New Poll, PLEASE Answer!

Hey! Check out the sidebar over there ---------------->

I just posted a new poll because I want YOUR feedback about which precut to feature next month (and the next month, etc.) Maybe you don't really like jelly rolls but you LOVE charm packs or you LOVE layer cakes but just wonder what you'd EVER do with them!? Let me know and I'll do a feature for an entire month! Hopefully this will help me with my blogging schedule and I just love to get reader/crafty girls input. I'm looking forward to your replies.

Don't forget:

GIVEAWAY of Buttons and RICK RACK from Little Red Cottage

Jelly Roll Quilt Along

Happy Stitches,
Anna

May Special ALL MONTH LONG

May Special

I hope you'll stop by the shop to take advantage of this great special! Pick up a couple for your mom too for Mother's Day (if she sews) or for yourself for Mom's day! You know it fits every time and it fits your budget too!

Happy Stitches,
Anna

Too Many Tops

I am SEW excited! I finished TWO quilt tops this morning, they really only needed borders but at least now they are DONE! Here they are:

Charming Love U Quilt with the new border!

I just LOVE the Love U Charm quilt! It's my own design, what do you think? It went together SO fast and we have ALL the supplies you need to make this cute top in our shop. If you are interested in a kit of these supplies, please e-mail me and let me know. I'm happy to put one together for you with instructions too! This one is going to be quilted up and listed in our Etsy shop, eventually.

Rocketship Quilt (from a kit I bought locally)

I am totally in love with this geeky sort of rocketship fabric. The cutest thing is the grey rectangle fabric has cute geek-y words all about science and space! Can you see that? I think it's adorable and educational at the same time! My hubby is a science teacher so if we ever had a baby boy I think this would be the perfect quilt for him. But for now, I'm going to quilt it up and list it in our Etsy shop for your baby boy!

I realized I'm really good at making tops, now I need to get better at quilting them!!

Of course, since today is Friday, I'm linking today's post to all the FUN Friday linky parties, including: Follow Me Friday, New Friend Friday, Friday Follow, Feature Yourself, and, Look at Me I'm So Crafty

Happy Stitches for the weekend!

Anna

How Do You Feel About Advertising?

Starbuck, my baby, hiding among stuff in our guest room.

OK everyone, this is a feedback post, I REALLY need some feedback here. PLEASE leave me a comment with your opinion about this.

How do you feel about a blog that allows people to advertise on their site? Regina and I are considering offering this option here on the Crafty Girls Workshop blog. It wouldn't be a high cost thing, and we'd make sure that we only allow people to advertise who sell/make items that are relevant to what our readers want and, of course, don't compete with what we sell. That's part of the reason I need your feedback. It might seem a little over the top to ask people to pay for us to add their button to our blog, especially since we already sell fabric and kits and patterns but I want to offer people the option. Perhaps you're a reader of this blog and you LOVE to sew but have NO idea how to make cute jewlery, why not let us provide an image that links to a webstore of someone who sells pretty jewlery? Do you see where I'm going with this? So, hit me, tell me what you think, yeah or nay about advertising and IF you are someone who would be INTERESTED in advertising on here, please let me know as well. Of course, it would be sort of a let down if we went to all this trouble and no one wanted to advertise with us. Believe me, it's going to be VERY inexpensive to start, probably $5 a month! Most of our advertising budget goes to purchasing ad space on various blogs and we've paid anywhere from $10 to $85 a month for those ads, so I believe that $5 a month is VERY reasonable. I'll also do my best to help drive more traffic here so you get maximum exposure.

One more point: By asking for help with sponsoring our blog by purchasing some ad space, it will help us generate a little bit of money to be able to pay for ad space on other blogs. This will help us keep our prices on fabric, patterns and kits low and fair. We aren't doing this because we're greedy, but we do need to keep our ads on other sites running and hopefully we can do that and help promote some great crafty people in the process!

