We just finished our annual Customer Appreciation Sale and very successful food and toy drive, thanks to our generous and loyal customers! It was a fun 2-day sale with lots of happy shoppers! Would you be surprised to know that many quilters came on both days? Doing the preliminary shopping and reconnaisance on Day 1, then going home to make a list of what they really need to finish a project in progress and/or kick off something new! Day 2 finds them back at the store with a grip on their lists! We all had a good time, and it was a new and unusual experience for us in other ways-- both Debbie and Laurel could not be present due to some health problems, so the minions dug in and went to work! We pretty much pulled it off without a hitch, except for the power outage just a few minutes before closing on Friday. That really stops everything, including the few customers remaining in the store! Very hard to match fabrics by the light of your phone! The whole downtown area went black because of the wintry storm we were having at the time. When the power came back on later, attention was needed to make sure all the computers (which are our cash registers) were back up and running normally. And the Friday totals and daily deposit could be accounted for before we were back at it on Saturday morning. All in a day's work!
Flipping back through the calendar and my pictures, one big thing that happened since I last posted was a trip to Houston for International Quilt Market. If you watch our Facebook page, we did post some albums of pictures there at the end of October. So pop over there for all that good stuff!
Since I have an avid interest in longarm quilting, one thing that I look for at events like Quilt Market are examples of interesting quilting that I can take home in pictures. Here are some selections:
Here's the overall picture of a wallhanging of circling dragonflies. Look below for a closeup of the quilting. The straight line quilting in the widening hexagon shape makes a great backdrop for those dragonflies, and would be very do-able on a domestic machine.
The wings in this dragonfly show very close quilting in matching thread colors. A pretty effect, and, again, very doable on most any machine.
Another great example of creative and basic straight-line quilting:
The lines don't even have to be consistently spaced for this to work. Just attach/engage that walking foot, and you can try this out for yourself.
Here's a picture of Brigitte Heitland, the designer of Zen Chic for Moda.
The arrows look like the route that Debbie and I walked all around that convention center!
Below is another Zen Chic pattern, and very interesting quilting to fill in all that blank space surrounding the colored triangles. I liked that there were variations in the quilting design in that background, making me re-think my approach to the same sort of situation on my own quilts.
And just for some variety, here's a cute little baby romper that just was irresistable to me. I'm a sucker for these! And, with my #3 grandson arriving in March, this is a must-do!
We are still receiving new items almost daily that were ordered during our days at Quilt Market, so there are a lot of great ideas popping up! Time for new samples!
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