The Cat's Out of the Bag

I just added a new line to our shop announcements, and this is what it looks like:

Pssst...visit our blog to see today's SECRET ITEM, if you purchase the SECRET ITEM, you'll get FREE SHIPPING, even INTERNATIONAL!!

Or something to that effect. So, that's what I'm going to start doing. But instead of clogging up this oh so important space here in the middle, I'm going to add a little widget over there----------> in the side bar called SECRET ITEM and underneath I'm going to put a picture of the item and include a link, so it's SUPER easy to get to it! Now, the best part is that if you read this blog, or visit my shop, you'll know about the SECRET ITEM but those who don't, might not get the FREE SHIPPING deal. But, feel free to tell your friends, because in the days leading up to Quilt Market (NEXT WEEEKK YEAH!!!)the items might just get better and better! And we do have multiples of some things, so there is a chance that even if you don't get it right away, we might have some more. So, sign up to follow me if you don't already, or you can even subscribe to this blog in a reader and get updates EVERY DAY! Remember there will be a new SECRET ITEM every day!! (Or that's the goal at least)

Are you as excited about this as I am?? PLUS, did you know that we always offer FREE shipping for purchases of $100 or more? Yep, we do!

Oh, and one last thing, IF you happen to fall in love with the SECRET ITEM of the day and IF you happen to fall in love with something else, IF we can fit all the items into a flat rate, priority envelope ($5) we will ship the ENTIRE order for FREE! What a DEAL!! Now, since I just thought of this idea, and I'm just starting it NOW, I'm going to go and post that new SECRET ITEM and you'll have an EXTRA few hours to find it, because I'm going to keep it up until 12:00AM Friday October 2 (at which point it wil turn into a pumpkin, haha) Hopefully that will give our wonderful customers in other countries time to find the SECRET ITEM.

Thanks for stopping by! Feel free to share the excitement in the comments!

Happy Stitches,
Anna

P.S. Following me on Twitter, MIGHT just be a great way to find out right when the new SECRET ITEM is posted. Hint, hint.

P.P.S. Actually, I'm feeling sort of CRAZY, so I think I'll try and do something fun. How about this, if the SECRET ITEM is a one of a kind and it SELLS right away, I'll post something NEW! So it could be any time of the day! A great reason to follow me on Twitter or just check back often!

One Pattern, Endless Possibilities

Isn't this pattern adorable? It's sooo cute and versatile and reusable in so many ways! You can use it to make little onesie dresses for your daughter, grandaughter, neighbor's children, best friend's baby, the list goes on and on. It only takes a standard onesie and 1/2 yard of fabric! Look at all the cute options we have right now for sale that are already cut into 1/2 yard pieces!

Here is a cute bundle of Snippets by American Jane.

It's getting harder to find this fabric. But it happens that we have a 1/2 yard bundle!

Check out this lovely group of holiday fabrics from Sandy Gervais!

All 1/2 yard cuts, there are 11 fabrics in this bundle and they are already prewashed for you!

These are just a sample of the many fabrics we have that would be super adorable made into little onesie dresses for your (or your friend's) baby. I think I'll try and make up a few since I have a friend who is having their first baby girl in October. Her name is going to be Lily and we happen to have some adorable fabric called Lily Pond that would be perfect! I've also started adding the patterns from our Etsy shop to our New shop, so that you can purchase yardage for a pattern at the same time you buy the pattern and the precut fabric, it's your one stop shopping destination! I hope you'll stop by and check it out! More gift suggestions tomorrow!

Happy Stitches,

Anna

Got Yardage?

Lately, I've really promoted our store on Etsy.com. That is where we started this little venture of ours called Crafty Girls Workshop. It seems, though, that we're sort of outgrowing the Etsy world and we'd really like to make it easier for you to purchase multiple yards at a time, and for us to keep track of it in an online inventory. Given all this, we found a wonderful place to call home, but the move is sort of bumpy at the moment because we know we get A LOT of exposure on Etsy. Now, this is probably more than you really want to know, but I want to be open and honest with everyone who wants to purchase fabric, patterns, and kits from us. We've had this shop set up for about a month, but we always seem to mention it second, after telling everyone about our Etsy store. Yesterday we met with a sales rep and ordered A LOT of awesome fabrics, all on the bolt! That means that it will be even more important for us to be able to sell multiple yards at a time and keep track of it all. So, announcing the GRAND RE-OPENING of our online store called...

