Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Lovely Frankenstein's 24 Days of Christmas


Okay, I promise not to give any Scrooges a fat lip (tempting though it is) but I WILL post a new Christmas project daily from tomorrow until Christmas Eve. There will be lots of quick and easy DIY gift ideas, Christmas decor and the occasional recipe in there too. So stay tuned for this Halloween nut to show you how holly jolly she can be!

Sunday, November 27, 2011

I've been a busy (and not so bloggy) girl

Thanksgiving is done and the busy Black Friday/Small Business Saturday shopping is slowing down. Me? Oh you know, just finishing projects and binding :)

Thursday, November 24, 2011

Happy Thanksgiving

If you know me in real life, then you know I'm not a very sappy, sentimental person. I don't like talking about my feeeeelings and emotions in general, and I don't think I ever will. But hey, once in a blue moon, right?
Here it is, Thanksgiving. It seems cheap to me to profess our blessings and how thankful we are one day of the year because the holiday demands it, when we should be thankful every day for the people we share our lives with and for all the things we do have. For me it feels even cheaper when I think about the time this year that I've felt just completely stressed out, scared and hopeless. Yet I find myself feeling all gooshy and sentimental anyway.

2011 hasn't been the best of years for me and mine, but even so it's impossible to ignore all of the truly happy and wonderful things this year has brought. All things change - for better and for worse, through the choices we consciously or subconsciously make, or without our influence whatsoever. It's not always easy to ride that wave, but it is important to stop at the crests and gulleys and recognize that things could always be worse and to focus on the positives and not the negatives. Sometimes it's easier said than done, but it's always worth the effort, to focus on the good things in our lives and within ourselves.

So what am I thankful for?
My family - you stay with me when it feels like everyone else is walking away, and who keep me in check with reality. You boost my ego and keep me humble at the same time, and always keep me laughing.

My best friends, Lauren and Isabelle. You're the only 2 people (not related to me) who get my weirdo sense of humor, and that have the same affliction. You keep me sane, and kick me in the butt when I'm working too much (I need that too).

My Readers. You keep this blog fun, because I would have stopped months ago if I saw no one was reading it.

The fact that in this economy, I have 2 jobs. Not only that, but I have 2 really wonderful bosses that I seriously wouldn't trade (though, at the shop with Mom that goes without saying) and my co-workers are fantastic too.

Our customers. You keep me inspired and on my toes, and visiting with you is sincerely a good time.

My part in the shop and the quilting community. So many people can't say they are truly doing what they love and I feel blessed to even have a minor part to play in doing what I love.

Personal growth. I am thankful to have learned how to use stress as a learning tool instead of letting it defeat me, even though I have much more to learn in that regard. I'm thankful to have grown more and become stronger as a person, and to have just that little bit more confidence in who I am, flaws and all.


I guess I'm just thankful to be here at all and to still be standing, and to know the people I love so much are still standing too. Regardless of successes, failures, health or disease and between Health Care deprivation, student loans, bailouts, scandals, conspiracies and Occupy protests ...we're all going to manage just fine.
Happy Thanksgiving.

Friday, November 18, 2011

Product Review: Sewline Quick Thru Needle Threader

Sewline is a company that specializes in sewing and quilting notions, with their most well known product being the mechanical Sewline Fabric Pencil. They are growing more and more popular as a company, as people look for new gadgets to make their quilting process easier. Their pencils are indeed absolutely fabulous, but that's a review for another day. This time around I'll be reviewing their Quick Thru Needle Threader.

This guy.

What a fabulous idea! it looks like a lipstick case, but when you pull the top down, there's a needle threader! And, if you pull the bottom lid off, there's a little case to hold spare needles. What a cute little package, huh? That being said, Sewline, I'm taking you to the woodshed. While this is a great idea for a product, it would be so much nicer if it actually functioned properly. This thing is not well constructed at all. The threading piece is extremely fragile and it was my experience, as well as that of several of our shop's customers, that it broke after less than 10 uses. Now I was gentle with it, and I know my customers (this group of ladies have been handstitching for decades, I know they know how to use a needle threader properly) were too, yet this thing broke.

