Quilt Market – Sample Spree!

Whew!  What a day.

Flight #1 left Sacramento at 6:20 a.m. and arrived in Chicago around noonish.  We had a layover for about an hour and then continued on to Pittsburgh.

Our living arrangements are at the beautiful Marriott SpringHill Suites right across the street from PNC Park.  Here are some pictures from our window.

As soon as we checked in we literally dropped off our luggage and headed straight for the convention center.  Tonight was that all-important crazy event known as “Sample Spree.”  In a nutshell, it’s an opportunity for us to purchase selected product before it’s released for sale to the general public.  The doors open at 8 p.m., but the professional spree’rs (is that a word?) start lining up well before six.  When we got there it looked like this:

Oh, but that’s not even the half of it.  The gentleman to the left is the back of the line.  It goes all the way up and then makes a left turn with twice as many people more.

After about 30minutes, the line behind us looked like this:

Yea!  It’s 8:00 p.m. – doors open – everyone RUNS!

First stop?  Moda, of course!

It is so thick you can’t even see the product!  Quite literally I put my arm through about 3 bodies and just grabbed what I hoped would be a wonderful find.  After all, it’s Moda!  How wrong can you go?  There was only thing I was missing and I couldn’t find it.  Oh, I’m sure it was there, buried under 100s of people.  I just wasn’t close enough.  Fortunately I knew someone on the “inside.”  All I had to do was point to him and draw the shape of a bundle with my hands, and voila!  This came sailing over all those heads right at me!  Thanks Eric :)

MILL HOUSE INN by Fig Tree

Of course, that’s not the only thing we bought.  We also have all of these:

Jelly Cakes from Mill House Inn (you can NEVER have too much Fig Tree), Aster Manor by 3 Sisters, and Rouenneries by French General.
Bundle of Close to my Heart from Laundry Basket (GORGEOUS!)
and the Little Brown boxes are Moda’s new Sweet Box featuring “Petit Fours” (320 tasty 2-1/2” squares) from two assorted new collections.  The Sweet Box will also have a pattern for a Prairie Flower Pincushion.

There’s much more to Sample Spree.  We “pushed” our way down the aisles to see all the other offerings.  Lots of wonderful new patterns, more fabric, thread, kits and samples.

Time to head back to the hotel.  We went for a walk to see what was around us.  Here’s a few pics of downtown Pittsburg.

 

Well, we’re off to rest and refresh before tomorrow.  We’ll be meeting with Moda tomorrow and you can bet that the fabrics above are high on our list.  We’ll also be seeing Westminster and Marcus, Andover, Benartex & P&B.

We should have our giveaway details all ready for tomorrow night.  So check back in to see what fun things we have planned.

Moda Bella Solids

Well, it’s about time!  I don’t know what has taken us so long – perhaps it’s all the beautiful fabrics from Moda, or the fun designs from Clothworks, those adorable baby prints from Wilmington, stunning batiks from Island Batiks, I just don’t know.  Every month I tell myself, “Self, don’t forget to order some Bella Solids and start building a good solid fabric library.”  Hallelujah!  We finally did it.  I wish I could tell you we’ve stocked ALL 109 of them (and I’m sure more will be coming), but I can’t.  We have, however, started with some basics, through in a few Christmas colors and, of course, we had to have the Fig Tree coordinates to go with all of her fabrics that we love so much.  So here’s a peek at what’s available today.  I promise, promise, pinky swear that when I stop at the Moda booth at Quilt Market on Friday, I’ll order a dozen or so more.  Let us know what your favorite solid colors are and we’ll see what we can do :)

CAUTION:  Several of these solids are white in nature, so it may not “look” like there’s a color there.  Trust me, there is! If you roll your mouse over the color, you’ll see the name of it.

Spring Magic Lurex Wovens

We have just received nine bolts of the most gorgeous wovens I’ve ever seen.  They are from the Spring Magic collection by April Cornell for Moda.  In lush bubblegum colors of Pink, Aqua, Yellow, Lime, a dash of Melon and White, these fabrics are accented with the shimmer of silver metallic thread (lurex).  What a perfect enhancement to any quilt, sewing or crafting project, both spring and summer.

 Spring Magic Fat Quarter Bundle

Moda’s NEW FabricMatcher Contest – May 2009

WE HAVE TWO WINNERS!

Again, thank you to everyone for sending in your projects.  I’m pretty sure we posted each one that was submitted.  If you don’t see yours, please resend it.  It was not our intention to leave anyone out!  And on that note, our email box is always open and ready to receive news of a completed project.  Please, please, please … share with us, and we in turn will share them here on the blog.  Everyone has loved seeing these pictures, so keep them coming!

Without further ado ….

Congratulations to our winners

Betty D. from Talladega, AL
and
Pamela L. from Canton, MI

They have each one their choice of a turnover or honeybun from either the Crazy 8 or Frosted Memories collection.

We’re back up and running

We missed you all so much yesterday.  But I’m happy to say all the bugs have been exterminated and everything is back to normal.

Just a reminder that there’s only two days left of our Moda Madness sale.  You don’t want to miss out!

25% OFF ALL MODA
(Christmas Excluded)

 

Gotta love computer technology!

Good afternoon dear friends -

It’s noon on Tuesday here at The Quilt Shoppe and things have been eerily quiet all day!  About an hour and a half ago we found out that the server that hosts our website is down.  Yuck!

We should be back up and running later this afternoon.  In the meantime, if you’re dashing and hopping and looking for those links, I’ve posted them here for your convenience. 

Thank you all for your patience.