Travel with the "Other Half"

I am scheduled to log some serious air miles over the next few weeks for several different occasions. There are a few business trips and a few family trips that are all happening in rapid succession. I have a page of itineraries pinned to my wall. It is easy to tell which ones are business and which ones are pleasure. The accommodations are MUCH pricier for the business trips. I am treated to some pretty nice places, with some ridiculous prices, for business reasons. I get a glimpse of how the "other half" lives and it has me wondering about their priorities. I am also fascinated by customer service and what companies will/won't do to keep your loyalty.

I just returned from a trip to International Quilt Market that required a flight to Houston with a stop over each way in Memphis. It seems that no matter where you fly, you have to stop over somewhere. I had never been to Memphis, and all I can tell you about the trip from Concourse A to Concourse C is that the entire place smells like barbecue. Not a bad first impression. I like barbecue and now I have a favorable impression of Memphis.

In Houston we stay at the famed Four Season Hotel. Amazing service, wonderful beds, fluffy white bathrobes and the absolute best lemon verbena bath products. For the discounted rate of $160 per night you get turn down service and free coffee in the lobby, but no Internet connection. If you want to check your email you have to cough up an additional $12.95 per day. When I questioned having to pay for a simple Internet connection that is FREE at Starbucks around the corner the impeccably dressed concierge person informed me that the $12.95 included a complete 24 hour time period. Well, geez, he had a point, a whole 24 hours of Internet availability for just over .50 cents an hour is a bargain. Especially compared to the $6 glass of juice and $18 eggs I had just consumed for breakfast. When another person in our party mentioned that she hated seeing herself in the intense magnifying mirror first thing in the morning, the hotel staff offered to remove it from her room. Dismantle part of the bathroom, no problem. Allow you to check your email for free, no way.

Next weekend I am flying to Florida for parents weekend at UNF. That will require a stop over in Atlanta. Years ago they sold a t-shirt in the Atlanta airport that read "When I die and go to heaven, I will probably have to change planes in Atlanta". All I know is that it doesn't matter if you are headed north or south, if you are leaving out of Pittsburgh you will have to stop somewhere along the way.

Having booked my own accommodations, I am staying at a mid level hotel near campus and I am paying the "parent" rate of $49 per night. For that I paltry sum I am entitled to a deluxe room with in room coffee maker, frig, free Internet and a complimentary breakfast. The sheets will be clean, the room will be comfortable. I know this because I have stayed in this chain frequently and after this stay I will be entitled to a free night. That savings is important because as we all know, Parents weekend really means, take me shopping, take me out to eat and don't forget your credit card.

The first week of November I have to travel to New York City. My travel arrangements have been made for me and I will be staying at a very trendy boutique hotel in Tribecca. I am sure that it will be a nice place. The room will be tastefully appointed and the bath will be filled with spa products that will impress my daughters. My hotel will also be more hip than I am.

Checking their website, you will never believe what special, unique amenity they offer. Go ahead, try to guess.....

complimentary cocktail? nope.

heated towels? nope.

Goldfish. According to the website I can request that a goldfish be delivered to my room.

Can someone explain why? Was there some boardroom or think tank meeting where some hotel expert decided that to maximize profits in this day of demanding customers, goldfish are the answers? If you are away from home and lonely, is a fish really going to make you feel that much better? After an early morning flight and working all day I usually try to squeeze in a bit of shopping and grab some weird take-out and head for my room to enjoy the luxury of having the bed and remote all to myself for the evening.

You know what they say, "You can take the girl out of the Holiday Inn, but you can't take the Holiday Inn out of the girl".

Pittsburgh Does Houston

Debby and I have just returned from a wonderful trip to International Quilt Market in Houston! Pittsburgh was well represented at this trade show in several different ways, quilt contributors, the best shop owners, the weather (grey and overcast). The photo above is of the Pittsburgh Project quilt that is the centerpiece of the quilt show section. The quilt is beautifully presented and the shear size of it is amazing. I stood for quite awhile waiting for the woman in the photo to move so that I could get an undisturbed photo, but she was intent on being in my picture. Now I am glad that she is there, she helps you to see just how large this project is! - Beautiful!

The goodies that we purchased are all being shipped home, so I thought that in the mean time I would share a bit of the quilt show with you.

We spend most of our time at the other end of the convention center, sifting through aisle after aisle of amazing merchandise that we purchase for the store, but I always try to take at least one quick walk through the show to see the amazing work from all over the world. This time I actually remembered to take my camera and snap a few shots on my way to the ladies room.

This piece caught my eye immediately. Earlier this month we had a shop display of the One Block Wonder quilts that have been created in our class program. While this quilt, hanging at one of the most prestigious shows in the country, is beautiful. Using those standards, the quilts that were flipped over our railing for customers to enjoy rank as spectacular! I hope this encourages more of you to display your work and enter contests. - YOU can do this!

