QKO Notebook

January 31, 2009

New Fabrics from Blank in Store

Filed under: What's New? — Tags: , , , , , , , , — Don @ 2:37 pm
A bunch of new Essence shades

A bunch of new Essence shades

A couple of days ago we got our latest shipment from Blank Quilting.  We had ordered a bunch of new shades of Essence, Blanks Karen Combs-designed blender. We’ve had a couple of shades of it in stock for awhile, and the Lapis has been very popular. We really like the design, it’s a different sort of blender that goes really well with a lot of fabrics, especially the Shade Cascade from Blank, and a lot of our Hoffman batiks.

We brought in a bunch of blue shades, a couple of green shades and a orange-red shade called Flame.  We have one new kit out there on the website now using these, a nifty geometric quilt by Karen Combs that uses about 5 different blue shades, greens

Essence quilt kit

Essence quilt kit

and flame.  This top is about 48 x 48 inches and would also make a great table-topper to brighten up your spring table!  We’ve also ordered about four more shades of Essence and they should be in this coming week, including a bronze, violet and a couple others.  We’ll be combining those with the Shade Cascade fabrics in another kit soon.

New Strips! We also got a selection of strip bundles from Blanks. Each bundle contains the usual 40 – 2 1/2 inch strips, 44 inches long. The Blank strips, called “Fabrications” come in four different fabric lines, including

Blank Strip Bundle - Floret

Blank Strip Bundle - Floret

Essence, Simply Delicious, Bali Rain, and Floret. Each bundle has 40 different shades in a rainbow of colors.  Pick up one of these and one of the “Strip Clubbing” books, also new on our website, and create yourself a masterpiece! The Blank “Fabrications can be seen by clicking here.

For those of you that have been looking for nice whites and ivories, we’ve also gotten in several from Blank, including their Alabaster, a soft metallic off-white from the Rock Candy line, a plain white from the Eclipse line, and an Ivory from Fusion Illusion, which is a beige pattern on ivory. We also have a couple of other good whites in our line-up, including a 108″ Roc-lon white on white backer, and one of our favorites, the Fabric Freedom cream Ice, which is a soft metallic crystal white-on-white.

January 22, 2009

Hoffman 2009 Challenge Fabrics are Here!

Filed under: What's New? — Tags: , , , , , — Don @ 6:27 pm

Wow!  Tuesday, right in the middle of Cindy’s big annual quilt group invasion, the UPS truck pulls up and starts unloading boxes.  The guy saw there were about 25

Hoffman 2009 Challenge fabric and coordinates

Hoffman 2009 Challenge fabric and coordinates

women in the place so he decided to help her carry in the boxes.  I was conveniently down at the post office mailing out orders at the time.    :-)

Anyway, it turned out it was our anxiously-awaited shipment of Hoffman Challenge fabrics and coordinates for the 2009 Hoffman Challenge.   In case you have never heard of the Challenge, a short explanation might be in order.

Every year, a bunch of Hoffman’s people get together and select one of their new top-end screenprinted fabrics to be a challenge fabric.  They also select a dozen or so coordinating fabrics to go along with it. Quilters and other sewing addicts buy the fabric then try to out-do each other with original designs using that fabric. There are a bunch of rules and a bunch of categories, including several quilting categories.  The entries are sent in around the end of July, and are judged by a panel of experts in each category field, and the winners and other special merit projects are put on tour all over the USA and Canada for about a year.  There are a bunch of nifty prizes too.  So if you’re into competitive design this might be your ticket to stardom.  Several past challenge winners have gone on to be super-stars in the quilt designing world.  You can learn everything you wanted to know about the Hoffman Challenge, how to enter, etc. at www.hoffmanchallenge.com.

f9006-58p

The 2009 Hoffman Challenge Fabric

But, many of us aren’t interested in competition.   But all of us are interested in beautiful fabrics, and these are, indeed, some really beautiful pieces.  Many of the fabrics have pearlescent outlines on the patterns, most are semi-metallics of some sort.  These are Hoffman’s top-of-the-line fabrics in any given year. They’re all screen-printed in Japan in top shops, and produced in limited supplies.   They are heirloom-quality fabrics, and will be wonderful for most any project.  You need some of these!  As usual, my pictures on the website don’t do the fabrics justice, so if you want to see them up close, we have a sample pack for them, which, as usual, comes with a rebate coupon for the price of the pack.

These fabrics are priced slightly higher than most of our fabrics, but they cost more,  and our prices are still at least 40 cents a yard lower than our closest competition.    We also have our standard half-yard collection at additional savings, and our fat-quarter collection too.

These are wonderful fabrics, and we hope you enjoy them as much as we do.

