It's time for a Newsletter!

We know, we know, it's been a while since we got a newsletter out. No excuses either. It's a new year and we are very excited to get back on track! Hopefully you have been staying warm this winter, getting lots of projects done and are looking forward to 2014 as much as we are. In August, we will be marking our "Lucky 7" --- the beginning of our 7th year in business -- so be watching upcoming newsletters, because I'm sure we'll be coming up with a fun way to celebrate!

First of all, we do have some dates that the shop will be closed. We will be closed during our daytime hours only on Tuesday February 4th and Thursday February 6th but will be open our regular evening and weekend hours. We will be closed for daytime and evening hours for retreat in March from Wednesday March 19th through Sunday March 23rd. As always, if you have an emergency you can always call us - we won't be far away.

Speaking of retreat, our sewing group is doing a charity project this year. You may have read our post on Facebook about it but in case you haven't, we are going to be making pillowcases for local food pantries. If you would like to help we will gladly accept any donations of fabric, finished pillowcases, pillows, or monetary donations to help with the purchase pillows and fabric. Our goal is to complete 100 pillowcases while we are at retreat. Char and I have been shopping the sales and looking through our stash to downsize (although, I think it's just making more room for new fabric!). The pillowcases do not need to be children theme related as there are adults that could also use a pillow/pillowcase as well. If you would like any more information, please let us know.

Winter Weather Watch! Since it is winter now, and hopefully moving into spring SOON, just a couple of weather reminders. Please be aware of what your shoes may be tracking into the shop! We try to keep the wetness on the floors - particularly around the machines - to a minimum so that your quilts and batting don't attract salt or water. Please feel free to bring a spare pair of shoes or slippers to quilt in. Also, if the weather is going to be particularly awful, please give one of us a call or text to make sure that we will be there. Everyone's safety always comes first!

Now, it's time to talk about our upcoming classes!

Introduction to Crochet

February 15, 22 and March 1 (Saturday) 10am - 12pm

$30 for all three sessions or $10 for the sessions you want to attend
Class size limited to: 10 (if there are more than 10 we will offer a second session on those class days)

(If you are a beginning crocheter and are wanting to skip the first session, please see us in the shop)

Yes, you read right -- crochet. We've had a number of quilters ask about learning to crochet and knit. Watch future newsletters for the knitting classes.

Session 1: We will be working on a scarf. You will learn the beginning chain, how to do singe and double crochet, turning to work your rows, and how to start reading a crochet pattern.

Session 2: We will learn about finishing off our yarn, start a basic ripple afghan, learn how to drop and add colors, more crochet stitches (like half double, treble and a shell or popcorn stitch)

Session 3: Will learn how to work with multiple strands of yarn, how to work with crochet thread and blocking your work. Also, any difficulties or questions will be addressed at each session.

You will receive your supply list when you sign up for class.

Souper Sleuth Saturday

March 8th (Saturday) 9am - 2pm

Cost of class is a canned food item for the Churches United Food Pantry Site at St. Mark's Lutheran Church. Only one item is required, but feel free to donate as many as you would like.
Class size limited to ________

Have you felt stuck on a project and just not sure how to do the next step? Perhaps there was an error in the project and you aren't sure how to fix it. Did you pick up a bag/purse or other sewing pattern and after looking over the instructions decide that it is something that you would need a little help with? Please join us for Souper Slueth Saturday! Bring your project and your machine if you like, and get some help to finishing that pesky UFO project ailing you! All for the cost of a food pantry donation!

Strips, Hunks, and Chunks Part 2!

March 29th 9am - 2pm

Cost of class $30
class size limited to six

We had a lot of fun with this class the first time around and now it's been updated and expanded! Come and see some fabulous ideas for working with with a variety of fabrics, whether just purchased or from your scrap stash. This class will be demos and hands on, so bring your machine and come join us for a fun filled day!

Full supply list provided upon paid registration for class.

Beginning Quilting

If you are interested in a Beginning Quilting class, or know someone who would be interested in a Beginning Quilting class, please let us know. We are currently putting together a new session and would love to see more new faces! 