Thinking we might have recieved a bad shipment of threaders, we called the company to let them know that, "Hey, just so you know all of your threaders broke for us and our customers, so we have reason to believe that we recieved a shipment of defective threaders. What are you going to do about it for us?" Get ready for this: They told us that they knew they were defective when they sent them out, but we're in luck because they're selling replacement cartridges for us to buy to sell to our customers at $5. Basically, in order for the $10ish threader to work like it should have when it was purchased, our customers were expected by the company to buy a $5 replacement cartridge AND the company knew about it. Pretty sneaky on Sewline's part and that's a $15 threader now! Needless to say, we didn't charge for the replacement cartridge because that's pretty bogus. 

As an idea, this product is great. If our experience with the threaders involved them being functional right out of the package, I'd give this product 4 stars, easy. But that was not the case, and so the Sewline Quick Thru Needle Threader gets:


Thursday, November 17, 2011

Thursday, It's Technical: Optimizing your Sewing Room

This is a confessional. I, Lauren, have an out of control sewing room. Seriously. It's ridiculous. Seven months ago, I had a functional sewing room with a sewing table and shelves and a closet and it was all reasonable organized. Well. My best friend moved in in April and she's lucky I like her because there went my sewing room, and entire room got relegated to oh, a 6'x12' "breakfast nook." But I got the little place organized and optimized, and until my fabric shelves broke and spilled everything everywhere, I ran a tight ship there.

So if you're thinking of organizing (or re-organizing as the case may be) your sewing room, first of all, consider the following questions:

- How large is your proposed sewing room?
- Will it be used for more than just sewing (scrapbooking, jewelry making, etc.)
- What is the lighting like in there?
- Will my typical organization methods work in this space?

Those questions will help guide you in how to best use what you have and what kind of supplementary items you may need or want. If your sewing room is large, you probably have room for different work stations - a cutting area, a sewing area, a pressing area, and then areas for other crafts like scrapbooking and the like (if that's your game). But if you're like me and have a teeny-tiny, eeensy-weensy sewing room, your objective will be how to most efficiently use the space you have for all of your sewing and/or crafting supplies.

If your lighting is mainly coming from one source (an overhead light, for example) then consider adding task lighting for your projects. If it comes from multiple sources, like an overhead light and a large window, be careful of where you place your fabric so it doesn't get sun bleached.

Consider how you organize in the rest of your home. Are you by nature neat and organized - do you label and categorize? Or, are you (like me) a whirlwind with a haphazard and case-by-case methodology? Set up your sewing room to play to your strengths. If you have a tendency to stack things out where you can see them, then shelves are a good thing to consider. If you like things put away, then a chest of drawers might be your best bet.

Once you figure out the larger furniture and placement oriented aspects of getting everything squared away, here are some ideas get things neat and accessible:

- Use wall space to your advantage. Wall mounted shelving, hooks, pegboards, bulletin boards, design walls and wall mounted magazine racks are all great ways to keep things organized and out in the open, yet taking up zero valuable floor space.

- If you are lucky enough to have a closet in your sewing room, take advantage of that space by housing larger or less-used items away in there, either on the shelves under the bar or hanging on hangers. The closet is a great place for batting, large ironing boards, sewing machines you seldom use...using pants hangers (the kind with the squeeze clips) you could clip up and away less-used rulers and templates as well as large pattern pieces that just will not fold back up, or pieces of material (like pleather, vinyl, laminate, wool) that are difficult to fold or shouldn't be folded.

- Rolling carts or small, portable kitchen islands are great for housing your projects and/or supplies and they are easily rolled out of the way when you aren't using them.

