Kotyk with Poppies
Tania sent us this picture today, and we just had to share it with you. She bought a large print from Fabric Freedom’s “Poppy” line from us, and used it to make some lovely pillows. Apparently, her cute kitty named Kotyk really likes this fabric too, because it looks like he grabbed the leftovers to cuddle on.
Really cute cat, and lovely pillows Tania! Thanks so much for sharing them with us! Sweet dreams, indeed! 
Last weekend we took our twice-annual trip up north to attend our favorite buyer’s market in Portland Oregon, do a couple of classes, buy lots of fabrics, and then after the show, head up to Seattle for a short visit with our daughter, son-in-law and new grandson.
We had a great trip although it was exhausting. We’re talking about maybe flying up next time to cut down a bit on the time we need to be away from here. Thanks to all our customers who waited an extra day or two to get their orders shipped! We know you won’t be disappointed in the new lines we saw and ordered for summer and fall delivery.
This is going to be a long post, so here we go…
We arrived in Portland on Thursday afternoon, checked into the Marriott Courtyard downtown, then had a nice dinner and visit with Cindy’s sister and brother-in-law who live across the river in Vancouver Washington. After dropping them off at home and visiting a little more while being repeatedly molested by their two hyper-active Jack Russell terriers, we headed back to the hotel and settled in. The beds were real comfortable, the room was nice, large and clean, the shower worked really well and the staff was really nice and helpful. About all you can ask for in a good hotel.
Friday morning we got up early and drove a few miles over to the Crowne Plaza hotel where all the classes were going to be held. We got there plenty early, so after breakfast we unloaded Cindy’s sewing machine and other paraphernalia, and went to the ballroom areas to find her classes.
While Cindy was getting set up for her class, I went next door to another room
Shelly Figueroa
where Shelly Figueroa was preparing to teach a class on making clothing for little kids. We’ve recently started selling Shelly’s patterns, and have made a kit out of her Mary Go Round dress pattern using Maywood’s Dab of Jazz fabrics. (picture at right) We love this little reversible dress, and it’s been pretty popular on our website. We had a really nice chat with Shelly, and got to see a couple of her new patterns. Look for a new girl’s jumper kit using her pattern really soon on our website. We’ll also be introducing a couple of her other patterns in the web store in the next week or so, including a neat pattern for a boy’s hoodie and beach short combo. Thanks for taking time out of your busy pre-class prep time to visit with us, Shelly!
Back in the other classroom, I got to meet Helene Knott, who designs the fantastic little vegetable-cat block patterns we recently put up on the pattern section of our web store. Helene is another great designer, and Cindy was taking a class on making her “Yammy Cat” block. Cindy’s going to write about her classes and experiences on Friday, so we’ll leave that for her post.
After Cindy got settled in, I jumped on the shuttle bus out to the warehouse to start shopping and meeting with our reps. Friday is the day to pick up extra in-stock and current merchandise at the show, and Saturday is the day to see all the new upcoming products. I spent a few hours wandering around the warehouse, talking with our rep, picking up things on our shopping list that we’d take home with us and avoid paying shipping charges on.
We got some extra supplies of patterns, like the entire 12-pattern Garden Patch Cats series by Helene Knott, a couple of other new patterns, restocked on a few fabrics we were short on. I also picked up a couple of new Daiwabo Taupe designs to expand our line a bit and a few new patterns that would work well with them. We also now have access to the entire line of beautiful Fabric Freedom soft fair-trade India hand-dyes, so we picked up 6 new shades of those, mostly in purples and blues to round out our selection.
I also spent some time looking at the new Serenity Daiwabo Taupes that are coming out this spring. They are gorgeous! So nice in fact that we’ve ordered all 33 of the new designs. When they arrive, this will bring our selection of these wonderful Japanese prints to over 65. Those of you who love the Daiwabos are not going to be disappointed in the new designs, they just keep getting prettier every year while continuing to blend nicely with the older prints.