PLEASE leave me a comment with your opinion, no matter what it is. If you don't want your opinion to be public you can send me an e-mail anna@craftygirlsworkshop.com

BONUS: I will do a DRAWING from the responses (so make sure you leave me your e-mail) to win a CHARM pack of fabric! Drawing will be on Sunday March 7th. Thanks!!

Happy Stitches to You,

Anna

Yes, she DOES sew

And yes, she IS obsessed with red and aqua! Look at these adorable pincushion cuffs I made today! I made one for myself and decided they were sew easy that I'd make another one for Regina at the same time! I used the Lil Plane Jane Aqua and Red and White Dot from Michael Miller. They were SUPER DUPER easy to make and so fun and fast! I dug around in some buttons I inherited from my grandmother and found a really cool white pearly one and one that had a little flower crocheted in the center. Can you see it in this picture?

The neatest trick I learned while making these was to add an old cut up credit card behind the pincushion part, on the wrist band to protect my arm from stray pins! Neat idea! Thanks KeykaLou Patterns for this great tutorial! It feels so good to have actually fininshed something from start to finish today. Yesterday I managed to get most of a quilt top finished too. I just need to grab some more fabric to finish the outside border, backing and binding, of course. I call it the Love U Charm Quilt because I used 1 Love U Charm pack and 1 yard of Bella Solid Mint for the sashing.

I think this will be a great blanket for a little boy (or girl), the fabrics are so fun and cute! I can't wait to go to Regina's tomorrow to get the rest of the fabric. That's the update for now. We have some yardage of Martinique coming in soon and Make Life from Sweetwater, which is going to be super adorable for those of you who enjoy scrapbooking.

Happy Stitches to You!

Anna

I am SEW proud to be able to link this up to i made it! Blog party Thursday over at Everything Etsy!

Also linking to V.O.T.W.

And while I'm at it, a jump on next week:

Can you tell I just discovered the LINKY LOVE of link parties??

Giveaway Inspiration

The winner is April! April, if you see this please e-mail me anna@craftygirlsworkshop.com with your mailing address. I'll attempt to contact you through blogger as well.

EDITED: Becky, (Lori is the one who is adopting the kids) over at Babes in Hairland really inspired me today. I don't have the ability to donate in a monetary way to children in Haiti or Doctors without Borders, but I do have an abundant stash of fabrics (part of the reason Crafty Girls Workshop was born). I dug into my stash and found something that I think could help Haiti, in a minor way. My philosophy is that if many people do one small thing, it will become one HUGE thing. Does that make sense? I think Craft Hope for Haiti is a perfect example. OK so here's the deal. I've decided that I want to offer a way to potentially reward you for commenting on Becky's blog and helping to spread the word about it. I want to give you some of my stash. It's 34 squares, precut to 5"x5", I know 34 is a strange number. It's a charm pack that I had, called Look and Learn by American Jane, I opened it and layed out the charms with the hopes of making an apron, but then put them away and changed my mind. I know I started with 40 charms, but I only have 34 left, I believe I may have made them into pin cushions for a giveaway awhile back. But still, 34 should be plenty to make an apron or a tote bag. I also want to include 1 yard of coordinating fabric from the same line. This fabric is NOT readily available to fabric stores right now. If there is any around, it is probably difficult to find. Here are a couple of pictures, I tried my best to include all the squares in the scan, sorry if a few of them are crooked.

The 34 Charms

1 yard coordinating fabric

I'll keep this opportunity open until February 2nd which is when Becky said she will donate the money based on the number of comments. She said you can comment once per day, so consider going back tomorrow to comment too. Here's how to enter the giveaway for this fabric and charm pack:

• Stop by Becky's blog (1x per day) and leave her a comment
• Come back here and tell me you did that
• Tweet about the Coins for Comments (and tell me you did)
• Post about it on Facebook (tell me you did)
• Blog about it on your blog (tell me you did)

You'll get one entry for each comment you leave here about each of those items. I'd be so thrilled to get lots and lots of comments so I know that somehow I'm helping in a little way too! I hope you have a wonderful rest of your weekend.