- Cabinets are perfect for closed storage, but think about how you use them. Once the shelves inside are filled, use the inside of the doors too! If the space between the door and shelves is wide enough, put some nails in and hang small items. If it's not, use it to hang fabric swatches with the selvedge on from your latest project (in case you run out of fabric, you'll know what to get) or put up pictures of your favorite color ways to inspire you. It's your very own Piniterest in your home!

- Wall mounted thread racks are Godsends. See your thread right away without having ro rummage through a bin.

- Store away your scraps in shoeboxes. The cardboard breathes better than plastic, so you don't run that remote risk of mildew (if you're worried about that), plus they're something you probably already have around. Organize as you see fit - by scrap size, color, print style, whatever - and stow away.

- Foam core or comic book inserts are great folding aids. Wrap your fabric around those and you'll have your own mini bolt of fabric for whatever size cut. It keeps more fabric more compact than just folding and you can set it on end, fitting more fabric on your shelf/in your bin than folding and stacking.

- Labelling the yardage amount on your cut pieces and scraps (if it's not readily apparent) is a lot of work but if you work out of your stash more often than not, it's a good way to know which fabrics will work for your project and which won't.

- Hang dowel rods on the wall or inside a cabinet to keep your ribbons and spooled items out of the way and untangled

- Small plastic baggies are great for housing buttons and other embellishments because they stay contained, and most of those baggies have a hole in the top above the closure so they can be hung on a pegboard for easy identification and access.

- Put patterns in binder sleeves in a binder. One large binder takes up less space than the same amount "ziplocked" bags the patterns come in with the pattern inside. Plus, using dividers or sticky tabs, you can quickly find the pattern you need without rifling through a large box of patterns.

- Hardware stores carry wall mountable storage drawers, used there to house screws, nails and all that small stuff. Use one in your sewing room, wall mounted or not, to house your sewing machine needles, buttons, embroidery floss, bobbins etc. Each drawer can be labelled too!

 - Portable toolboxes are great to house small notions of a similar type out of the way yet easily reachable. They're great for buttons, clothing closues (like hook-and-eyes, zippers, snaps), beads and other embellishments, sewing machine parts, etc.

- Use the ArtBin project bins to keep current projects, class projects, Block of the Month programs and UFOs organized

- Mint tins and the like are great for storing broken needles and bent pins safely contained.

- Magnetic bulletin boards with the magnetic tins are perfect for storing buttons, pins, needles, in a more visually pleasing way.

- Use a dry erase board to write up your project list, items you need to buy at the quilt shop the next time you're there, cutting instructions, or other notes to yourself as you work.

There are a million and one different ways to organize your sewing room, and it takes trial and error to figure out what works best for you. I hope this has given you some food for thought and helped you with adding to the great ideas you all ready have!

Sources and Other Links
All People Quilt
TipNut

Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Product Review: Heat n' Bond Feather Weight





If you do fusible applique, then at the very least you have heard of the brand Heat n' Bond, if not used it yourself. There are a few good fusibles out there on the market, and I have found through trial and error that Heat n' Bond products work the best for me. Not that the others, like Steam-A-Seam or MistyFuse, don't work well; they do, but I like the results I get with Heat n' Bond better.

Anyway, so Heat n' Bond has developed and released their response to MistyFuse and the other very light fusibles, which is their Feather Weight brand. We got it in at the shop for Carol and I, since we do a lot of applique, to test and see what we thought. Our opinions differ. I like Feather Weight, and actually I prefer it to Heat n' Bond Lite (my previous staple). I concede, however, that Feather Weight has some...idiosyncrasies. But once you know how to deal with and counteract those quirks, it's a wonderful, wonderful thing to have on hand.