Row of the Month

Starting in May.

Be on the watch for our spring newsletter in April! We are putting the finishing touches on our row of the month quilt. In year's past we have done a beginning block of the month, star block of the month, and border of the month quilts. This year to do something a little different we will be doing a row of the month quilt. We plan on touching a little bit of everything from blocks on point, to appliqué and well you will just have to sign up to see the rest! We hope to have some samples in the shop by April, but feel free to let us know if you would like your name on the list.

As always, if there is something that you would like us to teach at the shop please let us know. For most classes, it only takes you and two friends for us to teach a class. Class supply lists will be provided upon receiving payment. If you cancel with 24 hours notice or less, you will receive a refund in store credit. If you cancel with 48 hours notice or more and your spot can be filled from our waiting list, you will receive a full refund. If your spot cannot be filled from our waiting list, you will receive a refund in store credit.

Be sure to keep up with us on Facebook and Twitter!

Happy Quilting!

Char & Jen

Monday and Wednesday 5:30 pm - 8:30 pm

Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday 9 am - 2 pm
Other times by appointment only

Back from Retreat!

I would like to say we feel totally refreshed, but the truth is we could use a few more days of retreating to feel completely refreshed.  But isn't that always the case!

This year at retreat we discussed some interesting things and we have decided to try something new.  That something is a charity project.  We have some members of our little sewing group that do some volunteer work and talk got around to making pillowcases.  We decided that between now and the next retreat that we would go through our stashes and see what we have that can be turned into pillowcases.  Basically you need 3/4 of a yard for the main body and 1/4 yard for the band.  We are using the hot dog method.  Perhaps you are familiar with this method?

I'll see if I can explain without pictures, although if you google "Hot dog Pillowcase pattern" You will get some results that will have pictures to make it easier.

Take your 1/4 yard band piece and lay it right side up.  You will now lay your 3/4 yard main fabric piece wrong side up, matching the raw edges.  These fabrics are laying out selvedge to slevedge across your table so that the selvedge edges are at the right and left sides (rather than the top and bottom sides).  At this point I pin (with the pins perpendicular to the edge (or standing up rather than running across) of the fabric.  Now is where you make the hot dog.  Oh, and don't worry if your selvedges are not lining up, we will get to trimming in a bit.

Take the bottom raw edge of your main fabric and fan fold it so that all edged are between the two raw edges of your 1/4 yard band fabric. Be sure you do not cover that top edge, you will be sewing a seam here.  Now fold the bottom raw edge of your 1/4 yard band fabric over to meet the top two raw edges.  You will want to pin these three layers together.  I typically use the pins I already have used to hold the first two layers together.  Take your rather long hot dog to your sewing machine and sew your standard 1/4" seam along where you have pinned removing the pins as you go (obviously!).  Once you are through, you will need to turn it right side out by pulling your main print out from the middle of your hot dog.  You should now have a band with an enclosed seam on your focus fabric.  Press so that your band lies flat - press down from the focus fabric to flatten the enclosed seam from both the right and wrong side of your fabric.

Now, fold your pillowcase half, selvedge to selvedge.  Here is where you will trim up the side and across the top to even everything out.  Now, you have a choice on how to finish.  If you are fortunate enough to have a serger you can fold right sides together and serge across the top and the bottom.  If you would like a fancier finish, you could do a french seam.

If you would like to do a french seam, you will need to fold your pillowcase in half with wrong sides together (selvedge to selvedge) and sew a scant 1/4" seam across the top and side of your pillowcase.  Once that is done, you will need to turn your pillowcase inside out.  You will now sew a full 1/4" (or even a little larger) seam across the top and the side that you have already sewn.  This will enclose your seam and give you a nicer finish.  Turn your pillowcase back to the right side and you are finished!

I apologize if I have left out any steps - it may be easier to just google "Hot dog Pillowcase pattern" and see what kind of pictorials you can find to make my convoluted instructions that much easier to understand.