Happy Crafting,

Anna

Check out this Cute Tutorial!

Moda Bakeshop has a cute tutorial for using those ADORABLE Love U Charm packs. It calls for one charm pack and coordinating yardage. We have several solid colors that would be perfect for the lining. How about the Mint Green Bella Solid or the pretty Baby Yellow Bella Solid? The best part? 1 charm pack and 1/2 yard of fabric makes 2 bags! Make one for your child and one for a friend or if you have more than one child, they can each have their own, and reduce the chance of them getting into fights. I think these bags are just awesome and can't wait to try making one myself, and I don't even have any kids! And what a sweet sentiment to make one or up of these up in the L'Amour fabrics to show a special child they are loved for Valentine's Day or even for a birthday. If you choose to purchase the supplies to make this tote bag, just leave us a note in the message to seller and we'll print off and include a copy of the tutorial for you with your purchase.

Happy Stitching!

Anna

L'amour is in the Air

L'amour by Sandy Gervais

From what I've seen around bloggy land, everyone seems to really be getting into the holiday spirit, seems like it's just about the right time to start promoting Valentine's fabric!! Actually, we really liked this new line, L'amour, by Sandy Gervais, because even though some of it is seasonal, a lot of it isn't. We have many precuts for you, finally, a reason to purchase the book called Layer Cakes, Jelly Rolls, and Charm Quilts! We have some cute charm packs:
We've been told we have the best price on charms on all of Etsy.

We have the scrumptious Jelly Rolls, perfect for tote bags and quick quilts:

And we have fat quarter bundles that we'll be splitting up into Short Stacks, don't forget you can always create your own Short Stacks by purchasing the listing called Create Your Own Short Stack. There are SOO many cute patterns out there that used fat quarters and these would make up into some CUTE gift baggies for your children's best friends for V-day or just for anytime. Fill them with cookies, candy, or some crayons and a coloring book. The pinks and browns are perfect girly girl colors.

If you need a little more inspiration, we have several books and patterns that are specifically made for precuts. We have an awesome book just about jelly roll patterns called Let the Good Times Roll. You can find the patterns for the precuts in the same section of our shop as the precuts you are searching for. So for example, if you are curious what other Jelly Rolls we have, just choose the Honey Bun/Jelly Rolls link on the right side of the shop home page. We want to make it super easy for you to find fabric and complimentary patterns in our shop. Thanks for stopping by!

Happy Stitches to You,

Anna

Charm Pack Winner!

Thanks to everyone who joined in our Sale-bration! It was so exciting to see our list of new blog followers and Facebook fans growing so much every day! I hope you will all keep in touch, because I have some great plans for this blog. There will be a lot more posts and they will actually have more substance than just what's new or on sale in the shop. BUT I think that's all I'm going to say for now about that. Without further ado...(drumroll please) the winner is:

Commenter Number 73 JILL!

Jill if you're reading this, I'll be in touch this afternoon to get your snail mail address so I can send that Aster Manor charm pack on to you. Oh, and by the way everyone, I guess as a sort of side effect of this giveaway, we've had a sort of run on our charm packs! We're down to just 3 of the Rouenneries line remaining and 3 of Simple Abundance. If either of those were your picks you might want to go grab them before they are GONE!! These were very difficult lines to get in stock so once we're out, that's it. The GOOD news is that we have some ULTRA cute fabrics coming in very soon that I really can't wait to tell you about. I hope you have a Terrific Tuesday!