Feather Weight really is just that...it is light as a feather! I have a tendency to go for patterns and designs that pile layer upon layer, and so the thinner the fusible, the better. But like I said, there are some idiosyncrasies. When the fusible comes off the roll, Heat n' Bond has affixed the plastic instruction sheet to the inside (fusible) side of the roll. The adhesive is so thin that trying to pull that instruction sheet off without tearing a wide swath from the middle is both an exercise in patience and dexterity. I have found it difficult not to lose an inch or two from the end that I peel the sheet off of, but I have also found that once you get it started and it stops tearing, it can be ripped right off like usual. Also, if you pull the sheet off just a few inches past where you're planning to cut your piece off, the fusible won't tear when you go for another piece and have to tear the instructions off again.

Speaking of instructions, this is the one fusible where I do in fact follow them. You absolutely cannot use a higher iron setting on this stuff, because the fusible is so thin it'll just dissolve away if you do. It on;y takes a second or two to adhere it to your fabric, but once it's on there, it's fabulous. Because of its thinness, it's able to be repositioned on your applique. The drawback on that thinness though is that repeated ironing, when you assemble your applique, makes the fusible dissovle a little more each time so you may find your corners coming up as you stitch everything down if you're working on a more intricate project.

So with Heat n' Bond Featherweight, its assets are also its liabilities. I have found, however, that it is more beneficial than not and it's definitely a product worth giving a try.

I give Heat n' Bond Feather Weight...

Wednesday, November 9, 2011

Two Finished Projects in Two Days. Bam!

Whelp, I have spent the last two nights sewing my booty off and here's what I came up with:

Woo! It's done! The one complaint I have about Piece O'Cake's pattern is that there really wasn't a helpful placement guide and so just in eyeballing how far away to put the reindeer and Santa from the seam I ended up placing them too low when I gauged how far down to put the large tree. There ended up being a huge white space and it looked weird I thought, so I just filled in with more trees. I like the end result there! and the green squares in the corners aren't part of the pattern either, I just thought it would be an easy way to bring the green out without it being overpowering.



It also called for thin ric-rac for the lettering, but gave no placement guide for the letters, so I just used Hot Fix ribbon and my own sloppy cursive. It's whimsical, dammit! :D


Here is another one from BJ Designs, another of my favorites. It's just a quick and cute 20" by 20" mat.

Here's the whole kit 'n caboodle. It's hard to see here, but the "white" is actually a light gold with gold metallic snowflakes on it. It's not as bright and glaring in person as it is in the photo. Thanks, fluorescent lighting!

Here's a closer shot. See? The "white" is actually gold. Not quite as intense. But the snowflake is Michael Miller's Fairy Frost with the the glitter. Oooh....sparkly.


Let's see. Next up I have another mat like the snowflake (but it's a candy cane instead) and yet another from BJ Designs that's a large wonky Christmas tree. I'll get a picture posted of that soon, once I get it all together :-)

Tuesday, November 8, 2011

Bad Blogger...Bad!

Well, since we got back from Quilt Market, I know I haven't been the most diligent blogger around. Truth be told, I've been busy as all get out! I've been getting projects done (like you saw in the last 2 posts) and I've been working on the new ideas for the shop that we learned at Quilt Market. Plus, for the month of November we're short staffed at the shop so Mom and I are pulling double and triple duty to make sure things go smoothly. That being said, get better soon Debi! We need you :-)

So in the mean time, I'm running out of informational topics to write for you about. If you want to see something quilting related discussed on this blog, leave a comment and I'll make it happen! Untill then...I'll have a slew of neat new tips for you tomorrow.

Sunday, November 6, 2011

It's not even Thanksgiving yet!

I know. I know. Those of you that know me know how I feel about Christmas invading my life before I'm good and ready - which invariably is the day AFTER Thanksgiving. Buuuuuut I work in a quilt shop and now October was the time for beginning our Christmas samples. So after getting a simple little poinsettia tablerunner done...this is ny next one. It's from the Piece o' Cake book

Friday, November 4, 2011

Cabin in the Stars is done!

