Fabric, Fabric - everywhere!

One of the best jobs in owning a quilt shop is buying the fabric - that's also the easiest. The hardest job is not buying everything you see! Well, there are some fabrics that I look at and think "WHY?" Why did the designer think that this would make a great quilt? Or a wallhanging or anything? Those I pass on!

This is Jim sitting with Larry in the Timeless Treasures booth at market one year. Each company shows you their current line & if you're not careful, you could spend most of your time over market's three days, just looking at fabric while missing out on all the pattern designers, notions, books, etc., etc, etc.

When fabric representatives come to the store, they don't represent just one company - they could rep four or five. So you look through each company's selection - all the while wondering if the next company will have something better and you sould have waited. Or will you wait only to discover the best was in the first bag?

It helps to have some kind of a plan. When I first started out, if I liked it, I bought it. No idea of what I would do with it when it arrived. That buying strategy (or lack thereof) drove one of my reps absolutely crazy. I'd told him that I bought fabric this way - if it didn't sell, I wouldn't mind taking the remaining fabric home with me. He shook his head and I am absolutely positive thought to himself "There is no way she is going to make it. She'll be out of business in two years." The strategy worked well for years - until this past year and it seemed I liked WAY too much fabric.

Now buying fabric has become the most challenging one of my jobs - ok, it's still the best but it's a little more organized. When I buy a line of fabric now, I decide what's to be done with it when it arrives - lap quilt, big quilt for the lobby bed, table runner, baby quilt, purse, wall hanging, jacket? Or just mix it into the color wall? And it all goes into a looseleaf notebook - the Fabric/Sample book - each line of ordered fabric is in there by month it's due and then what the plan is for it. We started doing this last fall, I organized it a little better in January and now have "THE BOOK". It should make life much easier & keep our samples under control. (I live in constant hope that until my butler arrives, I will find little ways to organize the craziness which owning a quilt shop has become the "norm")

This organization does however, come with a cost. It adds more to the worst part of owning a quilt shop - paperwork. Ugh.

Till next time!

Spring!

Well ok, it was only for one evening but it was sure nice to SMELL spring! Jim and I spent Valentine's evening at the NJ Flower Show in Edison. Much smaller than the Philadelphia Flower show, it nevertheless gets us in the mood for spring.

I love the smell of hyacinths! The ones in my garden don't look anything like the ones in the pots in the garden centers or like these did but they smell wonderful. Mine always look like something ate half the flowers or they're diseased.

This was an exhibit for water conservation with the rain barrel and the soaker hose. We have the rain barrel that leaks since we lost the plug (gum does NOT work).

I just liked the daffodils. Nothing says spring to me more than the daffodils poking up through the soil. They're up about 3" on the south side of the shop but not peeking through at home at all.

This is Jim checking out the huge Koi in the pond.

Garden shows let you dream of spring and of what your garden could be - if you had a team of professional gardeners!

Till next time.

The best of intentions

Our $5 quilt club starts in March so in December I decided to get my act together & actually design the quilt for 2009. This project was going to be a bit of a challenge for me since I wanted to do it in EQ6 and hadn't even taken the wrapping off the EQ6 box yet. I also wanted to use our Accucut machine that I've had collecting dust for more years than I am ever going to admit to!

So I sat myself down and forced myself to learn EQ6 and designed a queen sized quilt! I was EXTREMELY proud of myself.

I figured out how to send the EQ6 images over to Corel Draw where I wrote up all the instructions, had EQ6 figure out yardage requirements (then checked them myself because I didn't trust it) and was generally thrilled that I was actually finished and WAY ahead of time too.

I should have known that my being organized and ready months ahead was too good to be true. I swore that the AccuQuilt dies I had were for a 12" block so I designed the quilt around 12" blocks. WRONG. Lori made up the first block and told me it only came out to 8 1/2". Of course I was trying to figure out how the heck she screwed it up since all the pieces are die cut . . . . she didn't screw up, I did.

I'd already shown the graphic to some of the 2008 participants and told them it would be queen sized. Some had already bought their background fabrics. Now what?

Back to the drawing board. I went back into EQ6 an tried to make those 8" blocks work. Nope. I finally gave up, went online and ordered the 12" dies. Then I called Lori and told her to stop making the 8" blocks.

Since I have TWO of the 8" block sets - don't ask - one will be going on Ebay very shortly! (Update - I sold the second set to a friend who has a shop in CA.)

Look for our $5 Quilt Club to start the second Friday and Saturday of March in two colorways - 1800 reproductions and batiks. There's a $10 cost to join, you will purchase your background fabric & setting triangle fabric and then if you finish your block, show up to one of the meeting on time each month - you get the next block free. If you miss or are late, your block is $5. A finishing kit will be available in April & will include the 13th block, sashing, borders, binding & the finishing pattern. Call the shop to sign up.

This will be offered as a mailed block of the month for $25.00 the first month and $13.95 for the next eleven months after & will include everything needed to make a queen sized top & binding. See the details on our website under block of the months.

Warm Weather, Fair Skies

This is where I was LAST Thursday.

This is where I am this Thursday.

May I just say BRRRRR!

Jim & I went to the FL Keyes last week with my older brother & sister-in-law to surprise my Mom for her 75th birthday. We went a little early, stayed a little late and managed to spend 6 days in the warmer weather! A VERY nice break from the cold we've been having here at the Jersey Shore. We left Atlantic City airport in a snowstorm and came home again in a snowstorm.

While in Key West on Saturday, I stopped into the Seam Shoppe to visit. They sell one of my patterns & I had a nice chat with Cindy who owns the shop. This is Cindy standing under a sample of my Pinwheels at the Beach pattern.