Happy Stitches to You,

Anna

100th Sale-bration

We did it! We reached 100 sales and BEFORE December! We have you, our wonderful customers to thank for it. So to show our thanks, we're giving away one charm pack of YOUR choice from the following:

Plus, we'll cover the shipping, of course. We have a lot of great patterns that use charms in the shop under the Charms/Layer Cakes section. International participants are welcome to participate in our giveaway, especially since many of our sales have been to International customers. Here's what you can do to enter the giveaway, you'll get an additional entry for doing any of the following:

• Leave a comment on this post, please tell us which charm pack you would choose.
• Blog about this giveaway on YOUR blog and then come back here and leave a comment telling us you did so.
• Tell your Facebook friends about the giveaway (come back and leave another comment)
• Tweet about the giveaway on Twitter (leave another comment)
• Become a follower of this blog (leave us a comment)
• Become a fan of our Facebook page (leave us a comment)

That's at least six different ways you can enter the drawing. By leaving a separate comment, it makes it a lot easier to tally the entries. You will have until Monday, November 30 to enter the drawing. I'll announce the winner on Tuesday. Thanks again for making this a wonderful beginning for our little online adventure. We have a lot of exciting plans for the future of this blog and our shop!

Happy Stitches to You,

Anna and Regina

The Crafty Girls

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

More Stash Fabric Listed in Shop and FREE Pattern!

Yes, it's true, we have listed A LOT more fabric in our shop. And what sorts of cute goodies could they be? Well, we have some gently used books that are instructional for various techniques such as Applique and Crazy Quilting. We also have some smaller 1/2 yard cut bundles of the Sweet fabric by Urban Chiks for Moda fabrics. That fabric is soo adorable. See?

Sweet by Urban Chiks

We just listed some Snippets by American Jane. Turns out Regina had been hiding this and decided that it was time to let it go. We've cut it into 1/4 yard cut bundles, and kept the price around $15. These are not fat quarters, but they are 9 inches wide and approximately 42 inches long. This gives you a nice amount of fabric for a great deal! Here are just a few of the fabrics. To see the rest you'll have to stop by Crafty Girls Workshop for yourself. :-)

Snippets by American Jane for Moda Fabrics

We have 1/2 yard and 1/4 yard cut bundles.

Now, here is the most exiciting part, I think at least. Have you been to the Moda Bakeshop recently? It turns out that the pattern they just posted yesterday is for making an ADORABLE little tote/gift bag using, what else? Snippets! It calls for four fat quarters (18"x22") and even though our cuts aren't fat they are still a usable size for the pattern on the Bakeshop. Believe me, I checked! So I figured this must be fate. Moda offers a FREE pattern for making a totally cute little bag using the exact same fabric we are listing! So hop over to the bakeshop and get the pattern, then stop by our shop and get the fabric. You'll be able to start making your tote bags in enough time to give all your Christmas gifts in them.

Finally, there is still a week to enter the drawing for the Christmas fabric giveaway. It's only a couple posts back and I think you still have a good chance of winning if you enter now and tell your friends. Remember you get an extra entry if you tell them about it.

Gotta get to stitchin,

Anna and Regina

The Crafty Girls

Destash Sale

I hope you all had a fabulous July 4th weekend. I had Friday off from my full time job and was able to spend most of the day scanning in some NEW items for the shop, almost 100 new items in fact. After spending a few months madly sewing like crazy (Thanks Regina for your lovely creations) the Crafty Girls have come to a conclusion, the people who read our blog and visit our shop already know how to sew! And all you wonderful visitors probably would rather purchase fabric and patterns instead of pre-made items for gifts. SEW, that is the new direction we are taking in our shop. To start off, since we don't quite have the capital to just run out to the Moda warehouse and buy bolts of fabric (although it is very tempting, let me tell ya) we've decided to DESTASH our own fabric. Now, there are several advantages to this, first of all, Regina and I are pre-washers. Meaning we pretty much always wash any new fabric we bring home. This is an advantage for you because when you purchase fabric from us, it is a particular length AFTER being washed/pre-shrunk! I don't know about you, but I've been very frustrated lately when I have purchased fat quarters (18"x22") and gone home, washed them and then found out they were actually closer to 17"x21" after washing! If we sell a fat quarter in this destash, it's AFTER washing, so you're getting a better deal. We've also gone through our sewing and quilting patterns and found several that we've never used, and no longer need to keep around, so we want to make them available to anyone who would like to make good use of them, and the price reflects that. This is a DESTASH sale, so the prices are very good, we didn't even mark any of our fabric over $8 a yard, now that's a steal! Some of this fabric is still out on the market but difficult to find, so you might want to check us out and snatch it up while you can! Oh, and did I mention that we have several charm packs for sale? I still have a few more to get listed today, but I've posted the ones I thought would be relevant, including a couple of Christmas/Holiday packs. Remember, it's time to start thinking of making gifts for your loved ones for the holidays. Our charm packs are a steal for only $7! OK, the down side, shipping. Yes, the cost of shipping is going up and it may seem pricey to spend $4 on a pattern and have to pay $2 for shipping, but we are willing to combine shipping. We'll even set up a custom listing for you on Etsy if you want to purchase multiple patterns (and fabric, and charms). This will make it easier to get a specific cost for the shipping. With the new flat rate postage boxes, it is a little easier to figure shipping costs, but it's to your advantage to purchase multiple items so that you actually save on shipping costs. So, go take a look at the new items in our shop. We still have more to destash, these items are really only the beginning, plus we will have some BRAND new patterns to list very soon! Thanks for visiting!

