Quilting Around the World

Hello everyone! Hilary here. It’s been quite awhile since we’ve updated our blog and we sincerely apologize for that. Barb and I have been busy preparing for a wedding! My oldest brother (that would be Barb’s oldest son… am I confusing you yet?) was married on Saturday to a wonderful woman and we were thrilled to get to spend 5-6 days with her family and friends in a vacation rental in the San Francisco Bay area. It was quiet and relaxing and the wedding was beautiful!

The bride, groom and their families.

We’re back to everyday life now, though, and upon our return to Wisconsin, I realized I’d let a few things slip over the last few weeks as we prepared for our trip. We were, however, able to come up with a fun topic for our latest blog post!

First, let me set the stage for the inspiration behind today’s post. The wedding was a unique opportunity for each of us to meet and talk with people who come from a wide range of backgrounds. Cynthia’s family is Mexican, ours American. Cynthia’s sister is working toward her PhD in Australia and her boyfriend is Australian. Nicholas and Cynthia had a number of friends from all over the world fly in for the wedding. Nationalities represented were Mexican, American, French, Australian, Italian, Israeli, Japanese, and Indian. Languages spoken during dinner included English (both Australian and American), French, Spanish, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Hebrew, Hindi, and Japanese.

What does all of this have to do with quilting? It has to do with quilting because upon learning that Barb owns a quilt shop in Wisconsin, a number of people began talking with us about quilting and sewing in their own cultures.

Australia

Let’s talk about Australia. Cynthia’s sister is learning how to sew. Her boyfriend’s mother, who is a quilter, is teaching her. In Australia, cotton fabric is sold by the metre (approximately 39″ compared to the 36″ in a yard). At this time, the Australian dollar is at an almost one-to-one conversion rate with the US dollar. Now the kicker – a metre of cotton fabric in Australia is USD $20 or MORE! Compare that to our prices of, on average, USD $10 per yard.

Through our website, we’ve heard from a number of Australians and New Zealanders who tell us that it’s actually less expensive for them to order fabric from us and pay for the shipping and handling than it is for them to drive down the street and buy it.

South Africa

Last week, we had a visitor in the shop from Cape Town, South Africa. She and her husband were in town for the International Cheese Technology Expo in Milwaukee. I was asking her about quilting in South Africa and what prices were like there. I told her about what we’d been told of the prices of fabric in Australia and New Zealand and she said that in South Africa, it was about the same. Approximately USD $20 per metre of fabric.

Makes you feel a little better about what we pay for our fabric here, doesn’t it!

Mexico

Over the last few visits between our families, Cynthia’s mother, Carmen, has become rather interested in learning about quilting. Barb gave her some fabric and a book for her birthday in March so she could work on some placemats. When we met again last week, we provided Carmen with some fabric and patterns for a few bags and an apron. In Mexico, they don’t typically create quilted blankets and items as we do here in the United States. As I’m sure you already know, patchwork quilting is actually a fairly American tradition. Our understanding is that in Mexico, traditional textiles tend to be more along the lines of woven, embroidered, or knit.

There are, however, some fabric stores in Mexico that sell quilting weight fabric and patterns, just like your typical quilt shop here in America (well… we found one so far). The one quilt shop we’ve found in Mexico is actually very similar to an American quilt shop. They sell fabric by the yard and it averages around USD $14 per yard.

While we don’t pretend to know everything there is to know about quilting, especially in other cultures and countries around the world, we did find it very fun and interesting to speak with others about the textile traditions that exist where they live and we thought it might be fun for you, our customers, to hear what we learned over the weekend (especially about the price of fabric!).

Have you done any traveling outside the U.S.? What have you found or what do you know about quilting in other parts of the world?

A quilter’s guide to coping with high gas prices and a slow economy

If you’re anything like us, you’re probably feeling a sense of deja vu regarding gas prices rising and the economy still trying to get back on its feet. Weren’t we here about a year ago? What’s a quilter to do, especially coming up on prime road trip time?

