Latest News......

Or rather an update on the last couple of months!

 

Time just seems to fly by sometimes and quite often it may seem like not a lot is going on because I'm not posting updates on all the various social media platforms every day; but things are happening every day. Sometimes they just aren't very exciting or I'm just too busy to write a blog post. If you want to keep up to date with regular updates the best place to find out about them is twitter.

So just WHAT has been going on since my last post?

 

Well..........there have been two great quilt shows at Quilts UK in Malvern and the National Quilt Ch'ships at Sandown.

 

I have my first proper quilt pattern available. Been meaning to blog about this for AGES!!

Planning on designing a series of patterns using pre-cuts.

This first one, called Jigsaw Stars, uses a Hoffman Bali Cracker but of course it can also be made with a Layer Cake.

 

 

Which reminds me I really must put this on the website!

 

Whilst I love the latest Hoffman pre-cut collection made from the #1895 fabrics, I kind of missed having Bali prints so I've ordered some Timeless Treasures Tonga Treats to fill the gap.

The 5" charm squares arrived a couple of weeks ago together with some of the 10" squares.

 

 

Tonga Treats have 20 difference fabrics in each pack, but have two of each fabric. I'm playing with a charm pack at the moment; HSTs a go go!

 

 

2 1/2" strip packs should be due for delivery shortly, all in the same colours.

 

I think that will do for one post! If you are very lucky I just may do another post tomorrow about the yummy fabrics I have on order....

 

 

 

 

New Fabrics......yay!

Finally found some time today to upload the fabrics that were delivered a couple of weeks ago. A D- for me for taking so long to do it!

So what new goodies do I have in store for you?

First up is Boyd's Bears from Spectrix; a cosy bear collection featuring a cot quilt sized panel and various co-ordinates

Next up is Bloom from Kanvas which is part of Benartex. A couple of great flower prints and a yummy stripey co-ordinate, although the colours of the images I have taken from the web don't seem to match the actual fabrics so I'm going to need to take my own digital images of these.

Next we have Dancing Cranes from Paintbrush Studios; some classic Oriental prints with a great main panel

And finally Vogue from Henry Glass fabrics. This is the collection I am going to play with first. I just love this stripe

So I tweeted this morning that I needed to decide either to upload fabrics, blog or sew...........well since I've done the first two that can only mean it's Sewing Time!!
Yay!

Finally!

Finding the time to blog seems to be my problem at the moment. I was all set to write a post about 10 days ago but somehow the time I had found to write it, suddenly evaporated.

But here I am. It's the beginning of November. And I know it's been ages since I blogged again!

I have been tweeting quite a bit recently so why not follow me there for quick and regular updates on what has been happening at The Crafty Quilter.

I am becoming increasingly frustrated with Facebook. I have over 400 followers on the CQ page and yet less than 25% of them ever see my posts. I could of course pay to promote my posts but that is just not a viable option for a small business. On the FB profile I use for quilting purposes, I have so many 'friends' that I have made a couple of lists of people or fabric companies whose updates I really want to see and yet when I was working my way through the updates in one of my lists the other day, I needed to refresh the page at one point and as I scrolled through  the updates I had already read, I found there were some that weren't there a minute ago. What was that all about? The whole point of making lists is NOT to miss any updates from people!
And so this is why you will find me more on twitter these days.

So what's new at The Crafty Quilter?

A few weeks ago the 5th Bali pre cuts collection from Hoffman arrived. These are now available in 5" squares, aka Snaps, and 10" squares, aka Crackers, as well as the original 2 1/2" strips - Pops. I really love these. I didn't order a large quantity of the new Snaps and Crackers as I wasn't sure how they would be received so have sold out of quite a few of them already. More are now on order and they will hopefully arrive later this month.
The most popular colour so far has been Brown Sugar, which is rather yummy.

My favourite is Parfait, although this has been the least popular so far!

The other new delivery just before the quilt show at Malvern was the first few fabrics from the Florentine 4 collection from Robert Kaufman. Pretty amazingly, I managed to upload the fabrics to the website the same day as they were delivered!
There are four colourways to this collection but I have only ordered these two subtle colours; Dawn and Mist.

I'll see what quilt kit I can design when the rest of the fabric arrive.

The last few weeks have been very busy with back to back quilt shows at Malvern last weekend and Duxford this weekend. Today is the last day of my last show this year, although I am working at an area day next Saturday too.
It will be nice to have a break and get some quilting done and to that end I have just bought myself a freemotion foot for my machine and plan to teach myself to machine quilt.

Anyone want to learn along with me?

 

Where does the time go?

Yet again weeks have passed without me blogging.

 

Okay months have passed!

I really do need to rectify this, more so as I am starting to become a little disillusioned with Facebook and promoting pages. This has been mainly from a personal point of view that I have started getting 'sponsored' posts or pages in my newsfeed as well as seeming not to get some posts from friends when I have checked all the boxes to receive all the updates. What's that all about? I think I would like to decide what I see and what I don't see, thank you Facebook!
I will continue to maintain the CQ Facebook page but I think I will try blogging and tweeting a bit more for a bit instead. If you don't follow me on Twitter just yet (tut tut) click here!

 

So what has been happening these last few months? There was the Festival of Quilts of course which was mega busy as usual.

I have made a few quilt kits since I last blogged so here they are.....

 

I have already posted the main full width print in the Imperial Collection 8 from Robert Kaufman in my last post way back in June, but here is the quilt I made with the collection.

 

 

The original aim was to add a dark marble outer border. I did pick a good matching Marbleous fabric for each colourway, only to be told Robert Kaufman had discontinued Marbleous and replaced it with a new marble collection called Fresco. I ordered some replacements from a shade card, only to find out that when they were delivered none of them went! So frustrating!
The blue main print has just sold out this weekend at the Scottish Quilt Championships but there is still the purple colour left and a little bit of the brown.

 

 

Next up is Dutch Cottage also from Robert Kaufman. Most of the fabrics came with the Imperial Collection fabrics a couple of months ago apart from the main panel print.

 

And this is the quilt I have come up with this.

 

 

I'll try and get details of this up on the website this week.

 

And finally we have Magic Garden which is a collection which is a little different for me from a new company called Blend Fabrics.

 

 

I love how the sashing strips seem to shade in this.

 

And so that is what I have been up to!

 

See you soon...........promise!