Author: admin

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Quilting doesn’t wait for anybody :)

Whoa nelly!  Time is flying by!  As you know, things here have been a little crazy!!  We have been going non-stop all year!! I was reflecting on the past year, and am shocked of all the things we are doing, have done and that been accomplished!!

If I may, I’d like to indulge in a little trip down memory lane.
Last year in February we made an offer and signed papers on a new building for our brick and mortar shop, right on the main street of our little town.  We closed on it in March and all the remodeling began.  It was so exciting!  We had vision and new this place could be amazing!  We only needed to completely gut it and start from scratch!  Easy enough, right!?!?  Our family worked like crazy ripping out all the old paneling, re-wiring, new plumbing, new heating and cooling, paint, carpet etc!  Really, it was an amazing transformation!  And we love it!

For the next few months we had practice for the Community theater production called ‘Broadway Bound’ that Mom, Natalie her kids and my kids were involved in. That was fun to do.  It always amazes me, to see kids with so much talent get out on stage and share it with us!  So brave of them.


We also had our annual bus trip!  Talk about a fun time!  We had almost the same group from the year before!  So much fun to see our ‘old’ friends again!
All the while we were preparing the new shop to open our doors by June 15th, getting things ready for the Open House, and setting up displays.
The first week in July our family had a vacation at the Lake!  And that was a total blast! And a much needed vacation for us all!
Then we had our exciting open house celebration July 18th! Now that was a party!!  We were blown away by the response and friendship shown to us that weekend!  It’s funny looking back, that morning around 8:45am Alan texted me and said he didn’t think anyone was coming!  LOL!  Then the store quickly filled with people, there was no where to stand, and even less parking!  I think we blew away our little town!  I know we were all more than surprised!  We loved every minute of it! We met so many of our online friends and some of you from the forums.

A personal indulgence here:  In February, I had two surgeries within 10 days.  I was really sick for several months. I was still living two hours away from the shop, and was driving every weekend with my family so that hubby could work on the new building.  Then on the 5th of July (while we were on vacation,) I got really sick and had an emergency appendectomy. I was at the open house just ten days after.  And all in the same week, we moved home!  Hahah.  (see, this year has been insane, right?!) 

Then we also got contacted by Fons and Porter to do the new Magazine with them, (have you heard of it? Quilting Quickly)  and got started on designing and sewing! We were really excited about doing a magazine, because we know that most of you want our tutorials in pattern form and it has been difficult for us to get it all done.  We think that together, we can give you both the videos and the patterns!!  Win-Win, if you ask me!!

The rest of our summer into fall was full of sewing and meeting all our traveling visitors!!  I can’t even tell you how much we LOVE that you all come from near and far to see us!!?!?  We LOVE it!  We have a guest book that is nearly full and we love to look through it and see where everyone has come from! It is such a joy to us.

In October we had a huge party for my Grandma who turned 80!   We had family come in that we hadn’t seen in years! When you live all over the country it’s hard to get together often and this was such a special occasion.

Then we went to Quilt Market in Houston, the end of October, Mom rode a mechanical bull at the Moda party. (not kidding!  I even have pictures and video) We had a great time, meeting designers and catching up with other shop owners!
October also brought our town Homecoming!  Along with that is a football game, parade and a dance!  We decorated the front of the shop and our windows won the decorating contest!!  We won money to donate to a school program. We chose Choir.  I don’t think enough money gets spent on the arts, like it used to.
In November our little ‘baby’ turned 4 years old!  NO WAY! We couldn’t believe we’ve been living this dream for four years already!  We had a party, with cake and everything!  We had giveaways to all our customers, and just had a wonderful time (and took our first company picture!)  Again, blown away by all our awesome friends that came to see us!


December brought Santa to town, and we helped put together a food drive for our local food pantry. (each donation earned you a ticket to a quilt made by Mom!) Not as big of a success as I had hoped, but I do think it will get better year after year!  

My husband and Dad also made my dreams come true by wrapping our little tree outside in lights!  I call it a ‘MAGIC TREE’ and I absolutely love it! We lived in Columbia, MO for two years and every year they have two trees in town they dress up like that and I sure missed it!  I am happy to say we have one in Hamilton now too!!  And it really made for a sparkly season!

Then of course underneath it all we have tons of behind the scenes things going on like building a new website.  We have literally been working for a year on this new site for you!  Trying to implement things that will be useful and new for you, to make your experience better! We are going for a more user friendly site, and we sure hope you like the changes!

