine, mine’s pretty tight when rolled. 

~Joyce

I realized last night after writing my post that my mission today had to be pictures. So that’s what I did! First off I have a picture of Melanie and Rosalie of Melly and Me designs. Behind them you can see a picture of their newest block of the month. It’s done with embroidery and is based on some of the best known fairy tales. I was able to buy one copy of the whole set to bring home with us, but it was their last set. If you’re interested in it, please let us know and we can order it as I believe Amy and I will fight to the death over the one set I grabbed.

Some Melly and Me stuffed animals.

Here’s a picture of elinor peace bailey and I. She saw my hat and decided we just had to switch for the picture! I loved her crown.

This is a picture of Kathy Miller and I in front of the fairy bed in their booth. She is one of the co-owners of Michael Miller fabrics and makes up the “Miller” part of their name.

I met Pat Sloan for the first time a few Markets ago, and since then have always enjoyed having the chance to talk to her. Unfortunately, she was in one of the longarm booths, so we didn’t have a great backdrop, but she did premier a new line of fabric for P & B Textiles.

This is a picture of Cassie Barden. She just came out with a new book for Martingale called The New Handmade. I saw some of the projects from the book, and I couldn’t wait to get my hands on it! Luckily, she was signing copies, so now I have one that is signed that I can make stuff out of – namely this really cute messenger bag. Oh yeah, and the projects are designed to not be crazy complicated – even better.

I met Jane Sassaman at the Fabric 2.0 party the other night, and she is wonderful! This was the last picture we took today, and I looked horrible in both pictures that mom took. I promise that I was actually enjoying being there!!!!! Oh, and look at that awesome quilt behind us made with some of her newest fabric line, Prairie Gothic.

Luella Doss and Andrea Schuster just came out with a new line of fabric for Free Spirit – Hot Flash. I stopped by their booth and got a great picture along with her great stuffed chickens!

Mom and I both decided that we wanted to continue the tradition of showing you pictures of us with the “stars” of quilting on our blog this Market. However, once I had thought about it a little bit more I realized that most of our customers don’t know much about our day to day dealings with our fabric reps – those people who really meet with the most. So, I decided to give you a personal view of Market as well. Here’s a picture of Angela and I. She runs Bunny’s Designs, the company that we buy most of our Japanese Imports from. She also just published a few patterns, including two adorable bag patterns that we ordered!

This is Debi, the head marketing/sales something or other at Michael Miller. We’ve known her since she worked at Free Spirit a few years ago, and we sometimes order with her at Market. She’s also from Philadelphia, so she understands how important the whole baseball thing really is (notice my hat). Oh, and the flower fairy in the background will soon be on fabric, and in our store!!! It’s part of their Flower Fairies line.

This Larry, our sales rep for P & B Textiles, Timeless Treasures, Free Spirit, Kona Bay, Marcus Brothers, and Clothworks Textiles. He’s also from just outside Philadelphia, so we always have fun talking baseball.

This is Kathy, who used to be our Needlecraft and Loralie Designs rep, and Cindy. Kathy lives far enough away that she decided to not hold on to the territory of Virginia, however we always love to see her at Market!!

This is Rose, who is the Marketing Director of Brewer, one of our distributors. I met her at Market in Kansas City many years ago, and we always sit and order from her at Market. Her daughter, Alyce, lives in Richmond and has taught a couple of classes for us.

This is Steve who is our rep for Michael Miller, Robert Kaufman, Batik Textiles, and Fabri-Quilt. Here we are in front of a different flower fairy!

Jeff is our rep for Northcott, In The Beginning, Henry Glass, and Shannon Fabric (we carry some of their minky fabric). This is a quilt made from Mark Lipinski’s newest line of fabric in the background.

Unfortunately there were a couple of people we never managed to track down for pictures, so we’ll have to get them next time!

We had about 50 minutes near the end of the day to walk the exhibits and when we walked though the Hoffman Challenge exhibit, we saw a quilt by one of our customers! Here’s Cindy L.’s quilt:

Well, that’s the last of it! We definetly enjoyed market and can’t wait for all of the cool stuff we bought to arrive. Today we bought Andalucia by Patty Young for Michael Miller, and the Michael Miller Flower Fairies. We also found some cute patterns that use charm squares! We grabbed a couple to try out, but hopefully we will be ordering more soon. One of the other cool things was some new rubbing plate/stamps and some stencils from Laura Murray. Her stamp/rubbing plates that we are ordered are called the Star Builder. It’s a great series of plates that can be arranged many ways to make lots of awesome kaleidoscopes/stars. We grabbed some other stuff that I just can’t remember right now because my brain is so dead, but hopefully you will be seeing it soon!