My favorite quilts in the show are never from published books or patterns. I like to look at the off the wall, optical illusion quilts. This one was particularly appealing because it is part traditional piecing, part illusion, part art, yet it was still a quilt. It is an "art quilt" that was made using traditional methods. I have "issues" with artists that glue, pin, and generally stick stuff to a hunk of wrinkled fabric and call it a "quilt". Fiber Art, maybe. Quilt.... I don't think so.

This type of piece takes a special talent. One with a mastery of piecing, design and color. It is very impressive.

That isn't to say that I don't like Fiber Art. I do! This is a close up shot of a piece that was the first thing I was attracted to. What fun! The texture was amazing. You could stare at this for hours and find something different in every inch. Much of what you would find would make you smile. Candy wrappers, small toys, paper clips, fabric scraps, ribbon and tons of thread. There is no denying the fiber, I will leave the decision as to whether it is "art" up to you.

It had me thinking of that old saying "One mans trash is another mans treasure".

I truly appreciate fine workmanship even when I don't necessarily find the color of the quilt appealing. I marvel at the hours that someone will put into constructing the tiniest of details. This photo is of one of several bed size quilts that were constructed from the same type and style of fabric. My snarky comment is usually that the maker should probably be prescribed some anti depressants. All that work and no "pretty" fabric! But there is no denying the work that went into constructing this beauty.

The style and color pallet is what we refer to as Japanese Folk Art. The fabrics are all shades of taupe with very little contrast, but the results are beautiful. Below is a close-up of just one square and the side border. The log cabin blocks in the border are 1/2 inch strips that were assembled into blocks and then border and then appliqued. Notice that the horizontal sashings are completely different than the vertical ones. The vertical sashing was not only hand quilted, it was beaded too! The tiny flowers and leaves on those odd shaped blocks are all hand appliqued too!

I hope you are inspired to go sew something!

Blog Detention

I know, I know, I should be sent to blog detention.

It has been quite awhile since I have had time to sit and write a post. Things have been very hectic around here. Don't worry, I have plenty of excuses. I should probably start with the computer mentdown that required the pruchase of a new laptop. A laptop with Vista as the operating system insead of the next edition of Microsoft 7. MY computer had to breakdown a month before the new version becomes available. That way I have to learn a whole new way of doing things and download a zillion printer drivers just to be able to function for 30 days. Then I get to do it all over again when I upgrade to the new system. I swear I could hear my old hard drive laughing at me just before it died. You may have heard bad things about Vista. You may have even said bad things about Vista. It is all true. Just my opinion.

I also learned that all Geeks are not created equal. If you live in the Pittsburgh area, I whole heartedly suggest that you avoid gthe Geeks in the North Hills Best Buy location. Take the additional 20 minutes and drive to the Cranberry store. Once you are there, bow down to the Geekiest of Geeks on the planet. They are truely miracle workers in my book. They saved my technological life after the North Hills Geek pronounced my hard drive "deader than dead". If I were not so busy with other things I would take my extreemly sharp Ginger sewing shears to the North Hills store and use them to snip that Geeks little black tie right off! Do I sould bitter? I shouldn't. Thanks to the Cranberry Geeks I have all of my info back, a new shiny laptop, a cute little travel laptop, a back-up drive and a much smaller balance in my checking account.

That is just one small part of my list of excuses for not being up-to-date here on the blog. Anothe one is that I spent the entire last weekend on a sewing retreat with customers. Work, work, work. Yes, it was an all sewing weekend at a wonderful retreat center. Yes, we have prepared meals in the dining room of the mansion. Yes, the comapny is fun to be with and we laugh quite a bit. But I sew for a living, so it still counts as work! Someone has to do it.

My new fabric line arrived just before I left on retreat. I hurried to find coordinates to take with me and managed to finish one quilt top and a good size tote bag over the weekend. When I returned home I realize that I took the wrong fabric and ended up having to make the tote bag all over again! That took a whole day. Because it is my fabric line I had to make several samples. Including the large table runner and smaller purse. That seemed sufficient considering that the whole line consists of just 2 pieces. Large and small butterflies.

If making the samples before Market were all that needed to be done it would be easy. BUT, once the sewing is finished I have to write the instructions, photograph the item, create the pattern front, make a UPC code (that involves adding every other number, multiplying by three, adding the other numbers, adding those to the first total and rounding up to get a check digit. Now you know what those engineers did before they created Vista). When everything is finished I have to print, print, print. Then fold and bag..... speaking of bags, I have to pack one. We leave for Houston and International Quilt Market in the morning. Market is earlier than usual this year. That moved deadlines up by 2 weeks! Excuse #23987.