We’re here to offer some suggestions (again)!

We know we wrote a similar post about this time last year, but we figured we’d take this opportunity to remind everyone that there are less costly alternatives to big quilt shows that can still be fun and educational.

If you’re unable to make it to any of the big quilt shows this year (Paducah, Cincinnati, etc), make a special trip to your local quilt shop, or get a group of friends together for a day trip to a shop a few hours away. You’ll save on the costs of gas and lodging, but still have a chance to get away for a little while to see what ideas are out there and what’s new in the quilting world. Many quilt shops are happy to arrange a demo of their latest and greatest gadget or schedule a special class for your group, so give those shops a call and see what they can do for you!

As we’ve talked about numerous times before, there are plenty of retreat centers throughout the country, but especially in South-Central Wisconsin. If you are still keen on dedicating a weekend to quilting, but can’t come up with the resources to make a grand roadtrip, select a place nearer to home and split the cost with your friends!

Many people are working from their stashes to save a little bit of money and to clean out their sewing rooms. We frequently hear people say these things and we want to support you in your endeavors, so we’re dedicating our April class schedule to spring cleaning and stash-busting! Find out if your local quilt shop is doing something similar and take a class or two! You’ll feel great about cleaning out some of your scraps and you’ll be supporting your local quilt shop, which is always appreciated!

These are just a few alternatives to dishing out the dough for a major road trip to a quilt show this spring. Share your ideas with us below in the comments section!

More project ideas for using up those scraps!

We have more of our projects finished for spring cleaning classes that we’re offering during the month of April! If you’ve missed out on the information for our class schedule for the next month, click here!

Zippy Strippy Bag

Above is our Zippy Strippy Bag. Lynn whipped this up in an afternoon and the pattern is great because it offers 3 sizes to choose from! We made the medium size. Everything on this bag, including the batting, was scraps! The only new item not in our stash was the zipper!

"Plumb" from the book "Scrap Republic" by Emily Cier

“Plumb” from Scrap Republic by Emily Cier is a fun little quilt that would be great for a baby quilt. We weren’t crazy about the borders on the quilt in the book, so we added this zebra print that was left over from the “Happy Little Animals” quilt we made last year. The back was pieced, but once again, everything used for this quilt was scraps, including the batting, which we pieced using batting tape!

There are so many possible variations on this quilt. You can easily expand it to make a nice lap quilt, you can use two colors and alternate them, you could just use one color and start with lights in one corner and darks in the opposite corner. The options are endless!

"Autumn Equinox" from the book "String Quilting Today" by Connie Ewbank

“Autumn Equinox” from String Quilting Today by Connie Ewbank is great for using up those strips and strings! Everything we used for this top is from our scraps except the sashing. The quilt top is a good way to learn foundation piecing if you’ve ever wanted to learn!

These projects, among others, are now on display in the shop to help give quilters inspiration for using up those scraps. Come on in and if you see any classes you’re interested in, be sure to give us a call to sign up!

Our April class schedule is here!

It’s that time again! Time for a fresh set of classes!

As we have mentioned before, we decided to dedicate the month of April to spring cleaning and our new class schedule reflects that. We have classes for pincushions, baby quilts, large quilts, hand bags, and table runners, so whether you have a few scraps or a room full of scraps, we have something to help you wittle that stash down so you can start adding to it again!

Many of the projects we’ve chosen are versatile enough that they can be done whether or not you have any scraps at all! So if you have no scraps, don’t feel left out! You can still take any of the classes!

2012 April Full Schedule

2012 April Snapshot

2012 April Calendar

Hopefully you’ll find something that tickles your fancy! If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to get in touch with us. We look forward to seeing you in our classroom this spring!

April is Spring Cleaning Month!

We at Quilter’s Compass have a problem. We’re sure many of you have the same problem. It’s confession time.

We love scraps. It is impossible for us to throw anything away because we might use it someday!