After hiking the "1/2 mile" my younger brother told me it was to get back to the shop from where we parked - yeah right, it was more like THREE MILES David - I nearly missed them as they close at 2pm on Saturdays but luckily - for David - they were still waiting on a customer.

Nice shop with some great tropical prints and exciting to see my patterns somewhere other than my shop!

We spent the week just below Key Largo and enjoyed ourselves immensely by snorkeling the first day, Key West another day and then basically laying around the pool the rest of the time. It was lovely.

My Mom was more than a little stunned to find my older brother, sister-in-law, Jim and I in the restaurant they'd stopped to eat in. My two nephews have been having a really good time playing mind games with their grandmother for the past few weeks. She thought Jim & I were arriving a week after we actually did and didn't think my older brother was coming at all. We ate at the Fish House in Key Largo and they stuck a candle in a fish as her birthday cake.

All in all I'm glad to be home, but boy do I wish the weather here was 70 degrees and sunny instead of the 19 we have today!

Super Bolt Sale

I'm mentally gearing up for our Super Bolt Sale this coming weekend. Since nothing goes into the sale room (which for this sale is the classroom) until the night before the sale, I tend to think about what I'm going to do and change my mind at least 9 dozen times between now and Friday.

When we first started this sale about 9 years ago, it was always done on Super Bowl weekend and we called it the Super Bowl Sale. Back then the Super Bowl was the last weekend in January & this was before the NFL started enforcing their trademarked term Super Bowl. Ok, maybe we started more than 9 years ago . . . time flies!

When we wanted to advertise the sale on our TV ad a few years ago, the ad guy shook his head and said, you can't use the term Super Bowl. So Jim came up with Super Bolt Sale instead.

This year we will be holding the sale a week early since Jim and I will be away the last weekend of the month. All bolts in the classroom will be on sale for $4.95 per yard. Only two rules - minimum cuts are one yard and you must take the remaining amount if it's under a yard. Our aim is to MOVE THESE BOLTS OUT - basically so I can buy new ones!

If you're going to be in Jersey Jan 24th and 25th - stop by and take a peek at the approximately 400 bolts we will have in our Super Bolt Sale!

Paperwork - ugh

One of the dirty little secrets of the quilt shop world is the amount of paperwork that must be dealt with. Paper comes in catalogs, sale sheets, monthly info from sewing machine companies, BILLS, notices of changes, notices of meetings, notices of this, notices of that . . .

I have papers EVERYWHERE - the break room, my office, my home office, in my tote/briefcase, the kitchen counter, everywhere. One of my resolutions for the month of January is to somehow regain control of all this paper and get rid of the piles laying almost everywhere.

Remember when computers came into vogue? How they were going to make us a paperless society? HA! Now I have tons of information in the computer and still have tons of paper everywhere else - who trusts the computer enough to throw all the paper away????

Like you, I watch all those organization shows, I read the articles in the magazines and I try to follow what they say. I stand over the recycling bin while looking at the mail - just how much junk mail does one person really need to get? - and bills go into the Jim pile (oops, that's how piles start!), stuff I need to look at goes in the Debbie file and another pile is for the shredder. Then I'm bored with that and I walk away, leaving the piles to be dealt with later. There's mistake number one.

The problem is, most of this stuff can't be thrown away. It's stuff that needs to be held onto so it can be referred back to, or paid, or a phone call is needed, or something and then your office ends up looking like this.

So last week I took the tiger by the horns (that saying can't be right) and tackled the office at the store. Papers, papers everywhere - some went into the recycling but most were sorted and put into one HUGE pile to be filed - there's that mistake number one again!

Yesterday I did better at the home office. I kicked Jim out of one of the drawers in the file cabinet at home and started sorting. Most of the four piles I had spread around my computer went into file folders & kept.

I still have to tackle piles on the kitchen counter and in the sewing room. Jim's piles? They are definitely JIM'S problem!

No butler dang it.

If you've been following the http://www.myquiltvillage.com/ blog, you'll know that I wanted a butler for Christmas. No butler was under my tree, nor has one shown up yet. I've given up & resigned myself to the fact that I'm going to have to organize my sewing room myself. UGH!

But think about it for just a minute. A butler sounds like a way out, crazy idea but - do you really like organizing your kitchen cabinets? Can you REALLY find that piece of paper that absolutely has to be mailed today? Do you really like cooking EVERY night? Is your sewing space as organized as possible? Just looking at Karen Snyder's pictures on her Anna Lena Land blog is enough to make me lock the door to my sewing space and throw away the key. And it WAS really that neat when I visited her last spring. I'm thinking Karen has a butler . . .

I've been psyching myself up to tackle my sewing "studio" and I use that term VERY loosely! - by telling everyone who reads my weekly shop emails how to do theirs. Am I following my own advice, ummmm, NO. I did clean off my cutting table, well cleared a bigger space anyway.

No, I won't be showing you pictures (read the last blog about why would anyone show their messy house on designed to sell) until I shoveled out the junk that I've accumulated. I do like Karen Snyder's organization idea of 30 minutes every day. I just have to force myself to do it.

There are organized sewers who have a place for everything and everything is in it's place. They are far and few between mind you but they're out there somewhere. My new year's resolution is to get the sewing room at least presentable for the furnace guy & the sprinkler system guy who have to wade through it every year to get to the furnace & the electric box.

And I really want to be able to sit down and sew without having to clean something off the sewing table first. Maybe the thought of Lurch from the Adams Family as a butler isn't so bad after all . . . .