Finally... It's done! I'm very happy with how it turned out. Its amazing how A fabric can look great in a smaller swatch and overwhelming as a whole - the second picture is my original border...the white in the flowers ended up being too much. Oh well. Never know until you try! First picture is the finished product with the border I ended up with.

Thursday, November 3, 2011

International Quilt Market 2011: Part 1

If indeed heaven exists, I'm pretty sure it would resemble a Quilt Market. No, seriously. It is immense and wall-to-wall fabric, notions, quilts, kits, books, patterns, gizmos, gadgets, gifts, and everything else under the quilting sun. But I'm getting ahead of myself here....so how was the trip?

Well, it's no secret that I'm a land lover. I absolutely and categorically HATE flying. Hate hate hate hate HATE. I figure, if I were meant to fly somewhere along the lines I would have evolved with wings or at the very least an unnattractive flap of skin with which to glide from tall buiding to tall building in a single bound. Last time I checked, I missed that evolutionary train and here I am, a biped with no flying parts. Or, going a different route, I'm pretty sure God would have created me with wings, or a gliding flap or hell, given me the ability to defy gravity and fly around. Unless my mirror is lying to me, neither scenario is true...I definitely cannot fly by any means so why on earth would I want to get into a heavy metal tube with affixed wings and play Russian Roulette with gravity and air speed velocity? Buuuuut, unfortunately, to go anywhere outside of our surrounding states, to fly is the most logical and economical transportation choice, and that's precisely what we did and for four hours one way and four hours back I hated every single second of it. I decided mid flight that while it has to be the most awesome job on this planet (and eventually several others), I would make the worst possible astronaut ever! Anyway, flight one was okay as far as flights go, except for the guy sitting next to me who decided it would be a blasty-blast to chat my face off the entire flight. Flight two sucked really, really, really bad. Talk about flying metal death traps! I'm all ready white-knuckled in the best of flying circumstances, but toss in some violent turbulence and I'm a crying, panicky little wuss....and that's exactly how that went. Yes, I, cried on a plane as an adult. Because hey, we got tossed around like an empty can in a wind tunnel. Fun times.

But we landed THANK GOD and then it was off to our first adventure in Houston, Texas. Let me preface this by saying despite my uptightness while flying, otherwise I'm pretty easy going when it comes to travel. I don't really care where we stop and I'm always up for a little city exploration but ho-ly crap. So we get to our hotel and it is definitely in the gangland. We stayed at the Marriot, which was actually really nice considering its location, and it wasn't until the following day that we noticed it was surrounded by barbed wire and its closest neighbor was a strip bar called "Sinfully." Keeping it classy, Marriot! Anyway, we ventured out for some dinner, which if you go to our store you know we were all about the Waffle House. We don't have those in Oregon, and we LOVE their hashbrowns. If you're not familiar, the Waffle House is the greasiest of greasy spoon chains, open 24 hours and the scene of many a late night hubub...Kid Rock got into a fight there once. Don't go for the waffles (ever), but go for the hashbrowns, because oh my God, yum. So we knew one was (according to Mapquest) 0.6 miles away from our hotel but damned if we could get there! Apparently, for one, Houstonians drive like stampeding wildebeest on PCP and for another, nothing is logically laid out or clearly marked. So we ended up in a frontage street going the opposite way in an area with gang graffiti and barred windows at night, in the dark in a rental car. Bonus. After a half an hour and a useless cell phone GPS later, we wind up at the Waffle House for some glorious hashbrowns (covered is the way to go, always) and I remember that oh crud, I forgot my toothbrush in Oregon. Blast! So mom says hey, we need to get one since they didn't have any in the quickie mart in the Marriot and hey, she needs some hairspray too. So we head out trying to find a grocery store or market or anything that would have toothbrushes and hairspray in the same building. Five miles later? No grocery store at all, no quickie mart that isn't poorly lit with bars on the windows with people loitering and gang graffiti. Finally after circling back we giveup and go to a Chevron to get our stuff. By now I'm tried and cranky and so is mom so we buy or stuff and get the heck out and to the hotel. When we get back, we learn after looking in the binder with all the local ammenities that if we would have just called down to the concierge we could have gotten a toothbrush, hairspray and tons of other stuff for free in the comfort of our pajamas. Life lessons.