Cindy relaxes after an intense day of sewing
Well, at the end of the day I headed back over to where Cindy’s second class was just finishing up, and popped in to see what was happening. She was making great progress on a very complicated table runner that she started in her second class, also given by Helene. I sat in the hotel lobby and used their wireless connection to catch up on emails and check orders while Cindy finished up. When she was ready, we headed back to our hotel to relax a bit, then had a nice dinner downstairs in the hotel’s bistro. It was a nice restaurant on the street and it was fun watching the trollies roll by while we ate. It’s been awhile since we spent time in any central city, and it was kind of a fun change.
Saturday, we headed out to the warehouse and got started early looking at
Cindy with Jeremy of Avlyn
fabrics for future sales in our web store. Our first stop was with Jeremy Jeffries, VP of Avlyn fabrics. We’ve heard a lot of good things about Avlyn, and wanted to look at their new lines, in particular some of their new batiks and hand-dyes.
We had a great time talking with Jeremy. He is super-knowledgeable about fabric manufacturing and fabric dying and gave us a great refresher course on those subjects while we were talking and looking. Avlyn has really high-quality fabrics, which is all that we’re buying these days. We’ve gotten a couple of lines in the past that were lower quality fabrics and we can really tell the difference, so if it isn’t the best, it isn’t showing up in our store, no more! I want to get a recap of our conversation on fabric differences, dyes and quality and as soon as I do, I’ll publish a post just on that subject, because it’s information everyone who uses fabrics should have.
Anyway, we bought a couple of new batik lines from Avlyn, including Karen Combs’ not yet released beautiful and unique new versions of her gradient-dyed batiks, which are in brighter colors than the first set. We have some kit ideas using these and some wonderful new designs by Karen. We are also going to be doing a fabulous new southwestern batik quilt kit, shown behind Cindy and Jeremy in the picture, and we also picked up a couple of cute new novelty fabrics from Avlyn. We’re really looking forward to our new relationship with Avlyn!
At that point we hooked up with our rep Lynn Kraus, who is also one of our favorite pattern designers, and headed over to look at some new fabrics from another new-to-us supplier, Elizabeth’s Studio fabrics. We had a great time looking through their new offerings and selecting a few for our store. We had previously ordered a new Russian-influenced line from ES and are anxiously awaiting it’s arrival. This is a beautiful line on black backgrounds with metallic bright colors and will be a unique addition. We also have several fabric sets coming from Elizabeth that are really amusing, so stay tuned!
Cindy and Don surround the Taphouses
Then, it was off to meet with our favorite supplier, Bryan Taphouse, owner of Fabric Freedom of London. We’re one of Bryan’s largest USA retailers, and it’s always fun to see what he and his designers have cooked up for the next season. We’re always amazed by the quality and new designs they come up with as well as the new variations on older designs. This time was no exception. We saw some things that just knocked our socks off, including a sequel to a new line that we haven’t even gotten in yet but is expected soon. Fabric Freedom is also doing another classy William Morris line this summer as well as a couple of new lines in shades of single colors, all of which, of course, we ordered.
This spring, Bryan brought with him his lovely wife Jackie, combining a little fun family vacation with the business trip. We had a great time chatting, and we wish them the best on their remaining travels in the USA this spring!
After looking at, and ordering most of the new lines from Fabric Freedom, we spent some more time making final purchases and topping up our cart with a few more patterns and books, then it was time to say goodbye to our friends in Portland, check out, load up the car and hit the road for Seattle.
A few hours later, we arrived at our daughter’s house outside Seattle, just about in time for dinner. After a nice dinner we settled in for a great visit with the family and especially our little six-month-old grandson. He’s getting so cute! And he’s almost ready to start crawling.
Sunday morning, after breakfast and another visit, we rolled for home, heading down the east side of the mountains, Arriving home on Monday afternoon, we spent the evening Monday and all day Tuesday cutting and packing out all the orders that had stacked up during our absence. We got everything out in Tuesday’s mail, though I don’t think our postmaster appreciated me arriving at his window 20 minutes before closing with that many packages to process.
Anyway, it was a good trip, we had a great time and selected a lot of really nice super-high quality goods for our store. Thanks again for your patience to those people who had to wait a day or two extra to get their orders. We promise not to do it again until next fall!