I just returned from shipping the box of quilts to my hotel (to save on additional baggage fees). That means I am finished, done, period. Except for packing, and hemming my pants, and updating this blog.

NEXT week I will have to work myself out of blog detention and find time to tell you about all of the wonderful things we find at Market!

I've been busy!

I just received the latest copy of the Handcock's of Paducah catalog and I was shocked to see how busy I've been!

There is no other explanation. According to the recent Hancock's of Paducah catalog I have accomplished WAY more than I realized. Obviously I am working in my sleep. I mean if I had been awake at the time, you would think I would have remembered designing the line of Desert batiks.
OR

It is possible that the nice people at Hancock's gave me credit for something I didn't do. I did design a quilt using those 10 batiks (a quilt which is not featured in the catalog) but I didn't design the fabric prints.

I did design the quilt on page 38 using the Tonga Batiks in the indigo shades. They don't mention my name, but they do have a nice "photo" of the quilt. That alone is pretty miraculous considering that I just put the final stitches in the binding of that quilt earlier this evening.

Wow, those Hancock guys are good, they managed to print the photo in the catalog before I finished the quilt! I don't blame them, that quilt is going to be extremely popular. The blue and white prints are crisp and clean and the pattern is very easy to make.

Actually, the Hancock "guys" are extremely nice people. Someone on their staff just took a few liberties with a computer generated image that I created before I started the quilt. I didn't even know that they had a copy of the crude printout I had created for the New York office. Thank goodness I didn't make any changes to the original design! Can you imagine if they ran this photo, offering the pattern and I had decided to make a star quilt instead?

Those little gremlins in catalog production hadn't finished their mischief yet. On pages 34 & 35 I was thrilled to see them feature our Daybreak and popular Jungle Fever patterns. But just above those photos I was a bit shocked to see that I was also given credit for designing their Building Blocks project! I didn't design that project, and I am not sure who did, but I hope that they understand that I had nothing to do with the mix up. I know I would be crushed if I was anxiously waiting to see my things in print and they were attributed to someone else!

I've been busy, but not THAT busy. After all, I'm still loosing 7 hours a week to running down hill! You and all the other runners in the park will be happy to know that I now have a pair of running pants that don't need suspenders!

Karen

Run, Run, As Fast As You Can

I did something momentous and completely out of character for me over the long holiday weekend. It may not seem significant to the rest of the world but I consider it an accomplishment. I ran a mile. Yep, a whole mile, and believe it or not, nobody was chasing me. Ok, the absolute truth is that it wasn’t a continuous mile, I only ran the down hill portions of a 3 mile route in our local park. It may not seem like much, but it is the furthest I have run since my freshman year in high school when I was forced to run a mile to pass gym class.

Where did this sudden burst of athletic enthusiasm come from? After we dropped our youngest at college I was pondering all of the changes in our life and decided that I should get serious about a regular exercise routine. The easiest way to get serious about exercise in our house is to tell my husband what you are thinking. He loves the “E” word. My husband is in great shape. I don’t have to add the words “for a man his age” to that statement. Cary is in better shape than most guys that are half his age. When I mentioned walking the park near our house he was all for it. To help me stay motivated he offered to walk with me each day, and he meant EACH and every day. There is no slacking off in Cary’s exercise world.

The walking part is actually quite enjoyable. The route through the park is beautiful, the weather has been perfect and I like getting an early start to my day. The bad part is that it takes about an hour to get ready and make that walk happen. Seven days a week. That is SEVEN hours out of my life. Seven valuable hours of SEWING time! Something had to be done. Convincing my walking partner, who considers a 3 mile walk a great way to “warm-up” his legs for a softball game, to skip a day or two was not an option. It seemed that the only way to speed things up is to start to run.

What the heck was I thinking?

Have you ever noticed that runners never look like they are having a good time? That is because they aren’t having fun. They are just trying to get home faster. It is either that or they are punishing themselves for some inexplicable sin they committed, like eating fries with their burger.

In my own personal, and I admit short, journey I have learned several things. The first of which is that yoga pants are for doing yoga, they are not made for running. Yoga is a gentle form of smooth exercise not at all like the jarring, pounding of feet on pavement. If you attempt to run in yoga pants, you will wish with all of your heart that you were also wearing suspenders. I also learned that I run with all the grace of a Clydesdale. My husbands size 12’s barely make a sound as they hit the pavement and my size 7½’s pound the pavement into submission. Then there is the fact that my face turns bright red when I exert myself. This has happened for as long as I can remember. It actually came in handy once when I attempted to mow our lawn and a neighbor was so concerned that I was going to drop dead that he insisted on finishing the job for me. Unfortunately nobody is offering to finish exercising for me.

