Just a couple of new things!

Whew, can you believe that today is Halloween already?  I know, where did the year go!

We have a couple of exciting new things here.  There first is that we will be able to start accepting credit/debit cards.  What?!?  Yep, that's right.  We have decided to give Square a try.  Bear with us as we get things figured out.  We are hoping for a small learning curve.

The next exciting thing is that we will be at the Hauberg Civic Center in Rock Island for their craft fair.  Looking to do some Christmas shopping?  Be sure to stop in there!  It will be November 10th from 9am to 1pm and is located at 1300 24th Street, Rock Island.  Hope to see you there!

UFO's always seem to take over.

Happy Monday and boy is it a dreary one out there today! Looks like a great day to curling up with a good book and a hot cup of tea.  Or perhaps a hot cup of tea a good movie and a fun sewing project.  Perhaps a UFO that needs finishing?  If you are anything like us, I'm sure you have plenty of those!  I know my list has gotten pretty lengthy as far as UFO's that I would like to see finished.  I'm not sure how far I'll get before the end of the year though.  We will just have to see how that goes.  Currently I'm working on finishing some pajamas for my son that I had started over the summer.  I only have to put in the elastic for the waistband on the pants.  That's it.  I've gotten 3 pairs finished now and have 2 more to go.  But I also made shorts as well as long pants so I will still need to finish the shorts so he will have them for this spring.  I know I have plenty of time, but I'm on a bit of a roll so I should probably just get them finished and put away. 

Sometimes UFO's confuse me.  I know that when they became UFO's one of two things happened.  I ran out of time to get the project completed and moved on to something else, or I had some trouble along the way and got frustrated and quit before I did something silly.  Sometimes when I pick those projects up now I wonder what was so frustrating about that project that I put it to the side.  Other projects I can pick up and see right away where my frustration came to play.  Those I usually put away again to percolate some more unless I am feeling in need of a challenge.  Believe me, most days are challenging enough that I usually just put them away again for a later day.  Do you work the same way?  Do you have UFO's stashed around where you just got stuck?  If you need some help with them, stop in some time!  We love show and tell and you never know if a different perspective will help get you ready to work on that project again.  Who knows, maybe I'll bring out my trickiest projects and see what someone else has to say about them.

Good Morning!

Good Morning Quilters!  Things are starting to settle down again now that we are both back from vacation and have had a chance to get acclimated to our regular schedules.  You always think that you can just slide back in to where you left off, but that just doesn't seem to be the case.  At least for us!

This week we are finishing up some quilts needing to be quilted so once again our wait time is very short.  If you are working ahead on Christmas presents and need some things quilted, now is the time to bring them in! 

If you are looking to do something fun this Saturday, we will be having our Scraptastic Saturday Class (starts at 9).  Char will be covering at least 6 different patterns that involve pulling from your stash.  Cost of class is $50 and a soup/sandwich lunch is included.  Space is limited and so if you would like to join us for this, let us know as soon as you can!

I know, I sound like a commercial don't I?  I'm sure you'll forgive me this time.  Currently I am working on trying to design a quilt with a modern flair.  Stay tuned as I hope to get it figured out soon and we can offer a class for our newest creation.

Stay warm - it's been feeling chilly out there! 

Happy Quilting!

Time to get back to work!

Well, our vacation season is now officially over.  We tend to go in the fall rather than the summer for some reason.  I headed south for the humid climes of Disney while Char headed East for the cooler climes of Vermont.  Now we are both back in town and ready to get cracking!  I'm not sure yet what exactly we are going to get cracking on, but I can assure you will probably have something to do with classes for the shop.  Perhaps some easy things you can do for Christmas presents?  Maybe we'll take a stab at designing a modern quilt pattern?  You never can tell here!  Stay tuned!  Or, if you have requests please let us know as we are always looking for feedback!

Can you believe it's October?

I know, where did the summer go?  And now that it has turned into fall its time to start thinking about Christmas.  I know, you are all telling me to bite my tongue.  I can't though.  As a quilter I tend to make a lot of holiday gifts and I'm sure you do the same.  If your list is as long as mine that means you really need to start the day after Christmas or at least the day after New Year's.  Do you find yourself in the same boat?

I also say that as a long-armer that this is where it starts to get into busy season with folks wanting to get things done in time for the holiday to decorate their homes or give to friends and family.  We always like to try to start the planning early, but it always seems like the nice weather comes and I want to go outside and play saving those projects for rainy or bad weather days.  Isn't it always amazing the things that seem to pop up when we aren't looking?

Well, if you are like me you are starting to seriously re-evaluate the list you wanted to accomplish and have started to pare it down to a more reasonable size that won't cause you undue amounts of stress this holiday season.  If you are like me a few years ago you are still thinking that mountain of a list is still manageable as long as you can reach some daily goals (which may or may not be reasonable goals).  I like to think that I've learned somewhat of a lesson over the years.  However, I'm sure my husband will disagree with me when we reach that dreaded 11th hour and I'm surrounded by not quite finished yet projects.

Feel free to share stories!  I know my best one is the year I made the most adorable chenille snow dog wall hangings.  I was hurrying through either the quilting or the buttonhole stitching and managed to sew through my finger.  Yep, needle straight through the nail and the tip of my finger.  Thankfully I didn't jerk or continue to press on the foot feed of my machine.  I did yell for my husband who was upstairs and *ahem* indisposed as I was yelling for him to come down to hand me my scissors.  I did manage to extricate the needle from my finger by tapping the foot feed once and since I now had thread through the hole it was doing me the favor of wicking away the blood so I didn't bleed on my white chenille snow dogs.  However, I couldn't move to get my scissors which were across the table from me so I had to patiently wait for my crabby husband to come downstairs to see why I was making "all the fuss".  He did feel bad when he saw my predicament and helped me remove the thread and bandage up so I could carry on.  After all, Christmas waits for no one!

Happy Fall everyone!  Enjoy the crisp sweatshirt and warm apple cider weather!