Crafty Girls Workshop

The address for this wonderful store is http://shop.craftygirlsworkshop.com/ How easy is that!! Please, check us out, click on the contact link and drop us a note to say hi and let us know what you think. That address is a lot easier to remember than the Etsy store, although we still have a lot of great stuff over there too. So, can you help me out a little by telling your friends about our "new" store? Very soon we will be listing at least 20 more bolts of fabric and new precuts are going to arrive very soon. Oh, and not to mention that we're going to Quilt Market in October! If you like our new location in cyberspace, please feel free to grab our badge and add it to your blog. Here is the badge.
Just right click and choose Save Image As and then insert it into your sidebar (and please link it to our shop or this blog.) If you do this and tell me you did, I would be so excited that I'd be happy to send you something special as a thank you. I'm not trying to get free advertising here, but I believe in helping each other out. What do you think? Thanks so much and I hope you enjoy shopping in our new home on the web.

Happy Stitches to You,
Anna

Psst...Another Giveaway

There's a giveaway over here for something from my previous post a day or two ago. Go see what it is!

Happy Stitches,
Anna

Another Giveaway, Already!? (Times 9)

Well, guess what? It turns out that one of my favorite bloggers and my FAVORITE stitchery pattern designer from Australia, Jenny of ELEFANTZ, has just joined/launched a group of 9 quilt and stitchery pattern designers! They call themselves the Gum Nut Designers and their little group is called Among the Gum Trees (since they are all from Australia)! I think this is absolutely fabulous because I just love Australian designers for their quilts, patterns, fabrics, stitcheries, everything! I love their view of this wonderful genre of crafting. SOOO, they have one blog where all 9 of them are going to publish FREE patterns at different times as well as inform us of updates to their shops when they have new patterns to sell. And to celebrate their launch? They are ALL hosting giveaways! That's 9 different giveaways you can enter! Just visit the Among the Gum Trees blog and read about all of them and their giveaways. Then visit each of the individual blogs to learn about their giveaways too. OK, did you figure that out!? So I hope you have fun reading the new blogs and saying hello to all the designers and getting to enter the giveaways. Please help spread the word about them by posting on your blogs too!

Happy Stitches,

Anna

P.S. Ideas for homemade gifts in the next post, stay tuned...

P.P.S. Jodi from Pleasant Home posted a little feature about our shop today because we decided to post an ad on her blog. She has such sweet things to say about us, so please stop by there too!

NEW Fabric Roll Call

Simple Abundance.....check

Mill House Inn ...........check

Aster Manor ..............check

Rouenneries ...............check

THEY ARE HERE! YIPPEE!!

What types of precuts do we have?

• Charm packs (5" squares)
  
• Jelly rolls (2 1/2" strips)
  
• Honey buns (1 1/2" strips)
  
• Fat quarters (18" x 22" cuts)

And guess what else? We also have plenty of patterns to go with these precuts.

So stop on by our shop and say hello! If you can't purchase today, that's alright, just mark our shop or the item you {heart} with a heart and be sure to tell your loved ones where they can find that list. We're also happy to make up a custom gift certificate if you would like, in any amount, NO SHIPPING required on the gift certificates! Until next time.

Happy Shopping and Happy Stitches to You,

Anna and Regina

The Crafty Girls

What would you do with a Honey Bun?

Thanks so much for the amazing response to the last post! I'm so thrilled to be making 12 more pin cushions to send all over the world! So, I started thinking about what I should make for my family this year for the holidays and I wanted to be sure to make all the gifts. Yes, I know it's a little bit late, but that's OK. I pulled out a couple of the honey buns I had bought awhile back and decided to make something with them. Remember that honey buns are beautiful rolls of strips, usually about 40, cut to 1 1/2" all from the same line of fabrics. So, first I tried my hand at making a little zipper pouch. This wasn't for a gift but I wanted to see if I could do it. I think it turned out AWESOME!

The tutorial for this is on Moda Bakeshop (of course), click here. Oh and I used an invisible zipper and it made it even better I think. I had never even put in a zipper ONCE before! The funny part is that I am keeping almost the exact same things in it as are in the tutorial. I am using mine to keep track of the hexagons I've been obessed with making lately (great to make while watching NCIS.) Sorry, I digress. The items I made today were part honey bun, part linen blend. I found a bunch of different tutorials online for projects I wanted to make for family members. I linked to them all on my Sew Good Sew Far blog so that I could find them easily. Today I made PDF files out of them and printed them out for easy access (since my computer is not near my sewing machine). One of the tutorials was for making rice heat therapy bags and the tutorial author also made some smaller bags for buckwheat (which can be frozen for ice packs.) So I used some of my leftover strips from another honey bun and this is what I came up with.