Sunday we “ran” the lake at another local park. Once again I use that term lightly, we only jogged the downhill portions of the longer route. It was amusing watching the expressions of the runners that were traveling in the opposite direction. I think we were quite a sight. Cary, peacefully jogging beside me not having broken a sweat and me, beet red and desperately trying to control a pair of yoga pants with a mind of their own. One guy caught my husband’s eye and gave him the thumbs up. I imagine he was thinking “Nice of you to sacrifice your run to hang back with the little woman”. As he passed he probably added “I hope that guy has a cell phone to call the paramedics”.

The exercise hasn’t been all bad. I’ve made three new friends. Maybe you know them, Tylenol, Advil and Motrin.

Time to strap on the running shoes. Wish me luck!

Who's Who?

Have you ever Googled yourself?

I'm not as Internet savvy as many people think. I do what I have to and muddle my way through most of that. The other day a fellow shop owner suggested that I should be checking myself out online on a regular basis, just to insure that everything that is said is actually true. To quote her exact words "Google yourself baby, you will never know what you are up to if you don't". I decided to give it a try. Some of the things I found were pretty funny.

This is not me.

Her name is Karen Montgomery and according to her bio she was featured in a Star Trek episode. I've never met Spock.



I'm not in this photo either,

The caption reads "Queen Karen Montgomery"
Anyone that knows me knows that I never want to be the queen of anything. Princess maybe. Queen never.



I didn't write this book. Karen Montgomery has authored a mystery series.

Not THIS Karen Montgomery, but it might be kind of fun to read them anyway.




We are getting warmer.......

This photo is of teacher Karen Montgomery and her class in front of the quilt that they made to honor the history of their town. At least that Karen and I have something in common.

I was thrilled to find this photo from a quilt show in the UK. The ladies are sitting in front of my Ashley quilt. The caption says that they ordered a kit designed by Karen Montgomery - me!

I love this photo best. The quilter used my Jungle Fever pattern and her own assortment of fabrics to create the quilt. I especially liked the comments she made about how much she enjoyed making the quilt and how well written the instructions were. Yea!
The photo is pretty low res. You may not be able to tell that the flowers at the bottom of the photo are actual flowers in her garden, they aren't part of the quilt. Isn't that beautiful?

It was fun to see what other Karen Montgomery's are up to and it was even better to see what people are doing with my patterns and fabrics.

It has inspired me to start a customer album on our website. If you have a photo of something you have made from one of my patterns or fabrics, send me a photo and your comments and we would love to include it! mailto:karen@thequiltcompany.com

Whew!

Five days, 8 states, 2 hotels, close to 40 hours in the car and I can't even remember how much coffee. I am finally back home after delivering our daughter Lindsay to college in Florida and then spending Sunday and Monday in Maumee, Ohio at the Checker Distributor Open House.

The first thing you should know is that college has changed. Well, not everything. The food is still pretty bad, the classes aren't that different, and books are still ungodly expensive, but the living conditions are definitely improving. Lindsay is attending UNF in Jacksonville Florida where they have just opened a new dorm. Long gone are the days of prison cell sized rooms and the bathroom down the hall. This photo is of The Fountains, the brand new dorm, and yes, that is a lazy river, complete with inter tubes for floating. The lazy river is directly across from the Olympic size swimming pool that is surrounded by lounge chairs and occupies the other side of the patio area. Do you remember your dorm having a patio area? I remember when we were happy to have a bean bag chair.

Lindsay is not living in the lap of luxury. She is in the older freshman dorm. Somehow sharing a huge room with 3 closets and a private bath with one other person in a building that features sun decks still doesn't seem all that bad. Classes are going well too. I think we are off to a good start.

I did feel a little guilty when we basically dropped poor Lindsay in her room, kissed her good-bye and headed home so that I could get back to work. I was scheduled to give a presentation to other shop owners at the Checker Distributor Open House in Maumee Ohio on Sunday. That required driving back to Pittsburgh, dropping off my husband, picking up Debby and heading for the other side of Ohio. A lot of work, but well worth the effort.

It was a wonderful event. If we ever have to select a committee to organize world domination, I am going to nominate the crew from Checkers! They managed to gather an amazing group of vendors, set them up in their warehouse space, allow several hundred customers to shop the warehouse, see demonstrations, attend lectures, feed them lunch, check them out, pack their cars and still see to every single need and comfort the vendors requested.

We had great booth neighbors. The girls from Quilt Branch were on one side and Nancy Zieman from "Sewing with Nancy" was on the other. In the few moments when we weren't busy demonstrating and answering questions we had the opportunity to exchange ideas and chat with the other vendors.

Proof positive that Debby and I really were hard at work!

Then, just after we were packed up and were ready to head home the staff at Checkers surprised me with this delicious birthday cake. Aren't they sweet? Then I returned home last night to a dozen roses from my wonderful husband, phone calls from my kids and an email box full of best wishes from some wonderful people. I call that a very satisfying weekend.