Thanksgiving Day

I hope everyone is having a great day. There is a light dusting of snow on the ground but it is definitely not winter yet. I spent the morning trying to clean my sewing room. I'll post some photos later this weekend I think. So far, I have found the top of my table and located some fabric that I think Jeanne will be able to use for needle punching. I have made some little yo yo's out of some 1930's reproduction fabrics and am trying to lay them out to be an Easter Egg. I think it will be a good new design!!

Tomorrow Jeanne and our little sister Jo will be going out for breakfast and then to at least 3 stores. I think we are going to run around a bit and then will come home to do more organizing in the sewing room. Be Back Later-

I am Thankful for my family, friends, and our health. Hope your Day is a great one!
Jan

New designs

We are still throwing around ideas for new yo yo patterns. We came up with 3 great (we think!) ideas but now need to start thinking about how to mock up the designs and see if htye will truly look like we thought. That means tonight I will go through my bags of yo yo's and try to sort them by color and size and see what I have to play with. Sometimes the hardest part of working on a new design is trying to decide how to get the look without actually doing the whole thing!

I have a business trip tomorrow so will have time to sit at an airport and on a plane ride to New York and make yo yo's if we can decide what color to do. And I am riding from Oshkosh WI to Des Moines IA Friday to visit a dear quilting buddy who emigrated to Iowa so I will have plenty of time in the car to stitch. Let's see--8 hrs to Des Moines and 8 hrs back and a flight from WI to La Guardia and back....just how many yo yo's can I make in that time??? Anyone care to guess??? I'll be sure to let you all know when I get back.

In the meantime, I may let Jeanne try her hand at blogging in my absence. Hmmmm....

Sunday night

Time to get ready for the week. Jeanne and I met yesterday and got our list of tasks reconciled. All orders from Market have been mailed and we have begun the talking process on the new projects. We have 4 ideas-the Valentine quilt will take sometime and a joint trip to the fabric stores in the area to get things rolling. I have taken the 12 vintage Valentines we will use and reduced them to work as 6 1/2" squares. I stitched one in red/white for a first look and the detail came through great.

We are also working on some new Yo Yo designs-I won't be able to share those with you until we get started but will hint that one needs red/white/and blue yo yo's and we are considering using Civil War reproduction fabrics. Jeanne is going visit a quilt shop tomorrow in Menasha-Primitive Gatherings-because we know they have some of the reproduction fabric lines.

I will be travelling to CT on business Wednesday and Thursday and to Iowa for a quilt retreat at the home of a transplanted Wisconsin quilting buddy. I need to have some idea of what I will work on by Thursday night because 3 other friends and I will start the 8 hr. drive at 8 am sharp and I have to be ready with all my stuff by then! More tomorrow.

Sarting new stitchery quilt with vintage Valentines

Jeanne and I have begun the process of designing a new quilt. We are planning to use 12 vintage valentine's and combine them with stitched blocks for a full size quilt that screams romance. But now the hard part begins-what do we start with? Is it the fabric or the valentines that will drive the design? We have a great set of 6 pillow patterns on our web site called Young Love 1-6 that were done in traditional red and white. We love those patterns! But should this quilt be in red and white or in colored embroidery? That is the first decision we have to make because that will dictate the fabric selection.

I have a grid in my mind already started that needs to be filled in with different blocks that are arranged around the stitchery. The concept is to make the blocks flow into each other so you can make them in units but when you look at them the quilt does not have distinct block breaks to stop your eye. Kind of like our Fall Harvest Stitchery wall-hanging that was introduced at Houston Market.

You'll hear a lot more about this-we are meeting for lunch and will try to talk it through again. We didn't get far over coffee this morning at 7:30 a.m.! Maybe it was too early for quilt designing???

Winners of Pie Contest!

Since we introduced our new Pie Mat pattern at Houston Market, it only seemed fitting to give away a pie. We collected names every day and drew out 3 winners. The winners are:

Karen Snyder of Anna Lena's in Long Beach, WA
Kirsta Meadows of All About Quilting in Jacksonville NC
Janet Lutz of Calico Gals in Fayetteville, NY

We will be sending each lucky winner a gift certificate for the pie of their choice.
We hope they share but won't tell if we hear they ate the whole pie themselves!

Please check out their great looking quilt shops and internet sites to see what is happening across the country.

www.annalenas.com
www.allaboutquilting.net
www.calicogals.com

And don't forget that you can order our Pie Mat pattern, using the great Clover Yo Yo makers, on our web site www.lastingtreasure.com !

Reality checks in

Jeanne and I are back hard at work already and Market seems long ago. We did a good job this week (since we got back on Tuesday) of getting all our follow-up work done. Jeanne got all the orders ready to go that we took at Market-including a new catalog order that was waiting for us when we got back. And the orders are ready to ship out on Monday, thanks to Jeanne and, our brother-in-law, Terry, who puts patterns together for us.

We had fun at market visiting with friends like Joan Hawley, the original Lazy Girl, and seeing what she was designing. Her new Miranda bag is awesome and I plan to make one this month using some great new fabrics from Moda. We also visited with Deb Warren and Cindy Paris of Material Girls Quilt Shop. They have a great on-line shop as well as a fun shop. Deb hosted a workshop with Kaffe Fasset on color design a month ago and it sounds like it was a lot of fun. You can check out both of these great sites via our links.

I'm going to spend the rest of the day trying to get some more photos posted here and finish up writing a pattern. Then it's on to new designs. Stay tuned here for our design journey! We'd love to have you make the trip with us...