Who doesn’t love antiques? The elegant look of days past, when people really took the time to make
Antique Archives - Gold
things perfect, not just “good enough” has a universal appeal. The people who designed fabrics in the nineteenth century went largely unrewarded — they did it for the love of the craft and for their own personal satisfaction.
Antique Archives is a new line from the talented designers at Fabric Freedom and the pictures just don’t do it justice, it’s so beautiful. Rather than trying to explain it myself, here’s the product description from Fabric Freedom:
Antique Archives is a range of 5 designs, printed in 4 colourways, inspired by antique floral prints as found in old swatch books. When a new design was printed, a record of it was always kept in the pattern books at the mill. Those individuals who created these fabrics often remained unrecognised by their employer and the public who bought, used and enjoyed these beautiful textile designs.
In the old pattern books kept by the mills there is a rich wealth of designs, which conjure up the
Antique Archives - Burgundy
expertise and quality of years gone by. We have put together this range of prints, inspired by fabrics of the past and designs found in English Archives, and given them a rich antique quality by our use of colour. Rich burgundy and green as well as antique gold and cream, complement each other beautifully and can be used all together, or in different combination to reflect your own choice.
A quilt made from this range can be used to add warmth and history to any room and will look as though it has always been a part of your home.
We couldn’t agree more! The detail on these designs is so precise and elegant that it could only happen by using hand-painted originals, a craft still practiced by Fabric Freedom’s designers. The designs are simply beautiful and the antique
Antique Archives - Cream
shades are so soft you just feel like you walked into an antique shop when you look at them. We’ve seen some of the other companies’ similar designs, largely drawn with computer design tools, and they just don’t measure up to these.
Fabric Freedom has, as usual provided small, medium and large prints over the 5 different designs in all four colorways. Don’t be afraid to mix and match any or all of these fabrics, they all work beautifully together as each of the prints has elements of all four colorways in them.
We have all of the Antique Archive designs in stock and on our website now, including our popular half-yard collections by colorway. We’re also offering additional savings if you want to buy all four half-yard collections at the same time (total of 20 half-yards.) As usual, purchase of multiple half-yard collections in the same colorway, or any additional yardage added to your order will be cut continuous with your half-yard collections unless you request separate cutting.
Antique Archives - Green
We’ll also be coming out soon with special cuts on this and many other fabric lines, so you’ll be able to get those charm packs, 10 inch squares and other cuts. Stay tuned for those, coming soon. We’ll also be introducing a new kit using these fabrics when we get the required background fabrics that are still in transit from England.
These are exquisite designs on wonderful, soft-finish highest quality 100% cotton with the fantastic feel and finish that Fabric Freedom is known for. If you’re into this look at all, and even if you aren’t, you owe it to yourself to get some of these now. We’re thinking they’re going to be very popular, for good reason!
See all these fine new Antique Archive prints on our website by clicking here.
Just in time for Indian Summer! We just received our shipment of new Fabric Freedom Indian Summer batiks and some matching FF Infinity batiks to go with them. We’ve put together two collections of
Indian Summer Batik Collection
dye-coordinated batiks that really work altogether, and as usual, we’re offering these in half-yard collections.
There are 4 prints in each of the two Indian summer colorways, a green/blue/purple colorway and a red/orange/yellow one. These fabrics are really attractive, stunning even when you see them all together. The green colorway has greens, blues and purples flowing together in many shades, like wise the red colorway, which has explosions of reds, oranges and yellows.
We’ve complemented the two colorways with selected Infinity batiks having the same colors. The blue/green features a sage green, aqua and pale blue, while the red colorway features red orange and a red/orange Infinity. Both collections also have a nice gold/tan/beige Infinity batik to pick up the tracings of those colors featured in the Indian Summer prints.
Indian Summer Batiks Collection
The Fabric Freedom Infinity batiks are all fair-trade items printed on ultra-soft quilters cotton with a great finish and a wonderful hand, as explained in the previous post about the strippers. We also have these at a wonderful price point, as the Indian batiks are a great value.
Get some! You owe it to yourself to try these great batiks!
See these two collections, and all the Fabric Freedom batiks by clicking here.
Wow! It seems like we’ve been doing a lot of traveling lately. It’s good to be home for awhile!