So Friday was our first day at Market and we had to go into downtown Houston to the convention center for the Schoolhouse Series classes. A few observations...yes, Houstonians still drive like maniacs, there are still no dang grocery stores along the freeway into Houston aaaaand the streets were EMPTY. Even in downtown no one was out walking around! It was so strange. In Portland, pedestrians are all over and the parks are full and it's clear that people live there. Houston? Either a hurricane just blew through and people were still evacuated or maybe it's just not a pedestrian friendly place because there was no one out on the streets. There was a beautiful park across from the convention center and no one was there. Mom commented that it had to have been the economy hitting the city harder than Portland (which, it hit pretty hard in places too), which is probably true unfortunately. It really is a beautiful city, but the absence of people was just eerie. It was almost post-apocalyptic, no joke. I digress.

The Schoolhouse Series was worth the cost of the plane ticket alone. Each class lasted 30 minutes, with 5 minutes in between. during each half-hour segment, up to 20 different classes were held relating to bettering your business, learning new techniques, seeing new lines, reviewing new books, seeing how to use new notions better, color theory for quilters and Q & A sessions with designers. We met up with a family friend, Michelle, who owns Sooner Quilts in Guthrie, Oklahoma. I grew up with her kids, and my folks have been frtiends with Michelle and her husband for years, ever since we were in the Marines. Anyway, we decided to divide and conquer - I'd take classes I thought were good and they would take classes they thought were good. After all was said and done, we learned a LOT. Mom and Michelle took classes from Joanna Figueroa, Jinny Beyer, Jo Morton, Bigfork Bay...I'm not sure who else honestly, you'll have to ask one of them. I took classes from Kaffe Fassett, Brandon Mably, Tula Pink, Amy Butler, Anna Maria Horner, Valori Wells (an Oregon native), Jinny Beyer, Karen Brown, Stephanie Prescott (A Quilter's Dream) and other non-designers.

Here's an anecdote for you: I got kicked by Kaffe Fassett. Yes. Kicked. Kicked by Kaffe. Kaffe the Kicker. No, no, no, it wasn't intentional so before there is any righteous indignation brewing heres how it went...I was sitting in the classroom, where the aisles were narrow. Kaffe was apparently in a hurry and came barrelling down the aisle before I could move my knees to give him more room to walk through the aisle. He got me right in the shin, hard enough that I was thinking "Ow! Hey!" but no bruise, no nothing. Though I don't think he noticed, because he never acknowledged the kick. Ah well, makes for a good story!

Anyway, you're probably (maybe) wondering if we actually for-real MET any of these people. I did! You'll have to ask mom about the people she met, because honestly I can't remember. But I met Tula Pink, Brandon Mably, Kaffe Fassett and Stephanie Prescott. By met, I mean talked to for more than a "Hi, thanks for being here, love your work." Tula Pink reminded me of my roomate - sharp witted, funny and slightly sarcastic. I liked her, there didn't seem to be any hoity-toity fakeness about her which was really nice. Brandon Mably was really a nice guy, very obviously art based, but he didn't have that highbrow way about him either. We had a really nice conversation about composition and I was very impressed by him, especially since he went out of his way to talk to people. Kaffe, all kicking aside, I was less impressed by. He wasn't rude by any means but I found him very aloof and he was definitely very higbrow, and I found him bordering on arrogance. But I guess when you're as influential as he is... Stephanie Prescott is the designer behind A Quilter's Dream and I seriously cannot speak highly enough of her. She is incredibly nice and what I was so impressed with was that unlike a lot of other designers and store owners, she was very open and willing to share ideas with people and share the things that brought her so much success. She repeatedly said that while she doesn't want everyone to be a cookie-cutter of her, she really wants to help other businesses and designers succeed especially in this economic environment and if that means telling people the things that worked for her, so be it! THAT is how the quilting world ought to be.