Anna
The Techy Crafty Girl
P.S. Tell your friends too, the sooner we sell this stuff, the faster we can get new items ordered to offer to you all.

Pre Cut Fabrics

Hi All,
Well, I don't know about you, but I am completely in love with the pre-cut fabrics from Moda. When I first fell in love with sewing and quilting about five years ago (wow, has it already been five years?) I would just drool over the fat quarter packs because it meant I could get just a little bit of every fabric in a line. Unfortunately, I usually found it to be cost prohibitive, because $100 for fabric seemed like a lot (hasn't that changed!) Then, when they introduced the charm packs it was like a sign from above! Now I could get a piece of every fabric and only have to pay around $8 or $10! But what to do with those little collections? I've found a few projects to do with them, but I still have several untouched charm packs in my fabric stash. Well, I think you can guess where this is going, imagine my surprise when Jelly Rolls were introduced! I guess I am just a sucker for pre-cut fabrics. I mean, it seems to have really reduced the amount of time I have to spend cutting so I can spend more time quilting! The funny part is I have yet to really dig in and make anything from the Jelly Rolls or the Honey Buns. And I noticed that Moda has something new coming out soon called Petit Fours, which I believe are little tiny squares of each fabric, probably about 2-1/2" I am sure I'll love those too, even though I usually prefer to strip piece squares. That's why I haven't fallen in love with the Turnovers. I just can't imagine trying to sew all those triangles, I really just prefer to "cheat" by using two squares, draw a line down the middle and sew 1/4" on either side. I suppose that works if you're making half square triangles but if you want to do something like a snowball quilt, getting yourself a Layer Cake and a set of Turnovers would probably be easier. Recently I mentioned to a shop owner that although I love the Honey Buns and have been buying them like crazy, I still don't really know what to do with them. She suggested buying a charm pack and Honey Bun in the same line and using the strips to frame out the sqares. That sounded like a pretty good idea to me. So of course I bought the fabrics, but have yet to try the pattern! So, what do you think about pre-cuts? I mean, I'm giving away a charm pack so of course I have seen that over 150 people really like the idea of charm packs, but are you as smitten with them as I am? Please leave me a comment (this is still market research you know) if you are as in love with them as I am. We hope to have some new items to put in the shop soon. I've noticed that 25 people have responded to the poll on the sidebar. While that's great, I would love to have 50 or 60 responses to get a better feel for what I should offer on the Crafty Girls Workshop. Thank you to everyone who has commented to enter the drawing by the way. I feel like I'm making so many new friends!

Happy Stitches to You,
Anna
The Techy-Crafty Girl

P.S. Have you visited the Moda Bake Shop? It has tons of great "recipes" a.k.a. patterns and instructions for making cute things with all their pre-cut fabrics!