Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Waiting, Waiting, Waiting....

I still have not received a thread or even a piece of lint from my new fabric line and the clock continues to tick. I whined to Timeless yesterday and they are working on it (and about a million other things). My contact person told me that she would get right back to me if she had good news. I haven't heard from her. That isn't a good sign. Keep those fingers crossed!

Meanwhile, here in the shop, we have been very busy with customers that are happy that the weather is starting to turn and they are glad to be out of the house. I've been keeping busy constructing my version of the Western PA Shop Hop quilt. There are 13 stores in our hop and in addition to many other things we offer a progressive quilt. Several years ago we wrote in to the shop owners agreement that each shop is required to have the blocks from all of the stores made and sewn into a quilt top. One owner designs a pattern to use and everyone is free to use that or create their own variation. As easy as it would be to duplicate someone else pattern with my fabric selection, I always end up making enough changes that I have to write my own instructions. The hop is in mid June. When it sneaks up on me I will be very thankful that I have the bulk of the work on this project done!

Most of my evenings have been spent stitching down binding on the batik quilts for Market. I finished this one last night so that I could take the photo first thing this morning. I really like this project! We are calling the pattern "Diamond Mine" and it will be available mid May (right after the instructions are proofed). Don't let the diamond shapes scare you, the pattern will include a Plexiglas template to cut the dark diamonds from strips and the colors are just strips that are added like a log cabin block. The bright fabrics are 12 of the new batiks that Timeless is introducing this spring. They aren't even on the market yet and I can't wait to get my hands on more of them. The background may look black on your monitor, but it is actually a deep green. The color name is Malachite. Rebeca Stahl did a beautiful job with the quilting. She matched each of the colors so that the quilting lines do not distract from the dimensional illusion.
Now instead of twiddling my thumbs, I think I will go write the instructions for the batik applique quilt and check one more thing off of that to-do list!

Karen


4 comments:

Becky said...

I saw the shop hop quilt on the design wall and it is lovelier than the photo can show! I wish I had a quilt shop so I could attend Market this year!! Thanks for all your work, Karen!

Barb Johnson said...

I noticed that the shop hop quilt you have on the design wall doesn't include the first block (the one now on the shop hop website) I'm glad to see that the rest of the blocks look more reasonable than the first! I mean, really - 16 - 1 7/8 inch Half square triangles? It's pretty, but who is the sadist who designed that one? (just kidding, kinda....)

Barb Johnson said...

On the way home, I was thinking that I was a little harsh with my last comment. Then I got home and discovered that the block has 32 HST, not 16! Comment stands! Except that I know perfectly well that Karen didn't design it, because if she had, it would not have had those nasty 7/8 measurements, she would have rounded up!

Karen said...

Luckily that million piece triangle block is "optional"! Obviously I opted out! I did manage to finish assembling the top, including our crazy patched setting triangles.