Twitter Quilt Market Updates

So, I've jumped on the Quilt Market Twitter-er bandwagon now and guess what? IT ROCKS! I figured out how to tweet from my cell phone and if you check out the right sidebar over there ------>
you'll see some of my updates from Quilt Market. Unfortunately, I totally forgot to bring my cord for my camera so even though I'm taking some cool pics I can't post them! Bummer! BUT I'll post them soon when I get home, maybe Monday evening. I also hope to have some pictures from the Denyse Schmidt Improvisational Patchwork workshop I'll be attending on Monday! Totally quilty weekend! So, did you see the total market bonus? If you leave me a comment here telling me the quilting/pattern/fabric designer celebrity you'd like to see me get a picture of, I'll send you a FREE pattern!! Be sure you have added your e-mail so i can write you back and send you that pattern.

Happy Stitches,
Anna

Scrappy Birthday Fabric Giveaway AND Quilt Market!!

Drumroll please...

The winner of the scrappy birthday giveaway is #61 out of 198 comments!

Lori said...


Last year was a quiet one. Went to dinner and celebrated with family. I would make a doll blanket for my granddaughter.


Congrats!!! I've been in touch through e-mail but if you see this first please e-mail me anna@craftygirlsworkshop.com with your home address so I can send the box of goodness out to you!!

Thanks to EVERYONE who entered! It was so incredibly awesome to get 198 birthday wishes from you all plus getting to hear what everyone would do with the scraps. I truely think that quilters are the mostest generous people EVER!!

I'm heading out to Houston Fall Quilt Market in just a couple of hours, yippee! I'll probably be a little slower in replying to e-mails because I'll be at the Market all day but just know that I'm searching out FABULOUS new patterns and fabrics and awesome new goodies for the shop.

I'm also going to do my bestest to figure out how to use Twitter so I can give updates about what's going on so I hope you'll follow me on Twitter. AND if you want some cool info about this trade show for fabric shop vendors, go to your Twitter account and search for #quiltmarket It will bring up everything everyone is saying about Quilt Market including pictures! I guess the cat's out of the bag now!!

Happy Stitches,
Anna

Are You a No-Reply Blogger?

I've received SOOOO many awesome comments/entries into the scrappy birthday giveaway, BUT guess what!? Some of you (whom I shall not mention) are no-reply bloggers and if you WIN the giveaway I won't be able to contact you and I'll have to choose SOMEONE ELSE!!!!! SOOO, please hop over to Jodi's BLOG and read her GREAT post about how to change that so that you CAN be contacted. THANKS!!

Happy Stitches,
Anna

Sorry for all the capital letters, I just want to get my point across. did it work?

Scrappy Birthday to ME plus a Fabric Giveaway!

(Cue birthday song)
Scrappy Birthday to me...

For my birthday this year I want to give all of YOU a chance to get a gift! I'm sew excited to be participating in this:





 By giving away this: 

 Isn't it pretty? It's a box chock full of lots of cottony scrappy goodness! It is ALL 100% cotton from the best manufacturers and quilt shops. These are mostly from my personal stash of scraps (and there's more where this came from!) Yes, that is some of the Daisy Chain line from Amy Butler in there in the corner. You'll see that show up in a quilt or two some day in the future. So do you want to know how to enter? It's easy!

 Leave a comment to say HI! and tell me what YOU did for your last birthday! oh and tell me what you'd do with a box full of scraps.

That's ALL you have to do! (You must include a way for me to contact you) If you happen to surf around on my blog and see other posts you like, then please follow me or if you visit my online fabric shop and like the fabric shop, please sign up for my at-least-once-a-month newsletter for coupons and news about specials. (Rumor has it that I might just pack some more scraps into scrap bags and sell them for an AMAZING price on my website...) Or you can follow me on Twitter or Facebook. But you don't have to leave an extra comment for that. Oh, and don't forget to visit Jodi at Pleasant Home and say HI over there too!

I'll select a winner using Random Number Generator on Friday October 29 before I head out to Houston for the Fall Quilt Market (SOOO excited about that!).

And here's the absolutely, positively, bestest best thing about this post! A COUPON CODE!

Enter the code HAPPYBIRTHDAY to get 15% off your entire order!!

Hurry because this code will only last until October 31 at which point it will turn back into a pumpkin!

Happy Stitches,

Anna

Please share my badge if you would like!


<a href=" http://craftygirlsworkshop.com" target="_blank"><img border="0" alt="crafty girls button" src="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4076/4854580169_075ce5c512_m.jpg" /></a>

Spill the Beans Sunday is BAAACK!!

The topic for today's Spill the Beans is... FINISHED PROJECTS! OR projects you hope to get fininshed really soon.OR whatever you are working on right now! (I like variety)

Here are a couple of quilts I finished THIS WEEK! Yippee, two in one week is pretty major for me. Plus, my next work in progress.

This is the second quilt I'm adding to the group to be donated to a local shelter for families this fall. My local Crafty Girls Workshop meetup group has been working on these month by month. It's sort of my own design, although it's super easy to do so anyone could figure it out. A new friend that I met through the SA Modern Quilt Guild has a longarm machine and she generously offered to quilt it for me, which helped me to get it done so quickly. She even added a custom butterfly in the quilting at my request.

 Then I found an absolutely awesome explanation for doing machine binding in the book called Dare to be Square Quilting. (Here is a great feature about the author, Boo Davis) So after hunting down a bias tape maker I whipped out binding for this quilt and the second quilt that I made to give to my surrogate niece, Lily, who just turned one year old this week! Her birthday party was yesterday. Here's her quilt:

I quilted it using my stitch regulator and it went pretty quickly. I love to make the backs of quilts interesting too, so I used flannel and did an applique of her nick name which is Lily Bug.

