Sorry!

Despite the show still being on, we have made the decision not to risk travelling up to Nantwich for the second one day fabric sale tomorrow.
Obviously it was a difficult decision to make as we don't like to let customers down, but sometimes you have to put yourself and your safety first. And whilst the worst of the snow has now fallen and we would have been able to get to the venue, there is more due in the south east late tomorrow and we might not have been able to get home again!
Plus my parents drive the van, they live in a village on a hill and are in their 70s...............

Once we get the van unloaded I'll try and get the sale fabrics back up on the website for another week.

It's work...............but not as I know it!

I am lucky that I love what I do; I love running my business and I love working for the magazine. You make your own stresses but it's all more of a way of life than work. I live, breathe and dream quilts, fabrics, designing. It's difficult to switch off. I'm sure a lot of you are the same, such is the life of a quilter!

 

The sale on the website continues until next Saturday 12 January. There are lots of fabrics and panels left to choose from. It's then on to the One Day Fabric Sale at Farnham Maltings in Farnham, Surrey on Sunday 13 January and the following week the last sale event this year, the One Day Fabric Sale in Nantwich, Cheshire.

And then the quilt shows proper start the week after that at the South of England Showground in Ardingly, West Sussex.

 

Of course all these sale fabrics mean there is space on the shelves for new fabrics, which leads me to one of my favourite pastimes...........browsing for new ones!
I've just ordered the cutest animal alphabet collection from Henry Glass Fabrics called Alphabet Soup. The panel is a 36" x 44" repeat which means it's cot quilt size.

 

I’ve also just ordered some wonderful ombres from the Graduations collections from Benartex.

I’m seriously tempted by the Eternal Ombres from Lecien. They are beautifully subtle colours. The only thing holding me back is as I don’t have any other taupes etc, I don’t have anything else in stock that goes with them……….which kind of sounds like I need to start ordering some………

But then comes the hard part of ordering fabrics wholesale……..the waiting…..as some of these fabrics aren’t due for delivery for many……many months yet!

 

For some reason Blogger isn't allowing me to add images from my pc today, hence the links to pages instead :-(

 

 

 

It's nearly time............!

It's almost the end of an amazing 2012 here in the UK. Despite the weather's best efforts to make it the wettest year on record, we still had a glorious summer of sport and of feeling great about Great Britain with the London Olympics and the Queen's Diamond Jubilee.

 

The last year has been busy for me as I juggle the business and my editing work. My eBay sales continue to amaze me considering I only have a dozen things listed there (I really should find the time to list some more items!) Every UK quilt show has been busy and mega...........every single one! There have been lots of new fabrics delivered..............and I have become addicted to using pre-cuts!

 

So what does 2013 hold? More of the same by the look of it. In my quilting life I want to make more quilts for me...........and actually finish the ones I make to display the fabrics I sell to inspire you. I want to get out and visit more quilt shows. It is so inspiring to see what other quilters create.

 

More immediately, my annual sale starts in a few hours!! There are some great bargains to be had as usual. All the fabrics in the sale are now £5.00 a metre which is more than 50% off in some cases. The sale will run online until lunchtime Saturday 12 January, when I will pack what's left and take to the Quilters' One Day Fabric Sale at Farnham Maltings in Farnham, Surrey on Sunday 13 January.

So why not grab yourself a bargain? Once it's gone...........it's gone!

 

Have a happy and peaceful new year!

 

Joanna

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?

 

Do you Pinterest?

Have you heard of pinterest?

 

It's another kind of social media site where you 'pin' images you like on virtual design boards. It's a great way of collecting ideas and inspiration together in one place. It's also a place you can get lost very easily wandering from board to board so have a cup of tea or coffee at the ready as you settle down to some wandering!

 

The site is now open for anyone to join, previously it was invite only. Why not sign up and follow my boards here?

 

I need to find the time to put some inspiration boards together too I think!

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!