Saturday, February 16, 2008

Box Full of Cat



Patch the cat keeps us company in the shop when we are working on the pre-cut kits. He would love to help us in the office also, but we try to keep his visits to the office to a minimum. He drools when you pet him, for one thing. The other thing is that he will disappear when you aren't looking and nest down in either the fabric or in John's quilts. We usually catch him before he does that though.


He is lots of company for us and completely different from Anna, the Siamese, who only likes to be around humans when John is out working in the garden. Another odd cat.


We finished packing for the Mid-Atlantic Quilt Festival in Hampton, Virginia today. It was a little harder than usual since Kate and I will be doing another show the following weekend in Puyallup, Washington so we have to divide things up. John leaves tomorrow so let's hope for no snow, and none of that icky freezing rain which I think is lots worse than snow.


Brooke

Wednesday, February 6, 2008

Takeover



If you hesitate, sometimes you are lost. I was going to sew this 12" Storm at Sea top together last weekend but goofed off instead. Kate had sewn all the square in square units and diamond units together and arranged them. All of us worked on the final set and, now, John is sewing it together.


Well, it will be nice to have a bigger sample of the 12" inch block at our next shows, although we don't have these batiks anymore The kits we have now are about half light batiks and half brights and darks so they are a little easier to arrange, I think.


Brooke


Friday, February 1, 2008

A Busy Week


This week has been a busy one with laser cutting more pre-cut kits for our website, upcoming shows and classes. Then we did pre-cut kits for Jinny Beyer and started on Batik Double Wedding Ring kits for Benartex, which is a big job since the fabric comes in strange configurations and has to be "worked on".


John had time to draft 4 different sizes of the "Drunkard's Path", since we get a lot of requests for that old-time block. The templates are ready but we need to do a sample and write the instructions. The sizes will be 4", 6", 8" and 10".

These templates are cut from our new color of acrylic, I call it seafoam - it has a yellow cast in this picture because the paper is still on one side. We leave the paper on one side in case someone wants to write the size/pattern etc. on the back and it adds a little friction for rotary cutting. When someone wants to "fussy cut", it is real easy to peel off.

I'm planning on finishing up the piecing on a 12" Storm at Sea this weekend - John is off to watch some football game??

Brooke