Here is "Da Bug" with her quilt, doesn't she look ecstatic to receive it? Her mom and dad loved it and everyone ooh'd and ahh'd over it so that was nice.

And just because she's SOOO cute, here is one more awesome photo of yesterday's party.

Really, I only took about 65 pictures and three or four video clips of the day. I just couldn't put my camera down, I mean how could I with a face like that!?

Now, let me show you a little bit of my NEXT project. I had a honey bun, which is 1 1/2" strips and some backing fabric from a line called Hello Betty. I've had this for quite awhile and finally decided I wanted to do something with it. The president of the SA Modern Quilt Guild had shown off a quilt she made with the same fabric using a grey for a contrasting solid color to help the patterned fabrics POP out. So I decided that since Crafty Girls Workshop HAS some Moda Bella Solid Grey, why not use some of it in a quilt? Well, then I had to find a pattern, and the Does Not Compute pattern was pretty close to what I wanted, but without the robot (Maybe another project someday) turns out I just wanted the pattern that is called Amish Brickwork, SO that's how the idea for Amish Betty was born. Here are my supplies.

I've already made significant progress. The pattern is from Dare to Be Square also and the author gives a great explanation of using 18" strips to do strips piecing to really speed up the brickwork background part. I spent my SA Mod Quilt Guild Sew In day yesterday from about 10 am to 2 pm sewing 50 patterned strips to 50 grey strips. My next step is to press them and cut them into the brick pieces, I can't wait!!

OK, YOUR turn to SPILL THE BEANS! I want to know what you're working on right now! Please share and feel free to add a link to your blog if you've posted pictures. I'm not doing a McLinky thing, but just put the link in your comments. Thanks!!

Happy Stitches,
Anna

I'm sharing this on Something I Whipped Up at The Girl Creative

Quilt Pattern Winners!

Congrats to the two winners of the PDF quilt patterns!

and

I will be in touch with you shortly to confirm your choice for the pattern! I hope you both will be able to share pictures of your finished quilts with us in the future! I just love to see finished projects from items from my shop!

I have been very busy this week, finished quilting and binding TWO baby quilts and have decided on my next quilt project! I have pictures to share of all of this but it will be in my next post later today. Tomorrow is a crazy day for me, I have an 8:00am meeting for the SA Mod Quilters Board, then from 10am to 2pm is the SA Mod Quilters Sew-In at Las Colchas and THEN around 2pm is the birthday party for my best friend's daughter's 1st birthday! Talk about busy! I'm totally looking forward to it though. Well, must get going, I have some winners to e-mail before I get started on my "day job."

Happy Stitches,

Anna

ePatterns are Eco Friendly So I'm Giving Some Away!

Part of the trasition for Crafty Girls Workshop has involved figuring out how to build up our offering of patterns without having to have a place to store them. Well, then it hit me, why not work with some designers like Denise of Whimsy Couture who design patterns to be distributed through e-mail!? It's good for the environment, it keeps the prices low (NO SHIPPING costs!) and it allows me to work with new designers and really get to know the girl behind the design. So a few weeks ago I contacted a couple of quilt pattern designers, who both happened to be from Australia, and they both happily agreed to let me list their patterns in my shop! Yippee! LOOOONG story short, Crafty Girls Workshop now offers QUILT patterns for sale that will be e-mailed to you within 12 hours of your purchase! Look at a few of the fabulous options we have:

Sand Castles (Rebecca Johnson)

Charm Bracelets by Kate Conklin (charm pack friendly)

 

Rolling Meadows (JR Friendly) by Rebecca Johnson

These are only a few of the patterns available. The best way to find the patterns on the Crafty Girls Workshop website is to look at the links on the left side of the screen, there you'll see the link for Electronic Patterns (since ALL our patterns are electronic now that makes sense, right?) and when you click that you can choose the type of patterns you want to browse, such as Quilts or Kid's Couture, etc. Pretty soon I'll be adding even more patterns to the listings such as Tote Bags, Embroidery/Stitching and Home Decor. If you happen to know anyone who designs great patterns for electronic distribution, please send them my way! I love to work with designers!

Alright, now on to the GIVEAWAY portion of this broadcast.

This time there will be TWO winners! One will win a Rebecca Johnson pattern and the other will win one from Kate Conklin. BE SURE that if you enter, you include your contact information so I can get in touch with you if you win! Here's how to enter:

• Visit the links above for the electronic QUILT patterns and then come back here and share which pattern you'd like to win, if you just LOVE more than one, list them in the order that you LOVE them.
• Sign up for my e-newsletter (be sure to tell me you did) for shop updates, coupons, and sneak peek specials (link in the right hand sidebar)
• Become a follower of Crafty Girls Workshop, follow me on Twitter, and "like" me on facebook (if you don't already) or just tell me if you do already
• Visit Kate Conklin's website and tell her HI from Crafty Girls Workshop (you can e-mail her or leave her a comment on the blog)
• Become a follower of Kate Conklin's Blog (totally worth it)
• Visit Rebecca Johnson's blog and tell her HI from Crafty Girls Workshop
• Become a follower of Rebecca Johnson's Blog (also totally worth it!)

Stop back here and be sure to leave a comment for each of these entries, OR you can leave one comment telling me each thing you did, I'll still count your name that many times, I promise.

OK, so get going and have fun looking at the beautiful quilt pictures on these talented Designers' blogs!!

I'll announce the winners on Sunday, October 10, 2010. Hey, that's 10-10-10!!

Happy Stitches,
Anna