January 21, 2009

Summer of Love by Fabric Freedom

Filed under: General QKO Info, QKO FAQ's (and other questions) — Tags: , , , , — Don @ 6:54 pm
Summer of Love by Fabric Freedom

Summer of Love by Fabric Freedom

When I first saw this fabric on paper, I really didn’t like it.  Cindy sort of liked it.  Then we saw it in the real samples and she liked it a lot, and I liked it a lot better.  Summer of love is reminiscent of the late sixties, when we were young, and love, and a lot of other things, filled the air.  This line takes you back to the summer of ‘68, when paisley and wild prints were all the rage.  The line comes in several colorways. We selected the black/red/white because we thought those primary colors best exemplify the period, and they’re just plain neat looking!  Great feel, color rendition and sewability, the highest quality as usual for Fabric Freedom.

So, get some of this fabric, put on some old Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, or “The Band” records, and sew yourself up a little “love” quilt.

This fabric will make you smile like it does us.  Watch out for the groovy stripes though, if you look at it long enough you’ll feel like you’re a little stoned.  But maybe that’s a good thing.   :-)

Check it all out on our website by clicking here.

Country Garden is here!

Filed under: What's New? — Tags: , , , , — Don @ 6:38 pm

Wow! The bolts have been arriving almost daily around here and all of a sudden we’re up to our knees in new fabrics.  We’ve been working as fast as we can, considering the work we had to do on our website, to get all the new product up and available as quickly as possible.  OK, so where to start?

cgpinkboltslg

Country Garden - Pink colorway

The last post on new stuff, we mentioned the new Country Garden fabrics from Fabric Freedom.  We haven’t carried a lot of pastel colors in our store before, probably because we haven’t seen a lot of them we like.  But the first time we laid eyes on these, we were hooked!  We liked them so much we brought in all the colorways and all the blenders in the line, 24 fabrics in all.  And, we finally got them all up on our website.

cgblueboltslg

Country Garden - Blue Colorway

Country Garden comes in three colorways, Pink, Blue and Lilac. Each colorway has 6 main prints in small, medium and large. Additionally there are 6 blenders made specifically to cross between the colorways, although some go better with some colorways than others.  As usual for Bryan Taphouse designs, the originals are hand-painted and hand-engraved, then printed on the finest 100% cotton yard goods.  The quality and hand of these fabrics is outstanding as is the artwork, engraving and printing.

Country Garden - Lilac Colorway

Country Garden - Lilac Colorway

The “cottage” prints are a tolle’ design showing a country cottage and surroundings, very very nice, in 6 different shades.  You can see all these now on our website by clicking here or going to the web store at www.quilt-kits-online.com.  You’re going to love this fabric line!

January 19, 2009

Sunday Store Outages at QKO

Filed under: General QKO Info — Cindy @ 10:55 am

Oh sure, it had to happen on Sunday, the busiest shopping and hopping day of the week for us.  :(

We had a bunch of resource issues with our new hosting provider, all day Sunday, and it took most of the day to get them resolved.  The system was only allowing 10 people at a time on the system and if any more got on the system would give out an error “Internal Server Error.”   It took all day to get the issue resolved.

No data was lost or anything compromised with this outage. We don’t keep any financial transaction information on our server or in our store, so nothing in that way was compromised either.

If you were on our site and couldn’t get in or couldn’t complete a purchase, please send us an email at info@quilt-kits-online.com.  We’d like to apologize for your inconvenience.

Everything is up to speed and running well today, and we don’t anticipate any more outages like this one.   Thanks again for your patience, and be happy you weren’t around here when steam was coming out of Don’s ears.   :-)

January 15, 2009

We’ve Moved Our Store!

Filed under: General QKO Info, What's New? — Tags: , , — Don @ 11:01 pm

Well, our move to our new “store” is complete, with just a few more glitches and hiccups to fix.  We still need to get our ugly order confirmations back up to their usual beautiful state, but that’s a minor issue that should be resolved in a few days.  Outside of that most everything seems to be working well, and we were only down for a few hours during the move.  Our apologies if you tried to get to our store and couldn’t, everything should be working well now.

I’ve spent the last week working day and night moving our store to a new hosting provider, one which hopefully will give us better performance and fewer outages.  We’ve been plagued with occasional outages lately and it finally got too much to bear, so we moved!   At the same time, we updated our software to provide better performance, reliablity and security.  You won’t notice too many changes, but one you may have noticed the last couple of days is the ability to purchase Gift Certificates.