If you are in our area and you would like to participate in our little project, we certainly welcome you!  If you would like to donate fabric or even finished pillowcases you can drop them off during our regular business hours.  We are trying to keep it to cottons and flannels and not necessarily children's prints either.  We are trying to cover a wide variety of ages with our project as best we can.

Happy Quilting!

Clean up, Clean up, Everybody Everywhere!

We sing that song a lot at our house when it is time put the toys away because that is what you have to do sometimes.  I'm starting to think that I need to sing that song in my craft room on a regular basis as well.  Perhaps you are better at this than I am - putting your things away.

For me, that means more than just returning my tools to their proper locations so I can easily find them later.  To me, that means making sure that ALL pieces of the project make it back into their box, or bag, or whatever that project is being stored in.  I have a not so great habit of putting it on the desk to put away "later".  Hopefully you are not the same. 

It also means that whatever leftover fabrics I have from that project are put away (if there are substantial pieces left) or are cut up into usable scrap sizes.  This is a new one for me and this came about because I have been exposed to Bonnie Hunter who makes wonderful use of her scraps.  If you haven't checked her out and would like to you can do so here. 

I have been trying piecemeal to get those scraps cut up into usable sizes, but to be honest it is a boring job and it doesn't feel like I'm getting very far.  I will continue to soldier on, but I do have a rather large Rubbermaid tub to get through.  It would make things so much easier if I would just do so at the end of each project rather than trying to do 10 years of project leftovers at once. I'm sure one day I will be caught up...just not yet and probably not before Christmas.

For me, "later" never really comes and then when I do want to spend a good amount of time in there trying to get something accomplished I have work to do before I can get to the fun work.  It doesn't make my crafting very enjoyable when that is looming or when I shove the needed work over to "later" just so I can go in and do the fun.  It is helpful to do your clean up.

Hopefully yours looks better than mine, or you have better habits than I have.  If we have a clean/picked up work space it makes finding time to do our crafting much easier and it helps when we have all our tools in their places so we know where to find them when they are needed.  If you are struggling like I am, let's make a pact right now.  Tonight spend 15-20 minutes in your crafting area just picking up.  Try not to get sidetracked into nostalgia town (I've spent many unproductive hours there as well) and stay on task.  I bet in that 15-20 minutes we can get more done than we thought we could.  Deal?  Let me hear from you.

I suppose that is why my craft room looks the way it does, because I don't always take that time and not just after finishing every project, but also after doing any work in there at all.  I really need to take a page from the preschool teacher...

Clean up, Clean up, Everybody Everywhere
Clean up, Clean up, Everybody do your share.
It's time to put the work away, the work away the work away
It's time to put the work away to have a goodly time.

Working out the kinks.

These last two weeks seem to be offering opportunities to work out the kinks.  If you have been to the shop during our daytime hours, you will know that there are two littles that come with me.  That means that some days are better than others.  Thankfully our customers are wonderful and seem to enjoy interacting with the littles while I make adjustments to the machines or quilt.  This is also why I normally book one at time during the daytime hours.  I gave it a shot for two renters during the day with the littles and we did make it through.  A minor victory for me. 

It also seems like Mother Nature has been working the kinks out in the weather...I think that she has gotten the kinks of summer all worked out now.  Hopefully this 90+ degree heat will soon give way to fall.

Speaking of working out the kinks, are you in the habit of doing a practice block?  If not, it may be to your benefit to grab some scraps and try out the block before you dig in to the fabrics specially bought for your project.  I know that may seem counter intuitive at times. After all, we know what we are doing right?  We've done this before haven't we?  Sometimes though, even those things that we think are simple may not work out as we had thought they originally might.

We just finished up a lovely quilt for a customer - and by that I mean that we did the piecing and assembling of the quilt top.  The name of that quilt is Snake River and you can find it in Judy Martin's Log Cabin Book. (If you haven't seen this book, you should - there are a lot of great layout ideas as well as patterns)  I mean, it's a log cabin block.  Why on earth would we need to do a practice for such a simple block.  Well, I'll tell you.  Sometimes what they put in the book isn't everything that you need to know about making that block.  In the example of Snake River we quickly discovered that we would need to trim the block after adding each of the sides to make sure it would stay true to the finished size.  Then as we were assembling the border we discovered there was an error in the cutting directions (fortunately making the piece longer rather than shorter) and we went online to find the correction.

