Cyber Monday Fabric Sale

Just thought you might like to know about the fab sale in my shop!

Happy Shopping!

Anna

Modern Solids Quilt Along at Patchwork Squared

 

I was reading the feature post today over at Fat Quarterly and they featured a new pattern company owned by two man quilters (Yippee!) called Patchwork Squared. These guys have a great aesthetic and guess what they just wrapped up? A Modern Solids Quilt Along!! This quilt looks awesome and even though it’s “finished” on the blog (apparently it started in March! Where was I?) You can still read all the posts and work as your own pace. Now, they feature Kona cottons in their posts but you can still use Moda Bella solids (especially since you can get them for only $5.99 a yard right now in my shop). As I understand it, there is a flickr pool just for this QAL as well. So, I highly encourage you to go check it out for some Modern Solid quilt inspiration!

Here’s the digital form of the finished quilt:

I just love those colors! Yeah for solids! Yeah for modern quilts! More to come soon.

Happy Stitches,

Anna

>Great Prices on Cotton Blossom Yardage

>

Cotton Blossom: Circles

Cotton Blossom: Flower

Cotton Blossom: Checker Print

These three beautiful coordinates from the Cotton Blossom line designed by Bonnie and Camille of Thimble Blossom and Cotton Way fame (they also have a new line coming out soon called Bliss) are available at a wonderful discounted price both on our webstore AND our Etsy store! You can get a 1 yard or 1/2 yard bundle of these three PLUS some other coordinates but if you just want to grab a yard, why not stop by the Etsy shop and get one? Their listings are almost expired and I’d love to see these fly off the bolts before the end of the day. I think these would make up into some adorable tote bags and aprons for your home. Of course, there are always the many, many patterns we have listed on the webstore. I encourage you to go and CHECK IT OUT! We have five yards listed of each of these three and that means that on Etsy you can get up to 5 yards without having to request a separate listing! I hope you’ll go check it out before this chance expires! Order before 3:00pm CST and your order will go out today!

Happy Stitches,

Anna

>Super Saturday Sale!!

>

Hello Betty!

Flowers on Cream

Checker in Blue

Polka Dots on Blue

We’re having a CRAZY SUPER SATURDAY SALE!! We want to sell ALL of the three bolts of fabric we have shown above. It’s currently dropped to a super duper low….

$6.00 a yard!

Shipping and tax charges apply

Tell your friends! Twitter it, Facebook it, blog it! If we sell EVERY yard of this fabric between now, Saturday April 10 and next Saturday, April 17, we will give away something that is totally cute and fits with the retro theme! To enter, just leave a comment here for each of the following items you’ve done:

1) Leave a comment to say you’re going shopping!

2)Blog about this

3)Buy fabric (one entry for EVERY yard you buy!)

4)Tweet about it

5)Tell your Facebook friends

Happy Stitches and Happy CrAzY SaTurDaY SALE!!!

Anna

>CGW Sew and Show on Flickr!

>Edit: The badge is now available! It’s over there in the sidebar with the nifty code thingy that you can just copy and paste! If you have any questions about that, please e-mail me. Click the link below to visit the flickr pool and join in! Thanks!!

Thanks sew much to Amy from Positively Splendid who has offered to help me with designing a badge for the NEW flickr group! When we get that finished you can bet it will be the next post, but until it’s ready, PLEASE do stop by the CGW Sew and Show flickr pool and join in and post your pictures! I’ve already put in a few pictures of things that Regina or I have made and I hope they will inspire you too! The idea is to show what we’ve made using our fabrics or patterns (or both) and we’d love to see what you’ve made! Don’t worry, we aren’t checking receipts to see if you purchased it from us. That’s OK if you didn’t but the exciting thing about flickr is that it’s all about pictures and you can add a description to your pics. So you can tell us about the item, why you made, and where you got the inspiration. If you used fabric or patterns from our shop, well, GREAT! If you have a pattern that you’ve used and think we should carry, let us know in the discussion portion of the group. Well, happy stitching to you!

Anna

>Pillowcase Tutorial!!

>

Yes, it’s finally time. The pictures are all ready and the instructions are written. Here is the LOOOONG awaited pillowcase tutorial, created by Regina (the rather silent Crafty Girl). At the end of this post I’ll include a link to open a PDF of this tutorial so you can save and print it and keep it close to your sewing machine (mine is in a different room from my computer.) That way you’ll always have a quick go-to project for fast gifts. By the way, the fabric used in the pictures is Oz by Sanae! We have a lot of it in our shop in various colors for many tastes. We also have a KIT available, just tell us your fabric choices (anything from our shop) and we’ll cut it and ship it to you right away!

Easy Peasy Pillowcase Tutorial

Materials Needed:

3/4 yd for case

1/4 yd for band

1/8 yd for accent band

1-1/4 yd lace (optional)

Fold the pillowcase fabric in half and straighten the edges. Remove the selvage from the edges of all the fabrics. The selvage is the tightly woven edge that is either white with the name of the fabric or may be the same color as the fabric but has very small holes along the length of it.

Step 1: Fold the fabric for the 2 bands in half lengthwise (wrong sides together) and press.

Step 2a: If you are using lace, draw a line 1/4″ away from the raw edge of the accent band (lengthwise).