A few weeks ago, Don had his annual western motorbike rally, which he hosted this year in Minden NV, about 30 miles from here. That was a lot of fun, and we got to stay in a really nice suite in the hotel for a few days and live it up like the high rollers do. This was only possible because they gave us the suite real cheap because we brought them a good convention. About 160 of our friends from all over the USA and Canada, and even a few from Europe showed up. We had a great time catching up friendships, ate too much really good food, and generally had a great time. It was a lot of work, but worth it. Cindy ran back home to fill orders that came in, so it all worked out.
After the rally we had company for a few days, then Cindy left for her semi-annual trip back to Minnesota to see the grandson and spoil him a bit. She had a great time taking him out to the Mall of America and other places, and also got to see her niece and sister at the same time.
I picked Cindy up in Reno at the airport last Tuesday and we stayed overnight in Reno then left real early in the morning for Seattle. A full day’s drive, and part of the evening saw us checking in to a hotel in Seattle. Thursday we visited our daughter and new grandson. Unfortunately, little Cal was in the midst of a multi-day colic attack, but we were able to do a little cuddling anyway.
Don and Cindy surrounding Bryan Taphouse
Thursday evening we drove down to Portland and checked into our hotel there for a couple nights. We went to attend a large distributor quilting fabric and supply show, and it was well worth the effort. We got a sneak preview on a lot of the fabrics that will be introduced next month at the International Quilt Market. We sat down with our friend Bryan Taphouse, owner of Fabric Freedom, and got a look at, and ordered most of the new lines that will be appearing next spring.
We are really impressed by Bryan’s
Cindy works with Bryan on order quantities
continuing commitment to the highest quality goods, the highest quality engraving and printing, and the highest quality artwork provided by his designers Mag and Sharon. They’re still hand-painting all the original artwork while almost all other fabric studios have gone to computer aided design. The quality and beauty of the artwork really shows through the engraving, and sets Fabric Freedom above the rest in quality.
We’re not going to spill the beans on next years lines, except to say they are going to be spectacular, especially one that we just sat for a long time and looked at it was so beautiful.
We also visited with several other fabric company reps in preparation for a new secret project we’re working on. Stay tuned, we should be springing that in a few weeks now.
What else do you do at a fabric show but buy fabric and schmooze with other shop owners? Well, you buy more fabric!
We saw, and fell in love with, the Maywood Cara Collection Serenity fabrics from Daiwabo of Japan. So, we bought a bunch of them for our store. We’ll be writing a post on those as soon as we get them up on the store, but just let us say now that these are very very special fabrics, completely different from most of the other lines we carry, and very beautiful.
After completing our business on Saturday, we headed for home. Stopped overnight, then arrived home on Sunday afternoon after another long day in the car. Monday was spent filling all the orders that stacked up during our absence, and we got them all out. We shipped everything out Priority Mail or 1st class, so no one should have been delayed too much in getting their orders. Thanks again for your patience during our trip, we only do this a couple times a year, and we promise not to do it again for 6 months or so. We think the new lines we have coming will make it all worthwhile.
We’ve been waiting so long for Celtic 3 to arrive from England, be bolted and finally shipped to us that we ceased holding our breath a long time ago. Our distributor got stuck on one last fabric, it seems like an eaon, but it was only a couple weeks. But now we can exhale, because Celtic 3 is finally here! Yay!
Celtic 3 by Fabric Freedom
The Fabric Freedom Celtics have been some of our best and most beautiful and unusual fabrics in the past, and this one is even better! The designs are similar to Celtic Illuminations, but this time they’re in historically accurate colors; reds, blues, gold, black yellow. We have 11 mixers including the medium knot groupings, and 2 main panels. The fabrics are in two colorways, red and blue, but they mix so well that all of them can be used with any others.
These are fantastic fabrics, as anyone who purchased the previous Fabric Freedom Celtics can attest to. Great soft feel, highest quality yard goods, fantastic engraving and art work, these have it all.
We’re offering the usual cuts by the half yard, our popular half-yard packs and fat quarter packs. As usual, we’re also discounting the panels when bought with our HY or FQ packs. Remember, if you buy multiple half-yard packs, or yardage in addition to a half-yard pack, you get continuous yardage unless you request differently, so the half-yard packs are a good way to save a little on the total bill.
