Vacation Time Warp

Last week our shop was closed for "vacation".

Webster defines vacation as "Time away from work devoted to rest or pleasure". I must be doing it wrong. I spent everyday last week at work, cleaning, sewing, organizing and attempting to accomplish everything that I have been putting off until "later". If you are anything like me, you already know that "later" never comes, you have to put your foot down and make it happen.

My number 1 priority for the week was to make curtains for my bedroom. These are the very same curtains that I intended to make on our week of shop vacation LAST year, but I ran out of time. I have had the fabric from my Counterpoint line ready and waiting for about 18 months. Enough is enough. If nothing else happened, I intended to stitch up 8 simple panels for the 4 windows in our bedroom. To be perfectly honest, I also had in mind that with an entire week to get the job done I would also be able to stitch up pillow shams, bedskirt and bathroom curtains to coordinate. The quilt top was already assembled and ready to go to the quilter. Piece of cake - I had a whole week!

Before I could start on my bedroom project, I had a bit of work to finish up. I haven't mentioned it to anyone yet, but I have been lucky enough to be given the opportunity to design a custom ruler for Creative Grid. I love the Creative Grid brand and we sell tons of their rulers. A few weeks ago I was starting a project and found myself adding markings to the ruler I was using to make it work the way I wanted it to. I gave my friends that make Creative Grid a call and the next thing I knew, my ruler design is being put into production! I will be introducing it at a wholesale show later this month - and of course I will debut it here as soon as I get my hands on one!

I have to have quilts ready to show what the ruler can do for the show. Because of the tight timing, I have to make the quilts using my hand drawn version so that I can get them finished, quilted and the patterns published. Here are the two quilts that I made before I could start on my bedroom project. Both quilts were made with Tonga Treats 2 1/2 inch strips, but the ruler is a general use ruler, not something that has to be used with strips.

I quilted both of the quilts myself with lots of help from our Bernina 830. I'm really new to this whole embroidery machine thing, but I think that they came out BEAUTIFULLY! The quilting patterns are from the Holice Turnbow collection that was included with the Version 6 software. It was amazingly simple to resize, adjust, and position the designs exactly where I wanted them right in the machine. If you have never used your embroidery machine to quilt a project, I encourage you to give it a try.

Although the retail shop was on vacation, the wholesale side of our business still needs tending to. Just about the time I was ready to unroll the curtain fabric, the fax machine spit out a huge pattern order. Without "staff" it was up to me (with help from my husband and kids) to print, fold and bag a few thousand patterns. It was Thursday before I touched the curtain fabric.

Friday was a day of determination. Curtain panels or bust. If you know anything about making curtains, you know that the rods have to be installed before you can start because you need them in place to take your measurements. That required husband help. While I was at it, I talked him into painting too. My husband, like most, likes to have "help" when he does a job. The curtain panels were pushed back and finished on Saturday. We agreed to paint on Sunday.

While I was finishing up the curtains, I sent my husband with fabric in hand, to Home Depot with specific instructions to have them color match the blue for the wall paint. It is a computer generated color matcher and professed to be perfect - I disagree. It isn't even remotely close - but it is on the wall.

The room is clean, the curtains are up and the week is over. Now you just have to imagine what it will look like with the quilt, bedskirt, shams and bathroom curtain..... maybe next year.