Of course I have yet to fill them up, but that's for another day. Well, the last part of this was that the same person who wrote that tutorial made a bag she called a wellness bag. This was a tote bag that she filled with the hot and cold therapy bags, and some other wellness items. I thought it was a neat idea and thought I'm make one for a couple of the people on my gift list this year. The suggestion was to start with a log cabin block and then add linen around it to make the tote bag. Here's the block I made. My FIRST attempt at a log cabin block, with no real instructions, just following my instincts.

I'm not quite done but I love how it's going so far. So that's what I've managed to complete today. I feel very proud of myself for getting that much done! I guess you could say I spent a lot of quality time with my honey bun today! So what have you all been working on? Oh, and by the way, there are some NEW honey buns in our shop! We have honey buns from the Mill House Inn and Simple Abundance lines. Better get them while you can!

Happy Stitches to you,

Anna

Giveaway Time! Today is the Day!

Alright, here's the deal, only like, four people said hello on the pin cushion giveaway! So I can't just give three people pin cushions and not give one to the fourth, so here's what I'm going to do, if you are reading this, and you want a pin cushion with a cute ribbon tab like the ones in the post below, just send me an e-mail with your name and address. As long as all 89 of the followers of this blog don't respond, I should be OK (but if you do, I'll be so thrilled I'll make you one anyway.) How's that for generous! Everyone gets one! Thanks to those who commented on the Giveaway post, maybe I'll send you something extra in the envelope. OK, but this only applies to people who e-mail me between today 09-10-09 and up until tomorrow 09-11-09 at 3:00pm which will give me the weekend to work on these cushy little wonders.

Happy Stitches to You,
Anna

What's Cookin' at the Moda Bakeshop

Well, ahem, it looks like we are in tune with the universe here at Crafty Girls Workshop. A sweet and ADORABLE baby quilt tutorial was JUST posted on the Moda Bakeshop! (Sorry I tried to add a picture but Blogger is not cooperating this morning!) Well, it just so happens that we have this SAME exact fabric available in our shop! (I think this would be super cute using any of our Snippets bundles too.) Granted, it's not precut into cute little charm packs but charm packs of Sweet are pretty difficult to find now so might as well just buy it in the 1/4 yard bundles. You might notice that this pattern calls for an additional 1/2 yard for the binding and 2 2/3 yd for the backing which you can also find on our Etsy shop, OR you can always stop by our website to shop our OTHER shop and get more yardage if you need it. We have an awesome cherry red that would work great as a backing and a precious red with tiny pindots that would work well for the binding too. Oh, well of course I would just love this tutorial, it's from one of my favorite blogs, Crazy Mom Quilts, or Amanda Jean. She's just awesome in all ways possible. Again, sorry about the picture thing, I really tried to add some pictures, but blogger seems to have other plans today.

Happy Shopping!
Anna

P.S. There is still time to enter the giveaway, just comment on the Giveaway post (back a few days) I'll draw the winner at midnight (or before I go to sleep). Also, please add your response to the poll over there on the right ---------->

The Secret is in The Sauce

I just found this really cool site for networking among bloggers. I've always seen this badge and wondered what it meant and now I get to be part of the Secret! Haha, actually, it's just there to remind you to support you bloggy friends and whenever you see this badge, drop them a comment to say hi! Also, I did this new thing where I subscribed to get e-mail updates of the blog posts so they actually send me the post in e-mail format! I think that's cool because I don't always remember to check out every blog I see, but SITS does some of the research for me and features a blogger and it goes straight to my inbox! Totally cool. Click the badge below to check them out!

Have a crafty day!

Anna

Super Sewing Sale!

All of these patterns are now on SALE and most of them are LESS than $5 before shipping! That's a great bargain to grab up some patterns for awesome summer dresses, skirts, or even some business casual separates! These patterns are from our personal collections and have never been used or even opened. They are practically in off-the-shelf condition! Take advantage of this sale because once these listings expire, these patterns are gone for good. Happy stitching!

Anna and Regina