There is a new item on the left hand menu of our store called, oddly enough, “Buy Gift Certificates.”  The way our GC’s work, you can purchase them in any amount you want over $10.  Say you want to send a GC to your best friend, so they can take advantage of all the great deals in our store.  You click on “Buy Gift Certificates” and a screen comes up that looks pretty primitive at the moment, but works.  You fill in the amount of the certificate, any amount $10 or over, your name, your giftees name, and your giftees email address.  You can also add a personalized message.  Then you click Submit, and the GC is added to your shopping cart just like any other purchase.  When you check out, and pay for your purchase, and your order is process, the system sends both you and your recipient a nice email showing them they got a gift certificate, and including the GC code.

Then, when your giftee makes a purchase in our store, the amount of the purchase is deducted from the GC and our system keeps track of the balance if the GC isn’t all used up on one purchase. If the purchase is more than the gift certificate, the system treats it like a discount and applies it to the total purchase.  Be aware that when using or purchasing gift certificates, you can’t use any other discount code.

Gift Certificates are a great new feature, and they can help you give a gift that certainly will be remembered! Try one!

Inundated with New Fabrics

Filed under: What's New? — Tags: , , , , , , , — Don @ 10:39 pm

The last few days have seen the UPS and Fedex trucks stopping every day at QKO Central to drop off our new fabric orders.  We’ve received a lot of new stuff, and I’m way behind in getting it up on the web store. But, a little at a time and hopefully I’ll be caught up by the end of the upcoming weekend.

gothambolts

Gotham Bolts

Wow!  Some really beautiful and exciting new stuff has arrived!

Gotham by Benartex.  We have about 8 fabrics in this line including a beautiful large panel.  Gotham is an art-deco design reminiscent of the 1930’s industrial city.  The main panel is a round design with the Empire state building and several smaller medallions,  hard to describe it, you really have to see it. Accompaning the panel are seven different matching fabrics which we’ve selected to surround the panel.  Here’s a picture of the bolts, and you can check out the fabrics at our webstore by clicking here.

We’ll be putting up a kit for the Gotham line in the next day or two, a wall-hanging or lap quilt that could be expanded to a bed quilt.  Of course, we’re offering the Gotham in half-yard collections  and fat Quarter collections. The collections don’t  include the panel but you get a discount on the panel if you buy it with either collection.  And, of course, we have our ever-popular fabric sample packs for this line, as well!

Another new line in our store isn’t really a new line, it’s actually been around awhile but it’s new to our store.

celtic2bolts

Celtic Illuminations Bolts

We had so much interest this last few months in our Fabric Freedom Celtic Christmas fabrics, that we decided to see if we could find some more of the Bryan Taphouse-designed Fabric Freedom Celtic Illuminations fabrics that came out last spring. For various reasons we couldn’t get it last spring.   We asked our rep and found out that they still had some in the warehouse, and they did, so we ordered it.  It came in yesterday and is it ever gorgeous!

Celtic Illuminations is a rich brown/gold mix that will really appeal to the eye and make a very bold statement. If you’re into Celtic knot designs, you really need to look at this, and even if you don’t think you are, you might be convinced when you see it.  :-)   As usual with Fabric Freedom, the quality is the highest available, the feel is luscious and the printing is accurate and of the highest quality.

For this collection we were able to get a large panel set that consists of two knot designs, a medium print with various knot designs in a three-row repeat, and three small-design blenders.  Not a lot but there’s enough variety to do some very interesting projects, and the designs are so rich and bold this smaller number definitely will do the job.  We also have a half-yard collection (which includes the panel set) and a Fat Quarter collection that doesn’t include the panel, but has an option to buy the panel set at a discount if purchased together. And of course, we have the sample pack.   There’s a picture here of the bolts, and you can see the details on our website by clicking here.

Today, the Fedex truck dropped off another several huge boxes, and it was the newest lines from Fabric Freedom, including the complete line of the new Country Gardens in three colorways with coordinating neutral blenders,  and a spicy 60’s-inspired line called “Summer of Love” in a black/white/red colorway, just in time for Valentine’s day.  We also got a bunch of next year’s Christmas fabrics, including a really cute William-Morris inspired Christmas Cats design line.  We won’t be introducing the Christmas fabrics until we’re closer to our “Christmas in July” event, because we have several other new Christmas lines coming from Benartex and others. And yes, we’ll be offering the ever-popular Christmas Advent calendar kit again this year, this time with cats!

When I get the new lines up on the website I’ll be writing about them.  Also, we just received word that our Hoffman Challenge 2009 fabrics are being shipped, so we’ll be receiving the entire line sometime next week, all 13 fabrics.  And, we have lots more lines on order for spring delivery! Stay tuned, lots of new things are coming to QKO!