On another note, Mom, Michelle and I had to eat lunch there at the convention center and it's amazing how brazenly these places flaunt that they know they have you by the short n' curlies. A cafeteria burger was $13, and honestly a Big Mac for less than half that is far better quality. During the Market, one slice of high school cafeteria quality pizza cost $5 and all drinks that you can get from a vending machine for $1.25 cost $3. Man oh man I forgot how they do that! Mom and I kept saying "we should have gone to Waffle House for this." lol.

So Saturday was the Market day, and hooooly mackeral I was not ready for what I saw. It. Was. HUGE. Take Portland Expo and multiply that 3 or 4 or 5 times. Immense. Like I said before, if heaven exists, I'm pretty sure it looks like Market. It was all wholesale stuff, so everything that could be bought was for stores only, not for customers...Market for customers didn't start until Nov.1. But anyway, shop owners had the option to make appointments and buy fabric with the different fabric companies, as well as see new pattern, book and notion designers along with all of the old stand bys. Designers had booths and quilting show hosts had booths and magazines had booths. It was nuts! Mom and I started walking together and checking things out until her meeting at 11:30 and then I went off on my own all googly eyed and in awe of the whole thing. I have to say, on a more personal note, it just reinforced that much more that I want to do quilting world careers and not academia geared ones. It was so COOL. So lets see...who all did we see there that we didn't see at Schoolhouse...Nancy Zieman, Elinore Peace Bailey, Marianne & Mary Fons, Patrick Lose, Jan Patek, Barbara Jones, Pepper Cory...good grief I'm sure there are plenty of others. We got lots of patterns, a a few books signed just for us. I got one signed by Kaffe Fassett...I mean it's the least he could do, right? ;-) Oh, I'm kidding. But no, I really did get one signed by him. Mom got a couple signed and I can't remember who by...one of her favorites but her name is long and hard to remember through the fog lol. Ask her! We got a lot of great tips and ideas for new programs and new ways of doing things, so be on the lookout for that. Plus, we are going to have a FABULOUS Block of the Month starting in January....but my lips are sealed! You'll have to wait and see.

Well, after Market we pretty much crashed. We got home around 7 or 8 inthe evening, and we had to be up and out of the hotel by 4am (yes, a.m...Think I'm cave trollish now? Get me up at 3:30 in the morning and you'll see a cave troll all right...knuckles dragging, grunting and lumbering, the whole 9 yards) to the creepy Hertz place. We had a super obnoxious guy on our plane, who was shouting down the concourse at people and I'm pretty sure he was still drunk from the night before. When we got off the plane, he looked at this little girl and told her she was sucking out all the air and making people suffocate. Not his kid, but some little girl behind us just excited to get off the plane at Denver. What a weird guy. But we got to Portland by quarter to 9am and let me tell ya, I slept most of the rest of the day.

Pictures are all ready up on our Facebook page, but I'll post some here soon!

Tuesday, November 1, 2011

Are you on Facebook?

Are you on Facebook? Are you friends with The Cotton Patch? Well, our profile got locked and due to the nature of the security questions to get back in, we are unable to access it to update. When you're friends with so many people from all over, people that you may or may not know personally, how is one supposed to identify that person in any random picture on that person's profile? Unrealistic? Yes. Needless to say, we won't be getting back in to our account.

So. Out with the old, and in with the new! If you're on Facebook, CLICK HERE to "Like" our page on Facebook, or search "The Cotton Patch" and find the page that way. Look for updates on new fabrics, classes, and general quilting world news.