It is Shop Hop Time!

We are smack in the middle of the Western Pennsylvania Shop Hop. This year the 13 participating stores are each featuring a different movie theme. Our shop selected "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest" as our movie. Not because of the plot, because the title was just too much fun to pass up! Who could resist the excuse to be crazy for a few days? We have candies that we are dispensing in pill cups. Our block for the progressive quilt is "Birds in the Air" and our setting squares are done in "Crazy Patch". There are signs on the door that say "Caution Enter at your own risk. Inmates roam freely". That has confused a few non hopping customers!

The overall theme of a hospital setting gave us the opportunity to dress as either part of the medical staff or as a patient. Several of us have been wearing scrubs and Debby or Dr. LeDonne as we like to call her has been wearing a white lab coat. She ran to Mickey D's yesterday and when they handed her her lunch they actually said "Have a nice day Doc"! But so far Patty takes the cake! Patty's real job in in the Dietary Department for a local nursing home. She borrowed the hospital gown from the nursing staff. Earlier this evening one of our customers said "I have something in my trunk for you" and THAT is where the fake behind came from! TOO FUNNY!!! (Patty wants you to know that isn't her real behind and hers doesn't have dimples!)

Funnier yet is someone that is driving around with a fake behind in their trunk just looking for someone to give it to!

Quilters are always unbelievably fun, but when you give them a "crazy" excuse, you are in for a good time!!!

Karen

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

Hello again

Wow, more than a week with nothing new to say…. How is that possible? I could blame it on being busy. The summer newsletter deadline was Tuesday. The Western PA Shop Hop started Wednesday and that alone takes more than a weeks worth of prep. I should be working on art work for my next line of fabric, but it’s been hard to concentrate lately. I managed to scratch my cornea and I was just a bit cranky while I was waiting for it to heal. If you ask my family I think they will tell you that it was more than just “a bit” cranky, but if they want to complain, they will have to get their own blog. Thankfully the eye seems to be better.

Speaking of family, yestreday was my daughters last day of school, the end of her junior year. It has been a magical year, one of those ones you hate to see end. According to her, as of 12:30 this afternoon she is officially a senior. Now it’s the race to the end, packed with college trips, applications, special events and all the trappings of a senior year. More importantly, this means that I have, assuming perfect attendance, exactly one hundred and eighty four more school lunches to pack in my life. Figure in a few snow days and a bout with the sniffles and it could be less. Hallelujah!

The Western Pennsylvania Shop Hop got off to a great start! We saw lots of happy hoppers, the weather cooperated and everyone seemed to be in a very good mood. The hop has a party theme and our store is celebrating New Years. Deb answered the phone all day with “Happy New Year from The Quilt Company” which made the person on the other end pause for a moment, but it certainly added to the fun. Hosting the hop is a little like having house guests for 4 days. You love having them, but you don’t get much accomplished except for entertaining and you do your best to keep everything neat and tidy. That makes sewing a little difficult. I try to stay on top of the computer work and visit with everyone at the same time, which means that no “real” work gets done until after hours and if the hop is successful you shouldn't have enough energy to work after hours!

But the store looks good! Because I shared my messy photo, I thought I should share the "cleaned up" version too.

The table runners on the wall in photo 2 are the samples of our store kits. The ones on the counter top are from the new "Let's Do Lunch" book by Terry Atkinson. The staff each made a runner to match their dishes and the customers have been having fun guessing which one is which. That's the trunk show from Karen Snyder's "Fat Quarter Fun" book, hanging on the wall behind the railing in photo 3. My customers LOVED her first book "Bundles of Fun" and are really going to enjoy this one too. Photo 4 is of our batik room and photo 5 is of the one classroom that we will not be using during the hop so we have pushed the tables to the wall and are using it as additional display space.

Time to HOP!

Karen