We ran test after test hoping to have all the bugs out before we launched, but you all know how that goes!!  🙂  We have been going through and with your help have gotten almost everything fixed!  Thank you all for your insight and heads up the things that were wonky!  You all were a tremendous help!  And your patience is unmatched!!  You all are the best, most loyal customers!  So many of you have been incredibly understanding.  We are still behind on a few orders working day and night to get things out to you!!  With all the new site changes we made changes to the shipping process too!  Just know, that will all the changes your fabric will be shipped to you faster than ever, once it’s all perfected.

So, here we are…January 2013 almost over!  We are looking ahead to this year with excitement and hope.  Things will be even better than last.  I don’t think it’s safe to say it will slow down, but we aren’t afraid of hard work either! I hope you all know how deeply we appreciate you.  We really do. We talk about your stories (you’ve shared with us) around our dinner table, during family get together’s and we are blown away by you all!  Thank you for letting us be a part of your life, and thank you for being a part of ours.

Have a great week!

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Breast Cancer Awareness Quilt from one of you! With the Twister tool!

My sister Bell, has breast cancer, it was a shock to us, because there is no cancer in our family. So I made this for her, and it was like therapy for me, to make this. The ribbon would look good in yellow or even with red white & blue.

I got this in an email a few months ago and Ana’s experience really spoke to me.  Quilting is a lot of things to a lot of people, but really often (especially lately it seems) it is my therapy.  It is something that comes from our hands and stands for years as a monument of our efforts, struggles, pain, triumph, friendship, love, and so on.  So thank you Ana for sharing your experience and knowledge with us!   She shared her pattern so you all could have it, feel free to use it and share it around, hope it helps!!

Download the Pattern Here

 

Breast Cancer Awareness Quilt
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The family from the forum

Hey everybody, this is Al.  I had a pretty cool experience today I wanted to share.  A little while ago I mentioned on the forums that I was in Salt Lake City for a few weeks, and Kathy, from the forums PM’d me and said she and Meli (another forum-ite) were both SLC natives and would love to meet up if I had time.  Of course I had time, so yesterday, Kathy and her daughter Melissa (Meli didn’t make it, she got held up in traffic 🙁 ) and I met up for some Dairy Queen and to get to know each other.

Meeting up with Kathy and Melissa from the forums

The thing that impressed me the most was how much like family we were.  Just because we had the forum connection, we had so much to talk about.  The different swaps Kathy had been in, the different people we both “virtually knew” and all the great things we both had to say about Mom (Jenny).  She said several times how she wanted me to understand what this place (the forums) have become, how much meaning they have for everyone in them, and I think I do, sort of, I try … but actually, I don’t think I can fully appreciate the impact they have for our online family, because we all get something different out of it, and that’s awesome.

I wish I could take credit for all the good that has come of it, for all the people who have connected, who pray for each other, who help each other, who laugh with each other, but I can’t.  We started the forum, back in the early days, to provide quilting support, so if you had a question, we thought it was a good place to ask it.  Fast forward a few years and we could never have predicted that it would grow into this thriving community of incredible women (and men) who lift and support each other every day of the year.

So I have to say, thank you!  Thank you all for being a part of my life, and for loving my family so much.  You are the kindest, most wonderful people, I know I speak for all of us here, but I am humbled every day to be working on building a company that serves people like you!  And thank you Kathy for your kindness and desire to meet up, you were so complimentary of all the work I’ve been doing, thank you so much!  Seriously, you all are the best!

*read Kathy (bkthomas)’s thread here for a few more pics

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Mother’s Day, don’t take it for granted

Hey everyone, this is Al, Jenny’s son. I’m the computer guy here at the shop, so you may know me for good or for bad, depending on your experience with the site, but I wanted to stop by real quick and share my Mother’s Day thoughts, hope that’s okay.

As you all know, Mother’s Day is coming up, and I wanted to let you know that I am grateful for my Momma Doan. I think I’ve always been grateful for Mom and Dad, though I do sometimes take them for granted without realizing I am. It just happens, I don’t mean to, but it does.

It is in this spirit, the spirit of remembering how precious life and family are, that I’m writing today. We all had an experience this last week that kind of shook me up a bit, and made me realize I need to appreciate the wonderful people in my life more and not take them for granted, and at the very top of that list is Momma Doan.