~Phoebe

I started looking through all of the pictures we have in preparation for writing this post, and I realized, most of them are of cool things in the city!! Across the street from the convention center is this brand new city park, it must have just opened, as the last two times I’ve been here, it has truly been a hole in the ground. I took some cool pictures of all the assorted things in the park.

First up, this cool sculpture/fountain thing (which made me want to run through it, in my work clothes):

Another fountain, but one of those fun play ones.

Motorized steerable boats in the small lake/pond.

Cool graffiti sculpture.

This is rather sad, but above the park in the skyline you can see one of the few buildings in the city that still does not have its glass replaced from when hurricane Ike came through.

An……interesting gazebo.

Weirdo cube-y sculpture things.

Very flashy golf cart:

Now, on to the stuff that you all really care about – Market!! Here’s a picture of me with our friend Bonnie McCaffery in front of her awesome quilts using the DigiBobbE software. She does wonderful Vidcasts, and I know she was hoping to get some awesome footage from Market, so check her website later!

This is a picture of me with Patty Young, one of Michael Miller‘s newest designers. We have every intention of buying at least part of her line tomorrow. She uses some gorgeous colors – pinks, reds, browns, and a little bit of green and white.

Here’s some great pictures of her booth, including some awesome chairs! (Do they look familiar?)

This is a picture of Paula Prass and I. She is Michael Miller‘s other newest designer. Unfortunately, I don’t have any pictures of her booth.

And last, but not least, is a picture of the Brown Bear quilt in the Andover booth.

I will try and take a lot more photos tomorrow, as I believe I might have a little bit more time to do it then. I’m going to try and go back and get some better pictures of Paula’s booth, along with some pictures of other stuff and other people!

Just to let you know some of the cool stuff we bought already – new Japanese prints (and some cute bag patterns), Jay McCarroll fabric, Bareroots embroidery patterns, new batiks, and……….some other stuff that I can’t remember. I think we bought something else from Free Spirit/Westminster – oh yeah, Amy Butler fabric and a cute Tina Givens fairy group.

~Phoebe

PS – I got you an autograph Amy!!! And the Bareroots embroidery patterns AND the Jay McCarroll fabric. So you must REALLY love me now.

Today was the first real day of Quilt Market, the first day the show floor was open. Twenty-some aisles of vendor booths. For the first time ever, we did the whole show floor in the first day. Now that we have a good idea of what’s there, we can take the next two days to divide and conquer.

It’s pretty late as I’m writing this, and I’m distracted by the AWESOME game the Phillies are playing tonight, so this is going to be a short-ish post. Phoebe can fill in all the holes later.

Before the show even opened, we met Gayle Bong, author of several Martingale books, including this one:

We also did some visiting with our friends Kelly and Jackie from Kelly Ann’s Quilting in Warrenton:

Laura Blanchard and Betty Sanderson do lots of work for the Red Rooster booth every year. This time they also enlisted the help of MaryT. I hope I got pictures of all the stuff they did! First is Laura’s tree skirt and the tree decorated with Betty’s birds:

I think Betty made the blocks and MaryT made the cat:

Here’s a quilt from fabric we’ll be getting for NEXT Christmas:

And two shots of Betty’s chair covers:

Okay, that’s it for tonight. If Phoebe wakes up early enough, maybe she’ll post more in the morning.

~Joyce

Quilt Market started off with a BANG! On the first day we don’t even do any shopping. We do what is called schoolhouse. It is a series of short (15 or 30 minute) sessions, all 5 minutes apart from 10AM to 6PM. So, if you just think of high school, that’s pretty much what it’s like (only with cooler teachers and free handouts). So, we go to the convention center around 9 and pick up our brochure which lists each time slot and the choices (there’s usually between 10 and 15 for each time slot. SO, first up was Jay McCarroll, of Project Runway. He has designed two lines of fabric for FreeSpirit Fabrics which premiere this Market. Here’s a picture of Jay and I:

And here are some pictures of his two fabric lines!

If you watched Project Runway, then I’m sure you saw Jay’s hats. I always loved them, and have always wanted one. Well, here’s one out of his cute fabric:

I’ll get you an autograph tomorrow, Amy!

Next up was another FreeSpirit designer, Melissa Averinos. She talked about her newest fabric line, Sugar Snap, which actually arrived in our store the day before we left for Market. (Apparently we were one of the first to get it, because it just started shipping Monday, from the sounds of it)

I can’t wait to get my hands on it! I caught a brief glimpse as I ran through the store on Thursday before we left, and boy is it gorgeous.