Step 2b: Pin your lace directly below this line. The header of the lace should be touching the line. Sew in place.

Step 3: Line up the raw edges of the accent band (with lace) and outer band, pin, and sew the accent band to the outer band using 1/2″ seam allowance. (picture below)

Step 4: Lay pillowcase fabric out flat, right side up. Line up the raw edges of the band piece and the pillowcase body. Accent band and optional lace will be sandwiched between. Sew together with a 1/2″ seam allowance. If you have a walking foot, this is a good time to use it. Trim the seam allowance to about 1/4″ and finish the edge with a zigzag stitch over the edge of the fabric (this prevents fraying).

Step 5: Fold the entire unit in half lengthwise and pin together. Take special care to match-up the seams on the band section. Sew together using a 1/2″ seam allowance.

Step 6: Trim the seam and zigzag stitch over the raw edge. Turn right side out and push out the corners. Press.

CONGRATULATIONS!!!! You now have a pretty pillowcase for your bed!

Note: If this tutorial is unclear or you have any questions, PLEASE feel free to ask either here in the comments or by e-mail. We’d also LOVE to see if you make any of these how they turn out!

PDF Version Here

Happy Stitches!

Anna

>How Do You Feel About Advertising?

>

Starbuck, my baby, hiding among stuff in our guest room.

OK everyone, this is a feedback post, I REALLY need some feedback here. PLEASE leave me a comment with your opinion about this.

How do you feel about a blog that allows people to advertise on their site? Regina and I are considering offering this option here on the Crafty Girls Workshop blog. It wouldn’t be a high cost thing, and we’d make sure that we only allow people to advertise who sell/make items that are relevant to what our readers want and, of course, don’t compete with what we sell. That’s part of the reason I need your feedback. It might seem a little over the top to ask people to pay for us to add their button to our blog, especially since we already sell fabric and kits and patterns but I want to offer people the option. Perhaps you’re a reader of this blog and you LOVE to sew but have NO idea how to make cute jewlery, why not let us provide an image that links to a webstore of someone who sells pretty jewlery? Do you see where I’m going with this? So, hit me, tell me what you think, yeah or nay about advertising and IF you are someone who would be INTERESTED in advertising on here, please let me know as well. Of course, it would be sort of a let down if we went to all this trouble and no one wanted to advertise with us. Believe me, it’s going to be VERY inexpensive to start, probably $5 a month! Most of our advertising budget goes to purchasing ad space on various blogs and we’ve paid anywhere from $10 to $85 a month for those ads, so I believe that $5 a month is VERY reasonable. I’ll also do my best to help drive more traffic here so you get maximum exposure.

One more point: By asking for help with sponsoring our blog by purchasing some ad space, it will help us generate a little bit of money to be able to pay for ad space on other blogs. This will help us keep our prices on fabric, patterns and kits low and fair. We aren’t doing this because we’re greedy, but we do need to keep our ads on other sites running and hopefully we can do that and help promote some great crafty people in the process!

PLEASE leave me a comment with your opinion, no matter what it is. If you don’t want your opinion to be public you can send me an e-mail anna@craftygirlsworkshop.com

BONUS: I will do a DRAWING from the responses (so make sure you leave me your e-mail) to win a CHARM pack of fabric! Drawing will be on Sunday March 7th. Thanks!!

Happy Stitches to You,

Anna

>We were featured!

>I can’t believe it, but someone chose some of our fabric to show in a treasury on Etsy! That’s totally cool. Well, I can’t figure out how to get it to show up here, but you can see the treasury if you click the underlined words.

Thanks Crazy Daisy Designs!

Happy Stitches,
Anna

>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

>Cute Skirt SAMPLE Just Listed

> This cute skirt, size 3T is now available on our Etsy shop for sale! Isn’t it adorable!!? This is our shop sample for picture purposes and is the ONLY ONE! Regina used the Quilter’s Quarters skirt pattern (which we have available in sizes 1-3 yrs or 4-6 yrs) and the Meadowsweet line of fabrics. The patterns and the fabrics are listed on our webstore if you’d like to purchase the supplies to make this cute skirt for your little one. Just think how fun it would be to ring in spring with a cute twirly skirt! I just figured out how to add the option to choose a fat quarter on each fabric listed, so you can browse the fabrics and pick out the coordinates you need and then just add the FQ option to your cart. This skirt uses just 4 FQs so for about the cost of one yard of fabric, you’ll be able to make an adorable skirt! You might notice that the price of a fat quarter is a little more than just a 1/4 yard cut of fabric. There is a reason for that. First of all, it requires us to cut a 1/2 yard from the bolt and then cut that fabric in half, so we end up with a “stray” fat quarter. Also, these are not coming pre cut from the manufacturer so we’ve had to had a tiny bit in for the time it takes to cut the fabric. A typical fat quarter is 18″x22″ and you’ll probably have some pieces left over for future small projects. Maybe even enough to make coordinating hair bows or applique a top! I hope you have fun shopping and let me know what you think of this cute skirt.

Happy Stitches to You,
Anna
P.S. I got to go “shopping” in our inventory tonight to pick out some fabrics and patterns to make for shop samples too! There is some sewing in my future!

I’m linking this up at Kim’s I Made It blog party (for Regina who isn’t Tech Savvy) over at Everything Etsy.