Look who wandered in to the shop...

This lovely group of ladies are from the "Wandering Threads" sewing group of Spring, Texas! 

We had a great time with them yesterday at the shop. 

Thank you ladies for making us a part of your trip!

New things!

We installed some new shelves to store our ever expanding batik selection!

It is getting to be quite a pretty room in the shop!

 We received the Vintage Modern by Bonnie and Camille from Moda! We have Layer cakes, charm packs and jelly rolls of this collection as well as patterns that coordinate with the pre-cut fabrics!

 Novelty Gift Card holders:

We also have patterns for this Caddy Pad Jr.

Deb made one up for me for Mother's day! 

All closed up and holding a mini iron it looks like this:

then you unbutton the loops: 

And open it up for an ironing surface! 

 Pretty neat for taking to a bee or to a class!

We know it is early but....

We received some of our Halloween fabric in from Moda the other day including a charm pack of this cute line!

 Here are the two halves of the panel:

And the coordinates:

 

 

We have also started carrying some Fickle Nickel patterns. These patterns use 5 one yard cuts of fabric. 

 Marge (Mildred) whipped this one out last week using the Radiance line:

We even have some 5 one yard packs of coordinating fabrics all packaged up for you! Just come in pick a pattern plus a 5 yard bundle and off you go! You are on your way to a finished quilt!

Decorating with Hoops Tutorial

Over the years my mother and I have attempted a goodly number of crafts which has left us with a goodly amount of crafting supplies. We each had a number of old hoops in several different sizes. Putting them to good use we started using them like this in the shop but it would be adorable for decorating a nursery, classroom, sewing room etc...

Step 1: Assembly coordinating fabrics:

 Fabrics  must be about 2 inches wider than your hoops. As our largest hoops were 16" a fat quarter of fabric was the most we needed!

I put larger scale prints in large hoops and smaller scale in smaller but that is up to you as designer of course!

Step 2: Hoop your fabric as shown, the inner hoop isn't shown but it is behind this one. Get it in snugly so it looks tight in the hoop.  You can gently pull on the edges of fabric hanging out to eliminate any ripples or looseness.

 Step 3: Once you have it tight, flip it over, and as close as you can, trim away the excess fabric:

 Leaving you with this:

 See how the front looks nice and clean!

 When you have done a few you can start to arrange them so that you aren't randomly putting holes in the wall when you go to hang them. We moved them around a few times and added more hoops to get the look we wanted. We were going for a collage look.

 

 This was the end result:

 We added a cute table runner to fill the negative space left in our roof peak until we unearth some more hoops to fill up the space with!

And the great thing is when you are tired of these fabrics and want to change your decor you can just change out the fabrics!

Ed Emberley has arrived!

Deb and I spotted this in the very first booth we went into at Fall Market in 2011.  It is put out by Cloud 9 fabric company and is printed on organic cotton. 

Gifraffes, foxes and other forest friends! 

 Alligators and dragons

Elephants and frogs 

Along with this cute panel which measures 24"x 42" and can be used as stuffed animals, appliques, puppets and more. 

 It also has this cute owl fabric which has a few owls with little graduate caps! This is definitely going into the T-shirt quilt I am making for a friend who is graduating this year.

Isn't he cute?

My children have several of Ed Emberley's drawing books for kids and really loved them when they were little. The folks at Cloud 9 even gave us a cute little coloring sheet to give out at the shop:

Stop by and pick one up or go to Ed Emberley's website by clicking here. 

There is a whole part of his website dedicated to activities for kids here. 

Enjoy!

OMG That's "To Dye For"

Today Dolores had us rolling up our sleeves when she taught her class on Batik dyeing your own fabrics! 

Look at the fabulous examples she brought to inspire: 

And look at some of today's creations were by the students:

Beautiful and vibrant! 

 Action shot of Kim working on another piece:

Deborah with a finished piece: 

We'll be offering this class again! The students really enjoyed it.  

Dolores makes it very simple--students just  have to show up with some "Prepared for Dyeing" fabric and nothing else! 

No need to cart your machine in for this one. 

Hey - when is the last time you played with colors like this?