Please don't think that I'm picking on Judy Martin.  She designs some spectacular stuff and I still plan on using her patterns and just because I am mentioning "difficulties" here it is not the fault of Judy or her designs.  Truthfully this type of thing can happen with any quilt pattern you are making.  Thus the practice block.  It made a lot of sense for us to make one first so we could be sure that we had our own heads on straight as we started the project where we could watch how pressing went and some cutting and finally how all the pieces really fit together.

If you are about to embark on a new project it might be of interest to you to make a practice block to work out the kinks.

I think we are in the dog days...

Of summer that is.  All this week school is getting out early because of predicted highs in the 90's.  Stepping outside at 10:30 this am showed me that it was already almost 90 and made me glad for air conditioning.

I am also thankful that quilting is an in door activity so I can enjoy said air conditioning!

Hopefully if you are also experiencing this heat, you have a way to stay cool and comfortable.

I know our quilting tips are a little unconventional - we don't necessarily talk about piecing tips, but we do hope you enjoy them anyway.  Today we are going to talk a little about hydration.  We are long-armers here at the shop.  I know that doesn't seem like much of a title, and really it isn't.  It's more a partial description of what we are.  While we are at the machine we do what we like to call the side to side shuffle while we are moving back and forth over a quilt.  It doesn't sound like much exercise does it?  We couple our shuffle with moving our arms in various configurations pushing a machine around and probably stick out our tongues and squint our eyes and make all manner of silly faces.  While it may not sound like much, it is physical work and it is the type of physical work you can get caught up in and not realize that you have been doing it for hours.  This is why hydration is important.  We are doing work, thinking and moving.  It is important to remember that while this is not a replacement for Zumba, it is still physical work for our bodies and we work and think better when we stay hydrated.

This point was driven home to use when we attended Machine Quilters Showcase and took some hands on classes.  The teachers in those hands on classes made sure that they had water coolers in the back of the room and would occasionally call out to the class that we had been quilting for 1/2 hour and if we hadn't made our way back to the water cooler, we needed to get ourselves a drink.

When the weather is hot like this, it is easy to think about hydration.  We tend to forget about it when we are in our sewing spaces working our little hearts out on our latest project.  It is important to not only have water while we are working at the long-arm, but also to have it in our sewing spaces.  Most importantly, we need to remember to drink it.

Hope your summer has been treating you well!  Don't forget to drink your water!

School Days, School Days!

Admit it, you are more excited that school is starting than your child(ren) are.  I don't blame you!  After all it means a little more quiet in the house.  Some structure to their days and some peaceful time for you.  So, what are you going to do with that time?  I know what I'm going to do with mine, quilt!

Finally I can get some time to work on those project that I just haven't been able to get to and now with school starting I'll have some regularly scheduled time where I can do just that.  I will freely admit, I am wholeheartedly looking forward to it!

Hopefully you are able to do the same.  Even if it is not quilting that you have on your list of projects to finish.

Today's tip is to not be afraid to walk away from a project.  We have all had them.  Those projects that we get started on and realize that it is not what we thought it was going to be.  It might be the fabric colors, it might be the pattern or it might even be the techniques used.  Once you realize what is happening, things can go one of two ways. 

Number one, you can scrap the whole thing.  That's right, I said it and it is nothing to feel guilty about.  Perhaps you have a friend that you could trade with.  Then you wouldn't feel like you were losing out on all the fabric, pattern or time you have already put into it.  If there is not a friend, perhaps your guild has a charity chair who would love to have it in whatever condition it is.  Someone might finish it for charity.  If it is really that bad, throwing it away might be a more mind cleansing option. 