We’ll also be coming out with a really beautiful bed footer quilt kit in these fabrics. Cindy is just finishing up the cutting lists and then we’ll be getting it up on the site real soon, probably tomorrow. The kit will be offered in both the red and the blue colorways.
We’re really excited to finally have these new Celtics on our website. Can you tell?
The Fedex guy showed up today with a couple more big boxes! Right in the middle of our blowout sale, he dropped off two new fabric lines from Fabric Freedom Lucky we’re making some room around here!
Jungle Fun Squares
Jungle Fun is Bryan Taphouse’s new “fun” line. Instead of getting novelty prints in cheap chain-store quality, this line features fun jungle animals and the great high quality we’ve come to know and love from Fabric Freedom. Lions, tigers, elephants and other animals are caught in a setting of jungle greenery in nifty bold colors of orange, green and brown. These are sure to please any kid, not to mention us “older kids!” Enough of this talk though, go look at the entire lineup on our website by clicking HERE.
When we first saw the samples of Dazzling Dahlias, the new art-nouveau floral line from Fabric Freedom, we said “Wow! That’s really bright!” Well, we just got the fabrics, and they’re even prettier than the little samples we saw. These Dahlias will pop in any quilt you choose to use them in.
We chose the red and yellow colors primarily, and we think they’re the cream of this line.
Dazzling Dahlias - Large Red Dahlia
Bryan has provided us with a nice mix of large, medium and small prints and blenders as well as darks and lights. Obviously, as usual, the pictures don’t do them any kind of justice. We’ll try to get some good bolt pictures on the website tomorrow, but in the meantime take our word for it, these Dahlias are truly Dazzling.
For you lovers of poems and pansies (and other flowers too), this is a great new line from our friends at Fabric Freedom. Who better to combine Shakespeare and flowers than the great London fabric house?
Shakespeare's Flowers
Shakespeare’s flowers is a lovely combination of florals and poems. Shakespeare loved flowers, and worked floral references into his works often, using the symbolism of flowers to describe his ideas about people and places…
When daisies pied and violets blue,
And lady-smock all silver white,
And cuckoo-bud of yellow hue,
Do paint the meadows with delight…
Florals and blenders with Shakespeare quotations in mixable colors, what could be more fun?
We currently have 8 of these fabrics on our website, ranging from the 3 1/2 inch squares showcasing various flower settings, to large, medium and small prints in several colors that mix and match with the panels, as well as two blenders that are covered with Shakespeare’s longhand script. We are still awaiting one more fabric, which is another pink primrose print with cream background. Meanwhile, we’ve put the line on the website, and we’ll add the other one when it arrives, making 9 different fabrics. We’ll have a kit up in two color choices real soon, making a 52 x 52 large lap quilt.
If you liked the Pansy line, you’re going to love this one too! Same great feel and sewability, hand-painted originals, and great engraving and printing.
Put a little culture in your life with this great new fabric line! Click Here for a link to Shakespeare’ Flowers on our web store.
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?
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.
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
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!
Pansies Medium Print
We FINALLY got our order (well most of it) of Pansy by Bryan Taphouse, which we ordered about 2 months ago. I say most of it because they shorted us on the small print, but we’re taking steps to get that fabric asap.
Pansy is another wonderful floral from Fabric Freedom. It’s got FF’s trademark hand-painted originals look, you can see the brushstrokes of the original paintings in the fabric, something no CAD system can give you. This really separates FF’s fabrics from most of it’s competitors.
We’ve got the Pansies in a combination of the violet and purple colorways. Makes a nice balance and everything goes really nicely together. We have three, soon to be four florals and three blenders that were specifically designed with this line. As usual, these fabrics all have excellent feel and sewability.
There’s a lot of lore behind the Pansy flowers. Good imaginations over the millenia have imagined that pansies resemble various human facial expressions. I don’t know if this is true, but they sure are beautiful, nonetheless.
Check out the Pansy fabrics on our website now, these fabrics are selling fast, the importer is about out of them even though they were only introduced a few weeks ago. You can see them by clicking here.
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