January 6, 2009

Ginger The Stripping Queen

Filed under: Friends' Projects — Tags: , , , — Don @ 8:13 pm
Ginger and her new strip quilt

The Stripping Queen and her new quilt

One of our bestest quilting friends here in the valley is Ginger.  She is a really talented quilter and has designed and quilted some of the most amazing quilts we’ve seen.

Lately, Ginger has been into strip quilting, so we’ve taken to calling her the Queen of Stripping.  A couple of weeks ago she purchased a butterscotch Bali Pop and some companion fabrics from us, the same ones used in the Tradewinds kit we have on our website.  We couldn’t wait to see what she’d come up with.

Well, today she brought over the finished top, and is it ever

Block and borders closeup

beautiful!  Pictures can’t do it justice, but we took a few anyway.   The materials she used in the quilt were the same Hoffman fabrics as in the Tradewinds quilt, i.e. the Butterscotch Bali Pop, the Autumn batik F2009/66, the 1895/205 Latte, and she added a thin border of the 1895/60 Hunter green.   She did take the basic pattern out of a book, which we’re going to be carrying soon on our website, as soon as we find out from Ginger which book it was.

Needless to say, Ginger’s version of this quilt is a lot more outstanding than the sample in the book will

be.  We can  say this knowing Ginger’s work and not having seen the book yet.  :-)    One of the things we really like about this quilt is that no two blocks are alike in it.  That takes a lot of work!

Attached here are some pictures of the quilt that I took when she brought it over today.  I tried to take a wide shot and a few closeups of some of the blocks and the borders.  You can click on the pictures to make them full size (800 x 600).

Really nice, Ginger!  You are indeed the Stripping Queen! Thanks for sharing your quilt with us!

Update: We found out that Ginger used the “State of Grace” pattern from the book “Strip Clubbing” by Cozy Quilts.  We now have that book in stock in our web store. Click here to see it.

Block closeup

Block Close-up

January 3, 2009

Anna’s Purses

Filed under: Friends' Projects — Don @ 7:06 pm

A while ago, we received an order from a new customer named Anna.  It was a bit of an unusual order in that she ordered a bunch of our Bag e Bottoms lexan purse bottoms.  In fact, she cleaned us out of them!

Anna and Ricardo, after a cycle ride.

Anna and Ricardo after a motorcycle ride

After a bit of correspondence with her, we discovered that Anna makes a lot of purses for her friends, and sometimes to sell in craft shows.

And, she sent us a link to a photoshow of her latest purse project which uses some really neat geometric fabrics for the outside and some nice blue batiks on the inside.  In fact, we liked her purses so much that we started carrying her favorite pattern, the Veronica handbag, on our website. Here’s a link to Anna’s Blog, where she is showing some of the purses and other projects she’s made.

Anna’s Project Blog

Anna and her husband Ricardo are motorcycle riders like we are. They enjoy riding around on their Harley Davidson motorcycle together and with friends.  They live in the Chicago area.  Anna also likes to travel, and she has done quite a bit of it. She is originally from Croatia and enjoys going back there to visit friends and family.

Very crafty, Anna!   Thanks for sharing your pictures with us!

January 1, 2009

Christmas in Minnesota

Filed under: Random thoughts and ramblings... — Tags: , — Cindy @ 2:35 pm

This year I was able to spend Christmas in Minnesota with our youngest son and his lovely family. Jordan, Lara, and our wonderful grandson Omar made it a joyful time for me. The memories of our visit will warm my days for a very long time.

Omar and his new Panda Quilt

Omar and his New Panda Quilt

I took a number of pictures of Omar, so of course we had to include at least one here in our Notebook.

As you can imagine, Omar has been the recipient of many a quilt and this year was no exception. One of the nice things about having a quilting-related store is the opportunity to design quilt kits, which creates samples to give as gifts. Our Panda quilt made a terrific gift for Omar and as you can see from the picture, he seems to like it.  He set up this picture on his own, and then called me in from the other room to take it.  He’s quite the ham, and he really likes his new quilt. He couldn’t wait for his Daddy to get home so they could use it together on the big chair.

I learned trapunto by machine using water-soluble thread from a dear friend (thanks Ginger) just in time to use it on the Panda’s face, the leafs he is eating, and the corner pandas. It is very easy to do and it gave this quilt a nice three-dimensional look and feel.

When I arrived in Minnesota the binding was still not finished so Omar and I worked together to finish the quilt before my return to Nevada. He was a very good helper and he informed me he would be interested in making his own quilt someday. He said it would be a picture quilt showing him and his Grandma and Grandpa riding horses together.  Wouldn’t that be cool!

Our wish for you this year is to take time — the time to savor the sights, sounds, scents, and tastes of the seasons. Enjoy your family and friends as they are what make a wonderful life.

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