Much like your craft or sewing room at home, our classroom/workroom is full of leftovers and scraps from store samples. Our shop operates much in the same way your personal sewing room does. The biggest difference is that everything we make goes on display in our shop and eventually gets retired and sold to clients. This means we have leftover fabric and batting. We have patterns and books that we’ve pulled from the shelves and marked for store use.

What it really means is that we need to get organized.

We got a new book in a month or so ago called Organizing Solutions for Every Quilter by Carolyn Woods. For a variety of reasons, we’ve decided that we need to dedicate the month of April to spring cleaning and organizing our classroom to make it more functional. With the economy still on the mend, we’ve heard just about every quilter who walks into our shop say “I’m working from my stash.” Good! We’re happy to hear that even though times are tough for a lot of folks right now, you’re still quilting. Maybe there isn’t as much money to spend on quilting as you wish there was, but the fact that you’re finishing projects you have in your closet (have you heard of our Finishers Club?) or starting new projects using fabric from your stash means you still get to sew and be creative!

Let us help you continue to sew and create through the recovering economy. Through the month of April, we will be holding a variety of classes geared toward stash-busting and using scraps. We’re still working on the schedule, but we will have classes for everything from small projects like purses and pin cushions all the way up to large quilts and everything in-between, including tablerunners and baby quilts.

We will also be blogging about our experiences of getting organized. We’re starting now so we can have samples ready for the classes in April, but you can do these things whenever you get time.

So let’s get to organizing!

Organizing Scraps & Left-Over Fabric

We’ve been following the suggestions inOrganizing Solutions for Every Quilter by Carolyn Woods to help guide us to a neat and tidy workroom. Today we’re just going to talk about the first chapter of the book where Carolyn really has you evaluate your space, what you like about it, what needs to change in it, and what it is that is causing the clutter.

Per Carolyn’s instructions, we made a few short lists. One list is of the characteristics of our space that we like: lots of open space, easy to clean wood flooring, ample lighting, lots of wall space, and plenty of outlets. Another list was of room characteristics to change: not enough shelving, not enough project storage.

These two lists were supposed to focus on fixed things in the room. Lucky for us, our landlord customized the space to suit our needs when he was remodeling the building, so we don’t really have a whole lot to complain about.

Next, we made our list of “organizational changes”. In other words, things that we need to organize and find permanent homes for. We came up with: sort scraps by color & size, find storage solution for store samples in-the-works, find storage solution for books & patterns, hang our thread rack, oranize notions & tools.

These are things we’re going to work on over time, but we wanted to start with the fabric.

Our scraps, pre-sort

First, we took all of our scraps that we have accumulated from store samples and dragged them out of their hiding place in the bottom of our storage cabinet. We created a staging area where we piled the scraps on the table (and floor… oops!) and came up with a hodge-podge of containers so we could do the actual sorting.

Staging area

Assortment of containers for sorting fabric

We decided to sort the fabric into the following: reds & pinks, oranges, yellows & golds, greens, blues, purples, blacks & greys, whites & lights, browns & tans, “prints” (in other words, it doesn’t have a predominant color, or it does, but it’s a rather specific pattern – seasonal, childrens, etc), flannels, and left-over blocks (everybody has some extra blocks from projects, right?)

Making progress! Nothing on the floor now!

Making progress - scraps are finding their new homes!

Eventually, all of the scraps got sorted and then combined (but still separate!) to save space in the classroom until we get a chance to find a more permanent storage solution for our scraps.

Here, the scraps are re-combined, yet kept separate, to save space until we get a more permanent home for them.

Reds/Pinks, Oranges, Yellows/Golds, and Greens!

We hope you find some inspiration in this post to get organized yourself. Leave us a comment about the areas of your sewing room you want to focus on regarding organization. Or, if you’re already an organization pro, let us in on your secrets!

To keep the juices flowing, here are some sneak peaks at one of the projects we’ll be offering as a class in April. The pattern calls for 1 red fabric and 1 white fabric, but we went through our stash and made it scrappy! Barb is longarming it now, so we’ll post more when it’s finished, but this will be perfect for summer!

