The Sun Hat's Off the Projects List!

Guess what? My sun hat is finished!!!! I made good use of a quiet day at the shop to make this beauty. I know you're going to want one for yourself! Blue Sky Hats, by Amy Butler, was amazingly simple to make. It took about 3 hours, total materials cost is about $20.

New Fabric and Books From Atkinson Designs

One of my favorite booths at Market was the Atkinson Designs booth. I am excited about the new fabric line, Paisley Party, designed by Terry Atkinson, to arrive sometime in late August/early September! Most of the quilts in both of Terry's new books are made from her new fabric line. It's full of bright colors, including orange and turquoise. I picked up some of her books at Market, where she was nice enough to autograph them for me. I have less than 5 autographed copies available, on a first come, first serve, basis! The books are called Time Out Quilts and Let's Do Lunch. Below are some pictures from the Atkinson booths, with projects from both books.

Sales Reps, The Good

I thought I should point out my outstanding sales rep, since I posted earlier about my not-so-outstanding service experiences.
Bonnie, with Moda, is my favorite sales rep. It helps that I love their fabric, but it wouldn't be so easy if the rep rarely or never visited me. (as is often the case) Forgive me if I have a complex about this, but living in a small town, you run into a lot of people who think 25 miles is soooooo far to drive out of the city. I get the feeling quite often that many sales reps have "bigger fish to fry," and so don't bother with me.
Bonnie, however, always visits me. She lets me know when she's in town, instead of skipping Deary for bigger places. She keeps her appointments, knows me by name, and is friendly and helpful. I appreciate this more and more because, as my store grows and I pull in more lines from more manufacturers, I see that I definitely don't get this sort of service from everyone.
Most of the other manufacturers and reps leave me out here to fend for myself. Some of them visit infrequently, and some don't even bother to try. It is difficult, if not sometimes impossible, to find what I'm looking for if I don't know it's out there, or can't see it in real. Many times, I don't even know what I'm looking for until I see it.
This week, I met Kathi, a rep from Blank Quilting. She was also friendly and helpful. With any luck I'll soon have 2 reps I can rely on!

Project Overload

Coming back from Quilt Market always leaves me on overload. There are so many projects, and not nearly enough time to make them all. I'm not a patient person, and I just want them all done NOW! If I was rich enough to pay people to make them, I could keep a small quilting army busy full-time. Too bad I'm not!
This time of night, my eyes get too tired to quilt. Here is a peak at what I'm quilting right now, Makin' the Cut.
And now, I'm going to attempt to update my current projects and future projects list. This could take a while........

Manners, According to Kylee

I should have known better! Remember Kylee's Take on God? Well, tonight at dinner I learned Kylee's take on manners.

The kids were being obnoxious (no, really, my kids???) at the table, so I decided it was a good time to review our manners. I used to do this often, but haven't done it for a long time. I decided to see what Kylee remembered, so I asked her to tell us all what manners are. Here is what she said:

"Manners are burp with your mouth closed, say excuse me, and.......go to the bathroom to fart."

I had to ask, didn't I? Like I said, I should have known better!

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly in Sales Reps

There are so many quilting fabric manufacturers these days, they are hard to keep track of. Usually, quilt shop owners purchase from these manufacturers through sales reps. Each company assigns the shop a sales rep that works in their geographical area. I have 4 or 5 sales reps that I can order through, depending on whether I'm looking for Moda, Troy, Maywood, Buggy Barn, etc. However, I've actually only met 3 of these reps, and only 1 stands out as outstanding.
At the recent Quilt Market, there was a line of flannels we decided we had to have. (My buying budget at Market is always "If I love it and have to have it, I buy it.") This required ordering through the manufacturer, Troy. My sales rep for Troy is a great guy, but wasn't available at the time, so he directed us to another desk to ask for help. What happened next stunned the three of us. This is how it went:

Two men are standing in the Troy booth, chit chatting with each other. We sit down at the open desk and start looking at the fabric swatches. They proceed to continue chit chatting and ignore us. My mom says "Excuse me." They continue to ignore us. Mom says "Excuse me!" louder and one finally turns around like we've just interrupted the most important conversation in the world. "Is there someone available to help us place an order?" After a long pause, one man says, "Let me go see," while the other man just stands there and watches.
Now I'm thinking "What the ---??" because, first of all, the last time I checked, these companies rely on quilt shop orders to stay in business. As a general rule, rudeness does not make me want to order from you. Second of all, since when is chit chatting more important than taking a large fabric order???
The man proceeded to walk across the booth, and talk to a woman at the other end. He returned and said "I thought she was available, but she has a scheduled appointment, so she can't take your order." Then he just pauses and stands there. At this point, I'm holding in some rude comment, Vicki's mouth is hanging on the floor, and my Mom starts to get up out of her chair to leave. "Well, I guess I'll take your order, since she's busy," the man finally decides, and sits down somewhat reluctantly.
If that damn Granola Girl fabric hadn't been so great, we would have high tailed it out of there, after giving him the tongue lashing he deserved. Instead, we ordered as quickly as possible and split. Trust me, we didn't get so much as a thank-you, and instead I'll never think of ordering from them again without remembering how rude they were.

How Do You Spell Your Name?

This morning, Kylee was in a sassy mood, so when I asked her what she wanted for breakfast she replied, "K - Y - L - E - E wants an English muffin."

When I asked Will next, he thought for a few seconds, and then said, "W, little one with a dot, big one, big one, little one with a dot, whoop, whoop, whoop, wants oatmeal."