400 Followers and Sporatic Posting

Wow! I am so excited we hit 400 followers! I feel so special! Thanks for considering us important enough to add to your reader list. As you may have noticed, posting has been rather sporatic lately. That is due to a lot of things going on in my personal life (yeah, lame excuse, right?) But guess what? I FINISHED the Luv U Charm quilt! And Pam and Marcie made really good progress on their charm quilts yesterday at the local Crafty Girls Workshop meet up! It really was a blast. Hopefully next month I'll remember to take my camera and snap some pictures! I literally finished the binding on that quilt yesterday MORNING and the meeting was at 2:00 pm! Please don't forget to stop by the webstore and check out our NEW design and add your comment to our guest book. Plus, if you note any other oopsies about the shop that I have neglected to correct, please send them to me at anna@craftygirlsworkshop.com to be entered in the Wacky Website Challenge Giveaway. I'll be choosing a winner on Thursday!! That's the update for now.

Happy Stitches,
Anna

Crisis Averted, Please Return to your Regularly Scheduled Shopping

Wow, this is what it feels like panic when you realize that your SHOPPING CART SOFTWARE is DOWN! We were wondering why we hadn't had any orders in TWO DAYS. Lately, that's pretty unusual. Well, I chalked it up to the Easter Holiday weekend. Perhaps people are too busy with their families to shop for fabric right now. Totally understandable. Then tonight, I was listing some AMAZING new fabric bundles we've created (I had loads of fun taking pictures yesterday) and I decided to test the shopping cart, but it wouldn't load! PANIC! Long story short, somehow I read a forum post that explained how to change the address and it corrected the problem. I felt a little better knowing it wasn't JUST my site that was down, it was happening to all 20,000 of the users of Mal's e-commerce. Note to self, if something seems unusual, it probably is an indicator that something is not RIGHT. OK, so our store is working now, please return to your regularly scheduled shopping. And would you like to see some fabric eye candy?? (I hope I don't get spammed for that)

Martinique Bundle Full and Half Yard Cuts

Michael Miller High Tea Bundle Full and Half Yard Cuts

There is sooo much more listed on our web store AND on Etsy. Happy Shopping and Happy Easter!!

Anna

Friday Webstore Feature and FABRIC!

Since it's Friday, I thought it would be a great time to point out another cool feature on our webstore. On any page, you can see a group of links on the left sidebar. The top is the Shopping links, which are categories for your shopping ease. The section under that is called "about" and this is where you can find some info about the Crafty Girls. You can click on the About link and read about Regina and me and what inspired us to start up Crafty Girls. The Events link will take you to a calendar and if you live in the San Antonio, TX area, you'll see any scheduled events we have planned for a particular month. The Contact link will take you to a form where you can send us an e-mail if you have any questions about our products or anythying. The Catalog is another way to search the webstore. The last two features are pretty pretty cool, I think. We have one called Web Site Links. This is where you'll find a link to join our e-mail newsletter, participate in our Crafty Girls photo sharing group, visit the blog, or even link to the sites of some of the designers of patterns in our shop. The last link is called Guest Book, which may be self explanatory, but I think it's a neat way to let us know you visited and add some input about our webstore (it's still growing and changing). We'd love to know where our webstore visitors are coming from. It may just be the computer geek in me but I feel these are features that make our webstore more personal for our visitors and customers. Something we didn't have as much of on the Etsy shop.

Now for something you'll REALLY like, FABRIC! Yes, Spring is approaching and that means we're getting some beautiful spring color fabrics in. Have you seen the Verna fabrics we've recently listed?

Wouldn't these make into some adorable little girl dresses or cute tote bags for SPRING!? It's time to get a jump start on those spring projects. Tell Mr. Groundhog that you aren't going to accept his assessment that Spring is not here yet and make this REALLY cute vintage jumper, perfect for Easter.

I've heard really good reviews of patterns from the Favorite Things line and I think this would be a perfect beginner project. I wish I had a little girl to make it for! Well, I hope I gave you something to think about for the weekend (and maybe grab one for a future project.) You can click any of the photos above to visit the listing in our webstore or just click the link. Thanks for visiting! I'll be linking this on a couple of linky parties today.

Have a great weekend!
Happy stitches,
Anna

Nicey Jane Fabric

I was poking around on my computer last night, saving some pictures from my camera and I came across some pictures I'd taken back in October at Quilt Market in Houston. The picture above is Heather Bailey's booth, of all the beautiful Nicey Jane fabrics. Aren't they just luscious? We loved the vintage-y look and feel of them at the time but were rather overwhelmed by all the fabrics that we were seeing. We have now opened an account with Free Spirit and guess what!? Nicey Jane was at the top of the list of fabrics to purchase. Here are the fabrics we purchased from this line.

Click the image to go to the page on our webstore and purchase anywhere from 1/4 to multiple yards! I can't wait to dig in and sew up some samples with this fabric!

Happy Stitches to You!

Anna

P.S. If you check our webstore, you might find a pleasant surprise, all our fabrics have mysteriously GONE DOWN in price! This is NOT a temporary sale either, this is a PERMANENT price change. Better get that yardage fast before it's all gone!

Our Webstore: Cool Feature

I just figured out how to add a really cool feature to our webstore! Can you see what is circled in the example above? (For a closer look, click the picture to go straight to the webstore.) It's cutting options! How does it work? Let's say you want to make a Quilter's Quarters twirly skirt, which calls for 4 fat quarters. Well, it's soo easy to get exactly what you need without a lot of back and forth complicated chat. Just find the four fabrics you like and choose the radio button next to Fat Quarter $2.75. Then, in the Qty box just below the buttons, enter how many you'd like and click Order. Usually for FQs you'll just want one at a time. Do that for the four fabrics you like and then check out (don't forget to purchase the pattern and any additional yardage). The shopping cart program will automatically calculate the price and tell us you want Fat Quarters! Isn't that awesome?! You can do the same thing for 1/2 yard or 1 yard cuts! That is the beauty of our webstore, a pleasant shopping experience (we hope). OK, yes, I'll admit, I'm a computer geek and figuring out how to do something like adding the option to choose cutting choices seems like a cool feature. I have to admit though, that the Shoppe Pro webstore system makes things really easy (and I don't get any extra credit for saying that either). I hope you all have a wonderful week and find time to sew or quilt! I'll be back soon with more "cool" features.

Happy Stitches to You,
Anna