Watermelon tablerunner

Watermelon tablerunner awaiting longarm quilting!

Carolyn gives more than a few suggestions on organization and storage. We’re not going to rehash her entire book, but rather show you the process we are going through as we use the book as a guide. We suggest that if you’re serious about getting organized and creating an efficient workspace, you pick up her book and get to work! There is a lot of information and we’re enjoying it as we go through this process.

Stay tuned as we continue to organize and create projects using our store stash. We’ll be releasing our April class schedule soon, so keep an eye out for that, too!

Fat Quarters Galore!

Are you ready to celebrate Fat Tuesday with us? We’re planning on starting the celebration on Saturday, February 18 and keeping the party going through Tuesday, February 21 with sale prices on fat quarters and fat quarter-related books and patterns! Check out our specials below:

Fat Quarters: buy 6, get 1 FREE OR buy 12, get 3 FREE OR buy 18, get 6 FREE!*

ALSO – 25% off select fat-quarter related books and patterns including Yellow Brick Road, Serenity, Turning Twenty, Clever Quarters, Too, 5-10-15+ Fat Quarters, and more!

And it can’t be Fat Tuesday without something delicious, right? We’ll also be sharing some yummy treats!

Unfortunately, the price of cotton is catching up with us and we will be raising the price on fat quarters effective February 19. That means we have time for one last hurrah and you have one last chance to stock up on fat quarters before the prices go up!

We hope to see you in the shop to celebrate with us starting this Saturday!

*Free fat quarters of equal or lesser value, sale valid in-store only

Upcoming Events at Quilter’s Compass

February 18 – 21: Fat Tuesday Fat Quarter Sale — Come celebrate Mardi Gras with us during our Fat Tuesday Fat Quarter Sale! Unfortunately, the cost of fabric is catching up to us and the price of fat quarters will be going up on February 22, so this is your last chance to get fat quarters at their current prices! Stay tuned for more details coming out shortly!

June 8 – 24: Wisconsin State Quilt Shop Hop — Join Quilter’s Compass and approximately 70 other Wisconsin quilt shops as we introduce the first ever statewide shop hop! We will be debuting a fabric line designed by Holly Taylor for distribution by Moda. This line of fabric will be available in Wisconsin independent quilt shops only. This fabric cannot be found anywhere but Wisconsin! The fabric is a traditional line with a North Woods feel to it. This generally isn’t our aesthetic, but we’ve come up with an incredible way to transform this fabric into something fresh and unexpected, so be sure to stop in during the hop to see it! There will, of course, be incentives for individuals who visit the most shops during the hop and prizes will be awarded as well.

Barn Quilts and the American Quilt Trail Movement by Suzi Parron

July 13 – 14: Book signing with Suzi Parron – In conjunction with Green County Tourism, the Barn Quilts of Green County, the Monticello Area Historical Society, and the Dining Room at 209 Main, we are very excited to be putting together a weekend full of events centered around barn quilts! We will be hosting a book signing for Suzi Parron, author of “Barn Quilts and the American Quilt Trail Movement” in July! On Friday, July 13, Suzi will hop aboard a bus for a bus tour of barn quilts hanging in the Juda and Brodhead areas. The book signing will take place from 1 to 3 pm on Saturday, July 14. We will also have a make-and-take class and the Monticello Historical Society is attempting to arrange an exhibit of antique quilts in the museum across the street, though plans are still being made at this time. Barb has been working hard on designing future Green County Barn Quilts and will be featuring these creations in a display at the Dining Room at 209 Main this summer! Whew – lots to look forward to if you’re a barn quilt enthusiast!

We are still welcoming additions to our Green County Barn Quilt block of the month programs, so if you’re still interested, let us know soon! The first few blocks are easy enough to complete without falling behind, but we will be closing the programs soon!

We don’t have a date set yet, but Barb is planning to release some new patterns in the near future! The instructions are being tested and edited now and we hope to have them ready for release soon, so stay tuned!