I thought I might brighten up your Monday a bit with some fun new fabric.
Don't forget Bernina Club is this Wednesday and Thursday where we'll be celebrating summer and I must say, it's a doozy! Quilt Market is Friday, Saturday and Sunday and you can tag along with me on Facebook. Hopefully I'll be blogging each night as well so stay tuned.
Have a great week everyone!
Encourage one another,
Today I want to inspire you and encourage you to watch this video. It's really a series of four videos so it will take some time, but I think you will agree it will be worth it. The program, from the BBC, searches for Great Britain's best home sewers. Unlike our drama filled Project Runway, The Sewing Bee features regular people who just love to sew. I appreciate that it offers good technical tips and some sewing history along with a most delightful use of music. I also love the What are they doing now? at the end. Without giving anything away, let me just say it's never too late to follow your passion and find time to do what you love no matter what your age. The Sewing Bee celebrates the love of sewing.
I encourage you to watch The Great British Sewing Bee.
Well, it's finally here. Our big shop hop weekend. We've worked hard to get everything neat and pretty for our guests. We're ready and look forward to welcoming you.
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I wanted to post this slide show for those of you who can't be with us.
We'll miss you.
Encourage one another,
So Sunday I was back at the store fluffing and puffing away for our upcoming shop hop (everything must be neat and tidy for the massive amount of company we are expecting) when I thought, hey, I should count the polka dot bolts, just to see how many we have. I've always been curious to know how many we have but I honestly think I was just putting off climbing up that ladder one. more. time.
So, I counted them.
Care to wager a guess?
384.
384 bolts of polka dot fabric!
Does that seem like a lot to you?
No, me neither. One can never have too many dots - that's my philosophy.
Anyway today we got just one box of fabric from our handsome man in brown and guess what was in it?
Um hum. DOTS. Just dots! Glorious dots in three new shades of grey, two greens we really, really needed and that perfect shade of aqua and red.
So make that 391 bolts of dots.
Sweet.
If you're looking for a particular shade of dot, chances are, we have it.
Life is good!
Encourage one another,
Awk. Can you stand the cuteness?
It's Woodland Pals by Ann Kelle for Robert Kaufman Fabrics.
We've been madly making kits, new models and some of the cutest little gifties for our up coming shop hop. Show up around four o'clock on any given day and you'll likely to be handed a pair of scissors with an invitation to join the fun.
The last of the goody bag components arrived today and we all squealed with delight as we ripped open the box to inspect its contents. (I love when a vendor exceeds my expectations). The next twenty days are going to be crazy busy but so worth it. I think you'll agree.
Encourage one another,
Bill and I celebrated our 45th wedding anniversary on Friday.
I had an eye infection.
He suffered from a bout of diverticulitis.
I went to bed with a hot compress.
He took antibiotics.
We're such a fun couple.
I've been under a bit of stress lately - emptying a vacation home and getting ready for our annual shop hop. Friday morning I was feeling physically rotten and completely overwhelmed. Saturday I awoke to a much improved eye and the offer to help cut 1300 shop hop felt thingies from two sweet friends. What a difference a day makes!
I wanted to show you our quilt for the shop hop. The theme this year is baskets. Each of the eleven shops was to provide a 12" basket block in "basket colors". It was up to the individual shops to set and fill the baskets any way they saw fit. Although the basket idea was basically mine I'll admit that once we had all of the blocks together I was stumped as to how to set them. They all seemed so...brown, but after a few days of trying different setting ideas we came up with this and
I absolutely love it!
We have a limited number of setting kits available for presale so if you're interested please let us know.
We hope you'll join us May 3, 4, & 5 for our fourth annual Heart of the Valley Shop Hop. Our team has been putting our heads together and with the help of Pinterest I think we have some super fun surprises planned for you. (How did we ever exist without Pinterest)? All I can say is you will not want to miss the party!
Encourage one another,
I wanted to quickly catch you up on some of our latest new arrivals.
This adorable pirate collection is from Makower's Henley Studio.
Our Glamping precuts from Mary Jane Butters arrived on Friday
as well as 2WENTY-THR3E by Cosmo Cricket. The yardage should be here before the end of the month.
I was especially happy to see this print
after discovering these adorable pincushions on Pinterest today.
The little label sized prints will be perfect for these tiny pincushions that I can't wait to make.
These will be perfect for them too. So glad I kept a spool of each for myself since they're almost gone. = )
They will all have to wait though because I have a crazy busy week ahead with visiting family from Kansas, Bernina Club and a trip to Las Vegas next weekend to see the Monster Jam Finals with Jake and Nathan. Oh, and we're going to the Pawn Stars pawn shop and a taping of Storage Wars too.
Good times!
Encourage one another,
The phone rang early this morning - well before it was time to unlock the doors. It was an elderly customer that lives seventy miles north of our store. She was looking for a particular fabric to make a quilt for an autistic great grandson. Since we didn't have the fabric she was looking for I suggested she try quiltshops.com. Being 84 she said she didn't have access to a computer.
I asked her if she had a daughter or granddaughter who could help her. She said she did have a friend with a computer that lived in the bay area but her friend didn't sew and it was just getting more and more complicated the longer we talked.
Then I got the brilliant idea to find the fabric and order it for her. She gave me her credit card and shipping info and within minutes we had the fabric she wanted on its way to her. The whole time I was entering her information on someone else's website she was thanking me and when we said our goodbyes she told me to have a great day.
I told her I already had.
Velma I know you aren't reading this but if you were I would thank you for calling Strawberry Patches and for letting me help you today. You blessed me more than you will ever know.
Encourage one another,
Valentine's Day has gotten to be a bit, er... trying for me. You see we share a parking lot with a very popular local bakery and although we have five plainly marked parking spots reserved for Strawberry Patches employees, finding a spot to park at 9:00am on Valentine's Day is next to impossible.
I always know it's coming, and I know it's only one day, but I must admit it gets my panties in a wad when I drive up in the morning and there are dozens of cars EVERYWHERE including in our five PLAINLY marked RESERVED spots.
My first instinct upon discovering a Volkswagen Bug in my spot was to park behind it and block it in.
Mean. I know.
But then I got a grip and found a spot down the street. After all, who am I to stand in the way of love? Men, frantically rushing in before work for chocolate dipped strawberries, moms picking up cupcakes for the school party and that single young man picking out just the perfect chocolate assortment in hopes to woo his girl.
Valentine's Day. Gotta love it!
Speaking of love...
this is Les Amis de la Foret - Friends of the Forest by Patty Sloniger for Michael Miller Fabrics.
See: creatures great and small, parked there under the huge oak tree, living in perfect harmony.
Encourage one another,