About a week ago, Mom and Dad left Hamilton to drive down to Kansas City to get some supplies for the new shop, it’s about an hour drive, and we do it several times a week for the last 17 years. It was raining pretty good, but it’s Missouri, nothing was out of the ordinary, seriously, we do this all the time. Well about 20 minutes after they left, I got a call that went something like this – “Son, we’ve been in an accident, we’re on the highway, come quickly, we’re okay, just come as fast as you can”

Mom wrote the following excerpt sent in an email to us kids after this which tells it better than I (she said I could share it with you all) –

“First let me say that we are OK, but we were in a car wreck today. We had borrowed Grandpa’s truck to go to the city to pick up vanities for the new shop. It was raining really hard, the kind of rain that soaks you when you walk from the house to the car…Dad was going slower, about 60, as visibility wasn’t very good. A semi truck blew past us washing us with water and we started to fish tail … Dad was worried that we were going to hit the semi. But we headed for the ditch and he was relieved as he thought we would be able to drive out of that, but we hit the other side and rolled. The ditch was swollen with water about 10 feet wide and 4 feet deep. When the truck stopped, we landed on the top of the truck upside down.

We were hanging upside down and some how Dads cell phone was still in his shirt pocket. He grabbed it and called 911. I asked him if he was ok and he asked me. We were both surprised that we were alright. I wanted out of my seat belt but I couldn’t get it unbuckled so I asked Dad if he could unbuckle me and he reached over and did it. All this time he is talking to 911 and trying to describe where we are. When he unbuckled me I fell straight down on my head and somehow managed to get turned around and sat Indian style on the roof of the car. I zipped up my purse and tucked it up into the floor board above me head.

All the sudden i noticed that Dad’s voice was sounding panicky. He tried the door and it wouldn’t open…He yelled at me not to open my door and for the first time I looked around and noticed that the water was over the window on my side and the cab was filling with water. I looked at Dad he is still talking to 911 and the water was at his forehead. The Door wouldn’t open so he started to roll down his window. He got it about half way down and unbuckled himself held his breath and pulled himself out the window. He reached his arm back in and rolled the window down the rest of the way and pulled me out. We were glad to be out of the cab and able to breath.

Then Dad yelled Run Jenny and the water started to roll the truck. Dad was trying to hold the truck to keep it from rolling on me and I was trying to stand up in 4 feet of rushing water and suddenly I just let go and the water carried me down the ditch. I knew I was in trouble as I couldn’t stop and started grabbing at the grass along the sides of the ditch. A car stopped and I yelled “help me” They came down into the dtich and pulled me out of the water. I looked back at the truck and the water had rolled it on it’s side and Dad was up on the bank. He came running to me and we just held each other. We are still amazed that other than a sore neck and back we are are OK. By this time we climbed up out of the ditch and a van stopped and I sat in his car. Our clothes were soaked and Dad and I were shaking badly. I was also covered with debris from the water in the ditch. Shortly after that the ambulance, firemen and highway patrol came. Dad’s phone that we just got yesterday was toast so we called Alan on a phone that belonged to the man in the van…he didn’t answer the first time but the second time he picked up and came right away to get us.

We feel very blessed to be alive…there are so many things that could have happened and it could have gotten really bad really fast. If the window hadn’t opened Dad could have drowned, if the water hadn’t carried me away, the truck could have rolled on top of me. But we were watched over and protected.

We just want all of you to know that we love you and you just never know from one day to the next how things can change. So hug each other and and your children.

We love you! Mom and Dad”

Pretty crazy stuff. Right after I got the call and was heading down there, my mind was racing with all the things that I hadn’t done yet in my life that I wanted them to see and know about, everything from marriage to kids, to talents and hobbies that I’ve developed but not shared.  So much of who we are revolves around our family and most of that starts and ends with Mom and Dad, and out of the blue I just got a call that both of them were very close to not being here like I was used to.

A lot of people get this wake up call with much more serious circumstances, things like cancer, other life threatening diseases, and death are all wake up calls. I’m extremely grateful our wake up call was in the end, nothing more than a totalled pickup truck and some wet clothes, but it was enough to wake me up, one more broken window or the car sliding a different direction and this could have been an absolute tragedy.

So on this Mother’s Day, I hope you’ll look around and give one more hug to people that matter to you, be kind, let them know you love them, because honestly, you just never know what will happen, so make the most of it while we can.

Mom and Dad, love you both!

Al

 

Al, Mom, Dad, Cousin Spenser two weeks ago
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Super Mario Brother Quilt Pattern (FREE of course)

A friend of the shop, Nicole, has offered up her pattern she made for the Super Mario quilt below. So you’ll need the following –

Blue Squares – 153
Peach Squares – 43
Red Squares – 60
Brown Squares – 68

You can do this with 5″ (or 10″ though that would be a monster too big for any quilt machine I’ve ever seen, good point Ida 🙂 ) or any size square as long as they’re all the same size. Just lay them out and sew them together in rows. Anyone want to do Luigi and Toad? 🙂

Download the pattern layout by clicking the icon below –

If you have any suggestions or critiques let us know and we’ll adjust the pattern / post accordingly! Thanks for all the support!