Number two, put it away.  Just find a box or bag or whatever you can find to pack up all the pieces and the pattern.  I would suggest that you do it neatly and perhaps write yourself a note about the difficulties you were facing or at what point in the project you stopped.  Then, move on to something else.  Let time go by.  A month or two, maybe a year.  Just put it out of your mind and when it does come to the front again, take it out and give it a look over.  Things just might not seem so bad when you have had time away from the project and when you start to look at it again, it might just be the time to pick it back up and finish it.

Most importantly, with either of these options is to let go of the guilt.  There is no need to feel guilty for not finishing that project.  There is no shame in getting rid or it or putting it away to let it percolate.  Our hobby is an expensive one and it should be fun.  Otherwise we are just wasting our money and time.  Work on those things that you love and don't be afraid to challenge yourself.  However, if the challenge is too great, there is no shame in walking away whether it be for a while or forever.

Happy Quilting!

Getting Back on Track!

It happens to all of us at one time or another, we get sidetracked.  For some of us it happens with regularity.  Don't worry, I'm referring to myself.  However, it is time to "get with the program" or whatever other cliche you would prefer to use.  We will be getting out a new blog each week and hopefully include a quilting tip for you.

It is getting to be that time of year already.  The lists for school supplies can be found in Wal-mart  and parents are starting to do the dance of joy knowing that very soon their children will be returning to school.  No more will we here those words, "I'm bored" when we know full well that there are rooms full of toys, friends a phone call away, and beautiful weather outside that is just begging to be enjoyed.  Ahhh, relief is around the corner.  I'm sure we'll be exchanging it for, "I don't want to go to school" or some other such complaint but we can just push them out the door anyway and enjoy a second cup of coffee in quiet bliss.  At least that is part of my plan...

Here at Quilting By-You, we are watching summer winding down and waiting to see what the fall will bring us.  Don't forget about our new hours!

Daytime: Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday 9am - 2pm
Evening: Monday and Wednesday 5:30pm - 8:30pm

Of course, if you need a different time, please give us a call.  We are always happy to work with you.

Now, for today's tip.  Getting on track.  I find that I work better when I prioritize or make lists.  Sometimes I don't want to follow those lists, but it is a whole lot easier to remember everything when I have it written down.  I also make different lists for different areas of my life.  Grocery lists, quilting lists, packing lists, organization idea lists.  The list goes on and on (sorry, I couldn't help myself there...).  I have also found it helpful to keep a quilting journal.  Now, this journal does not work in the typical way a journal works.  It is not really a chronological notation of my ideas.  Instead, I use it to keep track of fabric collections that I am on the hunt for, projects that I have been mulling over in my mind complete with little sketches and notes, what UFOs I have and what step I am on with them or notes about a difficult part of the UFO that I am trying to work through.  Sometimes the notes say, go to page X where I have made modifications that I want to consider.  I keep track of the quilts I have been working on and when I have completed them and who received them.  I write down websites and shop names with information about where I found fabric and patterns.  I don't want to call it my Quilting Bible, it's more of a log book with all the bits that are important to me jammed inside.  At some point that little book will be full and I will need to start another one.

Maybe you already have your own journal to keep track of your quilting journey.  If not, it can be really helpful to you to have a place to jot down all those ideas that keep tumbling around in your head.  After all, you don't want to lose that one idea that may be just perfect for the next wedding or baby quilt or line of fabric that you just saw in the store.  Writing it down will also help encourage you to grow that idea.  Not over night of course.  Sometimes I write in my little book like my hand is on fire.  I just can get my ideas down fast enough.  Sometimes when I find myself looking for inspiration, I will pick up my little book and read through it and find myself really taking time and working through my sketches or ideas or troubleshooting the problems I have encountered.  It also helps me turn my brain off when it is time to sleep because I know those ideas are safely written down and I can access them at any time without fearing that I may have forgotten a tiny bit.

I'm not sure that I really expressed myself well concerning my little quilter's journal, but I hope you get the gist.  I also hope that you find something that really works well for you.

Happy Quilting!