Next I went to a schoolhouse with Liesl Gibson of Oliver + S patterns. She showed off her newest collection, plus some upcoming patterns for the spring. We are still debating whether we should carry them or not, so any feed back would be welcome!!

After that I went to a schoolhouse with the lovely elinor peace bailey. This time she wasn’t talking about dolls, but her newest fabric line from P & B Textiles. I’m not sure what it’s called, or when it ships, as it’s not even on the website yet, however, I’m fairly certain that we ordered a large part of the collection, if not all of it. It features lots of fun fairies.

Sometime in here I also when to a schoolhouse about designing fabric. I also ended up skipping a few to deal with some issues at home. Somewhere in there I ran into Mark Lipinski long enough to get a hug before he ran off to do something else. I’m hoping I’ll have a chance to chat with him again tomorrow.

Last but not least, Mom and I both went to a presentation by Kathy Miller from Michael Miller Fabrics. Kathy always gives a color forecast for the upcoming season, and so we never miss her schoolhouse. She also showcases their newest lines. Premiering this Market is Flights of Fancy by Paula Prass, Andalucia by Patty Young, and Flower Fairies based on the drawings by Cicely Mary Barker. She also gave us a preview of the newest Vera Bradley bag – gorgeous!

After schoolhouse was over, I ran over to the Fabric 2.0 Party, which was hosted by Michael Miller Fabrics, J. Caroline Creative, and a bunch of other people (sorry!). It was on top of the Hilton across the street from the convention center, with gorgeous views of the city. Unfortunately, I didn’t get too many pictures, but it was an awesome party anyways!

Here’s a picture of Patty Young of Michael Miller and Melissa Averinos of Free Spirit.

My friend Debi, who is the head marketing something-or-other for Michael Miller, and Jane Sassaman. Sorry it’s such an awful picture, but it was really dark by then.

I also ran into my friends Bonnie McCaffery and Luana Rubin (who owns equilter). I also got a chance to talk with Kathy Miller for a minute and got a formal introduction to Jay McCarroll.

After all that stuff, we went to sample spree. I don’t know how many of you remember what it was like last time, but it was like that again this year (it always is). Here’s a picture of some of the fabric we are bringing back from Sample Spree this year. If you look closely, you will see that there are 4 bundles of Brown Bear, Brown Bear fabric – which we will be selling for $200, each (just kidding!).

So, that’s what I did today! I’m not sure what mom did today, but I believe she saw a schoolhouse with Katie Pasquini Masopust (whom she worships) along with some other people.

~Phoebe

That’s right folks – Joyce and Phoebe are out of town and it’s time for the Pattie’s in Charge Sale!  Last time, I put Christmas fabric on sale in the hopes that we could get those holiday projects started and maybe finished in time.  Time, like our daylight hours, is running short!  I’m going to make it even easier for you with this sale.  All Kits, Jelly Rolls and Charm Squares are now 20% off, Friday through Sunday!  Just think – a couple of jelly rolls and charm packs can help make quick work of a beautiful present that will get you many compliments.  I’m also going to encourage you to add some of our gorgeous buttons to your next bag – they will be 20% off as well.  These specials run through Sunday, but don’t forget that our Finish the Bolt days are Monday and Tuesday!  See you soon!

Pattie

Phoebe and I made it to Houston pretty much without incident.  Screaming baby on the plane, bumpy ride, but as air travel goes, not bad.  It was sunny here and warmer than at home.  We got here early enough to go to our favorite Italian restaurant, Josephine’s.  THE place to go if you love garlic like we do.  We didn’t have the camera with us or we’d be posting photos of our dinner. 

Tomorrow is Schoolhouse, an all-day event made up of 15 and 30 minute “infomercials” on the newest, latest and greatest in the industry.  Then Phoebe is off to her special party, I have a dinner date with another shop owner, and we finish the night with Sample Spree.  Luckily we’re in a different time zone so we won’t have to stay up past midnight watching baseball.

Pictures tomorrow, I promise!  Well, I promise to try my best, anyway. 
~Joyce

At Spring Market in Portland, Phoebe and I met Melissa Averinos, who was then Free Spirit’s newest designer.  We fell in love with her first line, Sugar Snap, and it arrived in the shop YESTERDAY!  Phoebe was trying to figure out how she could whip together something to wear to Market before we left, but since she’s in class all morning (and was up late working on homework since she’ll be missing three days of classes), it will just have to wait until we get back.  But here’s a preview as Pattie was unpacking it:

Okay, back to packing!
~Joyce