Sweet Home Quilt Co.

Head over to Jackie’s blog…she’s having a GO Cutter giveaway and you just might win! Tell her I sent you!

Melisa

It has been a while since we’ve had a giveaway so I thought since today, April 18, is Make-A-Quilt Day we’d do some celebrating. You know you need more fabric to make a quilt, right?!?!Earlier this week while searching my office for something I’d put in a “safe place” (%#@#$!) I found a forgotten bundle of one of my favorite fabric lines from Moda EVER – Shangri-La…

…seven half-yards of Shangri-La yumminess…and I’m going to share with one of you!

I’m getting ready to go to Quilt Market in May, and I usually go with a buying plan so I don’t go overboard (yea right!). So here’s the question – What is on your wish list? What would you like me to look for while I’m at Market? Notions? Books? Patterns? Gifties? Fabric? Flannel? Brights? Moda? Blenders? Is there a new designer you’re anxious to try? Inquiring minds want to know!

Leave your comment on this post telling me your wish list, and I’ll announce a randomly drawn winner for the Shangri-La fabric bundle on April 25. International winners will be asked to pay shipping.

Melisa

on another successful shop hop weekend! The weather was terrific (except for rainy Sunday!) and we had over 1000 visitors in the shop during the weekend! That’s a LOT of shop hoppers! We were so busy I didn’t have much opportunity to take many pictures, but several customers have published their “Shop Hop Reports” on their blogs. Ride along with Karin and her mom on Day 1, and hop with Karmen here. I’m sure there are other reports out in blogland, too, but I haven’t had a chance to get caught up yet…if you find any, let me know, would you?

I did take some time Sunday afternoon when it slowed down a little to get some pictures of new samples and displays in the shop. If you didn’t make it to Shop Hop, you need to come in soon and see all the changes we’ve made…I think you’ll like it! (Click on the pictures to enlarge)

Can you believe he was still smiling after four days??? And Kris, Mellie and Cathy still had big smiles, too! Or maybe they were smiling because they knew it was almost over? Hmmmm….

Elaine doesn’t look quite so thrilled…she was stamping passports…but I think she just didn’t want her picture taken! That’s also our giveaway, a big apple-themed decorative box filled with books, patterns, kits and apple-themed fabrics. Look at all those entries stuffed in that jar! Wonder who the lucky winner will be?

New pincushion displays…looks good enough to eat!

Scenes from the Front Cutting Room

Reproduction Room

Kid’s Room

Hope you’ve enjoyed the tour. We’ve changed things around so much, we’re having to stop and think where we moved things! We’re ready for new spring shipments, and then we’ll have to rearrange again! It’s never ending, but oh so much fun!

Melisa

Whee! It has been a wild, wild afternoon here at Sweet Home! Apparently, a local business was robbed and the perpetrator (I just love using “cop speak”!) decided he’d hide out in the neighborhood behind us. We’ve had the doors at the shop locked all afternoon, and in between customers I’ve been mostly watching out the windows at the police activity in the neighborhood with an ear tuned to the sound of several helicopters hovering overhead. We even got to see the city’s newest officer, a bloodhound, in action! Unfortunately, the robber was not caught, which meant Mike wouldn’t allow me to stay at the shop by myself after we closed so I couldn’t get finished with this post. My son dropped off my granddaughter and grandson after work so I’ve been playing Go Fish (10,000 times!!!), sword fighting, and watching Prancer with them all evening. They have just gone home, so finally, a minute of peace and quiet to get this done!!!  It is still Friday, so technically, I’m not late yet!

The last Friday Favorite giveaway of the year was apparently not as popular as the other Friday Favorites – only 26 comments this time! I guess there aren’t many applique enthusiasts among my blog readers! That is good news for this week’s winner, though. The random generator thingy at random.org selected comment number 11 – Leiann (no blog)! Congratulations, Leiann, you’ll have some great designs in this book with which to practice your new applique skills.

I will begin First Friday Favorite giveaways in January so stay tuned. I hope you’ll stick around and keep up with what’s happening at Sweet Home Quilt Co. even without the weekly giveaways! I’m enjoying getting to know you all!

I guess I was right about last week’s giveaway fabric being an “unknown” to many people. It seemed just about every comment mentioned not having seen the fabric before! If you missed it, check out last week’s Friday Favorite  post here. And the lucky winner of the one yard of yumminess is Happy Cottage Quilter.  Congratulations, Jocelyn!   (If you aren’t Jocelyn and you really must have this fabric, we still have some in stock and will be happy to send it to you!)

This week’s Friday Favorite giveaway will be the last for the year. Remember that in January, we’ll move to a First Friday Favorite format – that means there will be a giveaway on New Year’s Day!

This week I picked a book for the giveaway. A Gathering of Days by Elisa Wilson of Elisa’s Backporch has both quilt and home decor projects included along with yummy recipes. And before I hear about those of you who don’t “do” applique, let me encourage you to at least try it! The projects in this book are all fusible applique, which couldn’t be easier, and a perfect way to try applique if it is new to you. And if you’re an experienced applique enthusiast, these designs are easily adapted to hand or machine applique techniques.

Here’s how the Friday Favorite giveaway works:

• Leave a comment for one entry.
• Leave a comment and post about the giveaway on your blog and receive 3 entries.
• Leave a comment and add us to your blogroll or become a follower of my blog and receive 5 entries.

Remember to leave a link to your blog and/or an email address so we can contact you if you win! I’ll announce the winner in the next Friday Favorite post!  Good luck!

I am really enjoying visiting the blogs of those of you who’ve taken time to comment. I can spend hours and hours blog hopping, and I am inspired over and over again with each blog that I visit. Thanks, also, to those who’ve become a follower of Sweet Home Quilt Co.’s blog.

I hope all of you in the U.S.  had a terrific Thanksgiving holiday yesterday! All of our kids were scattered here and yon, so it was just me and Mike enjoying a rare, quiet day at home … I didn’t go out of the house all day long! BLISS!

The winner of last week’s Friday Favorite giveaway (the five patterns from ModaU) is Brenda. Yay Brenda! Be sure to visit her blog when you get a chance.  And thanks for the empathy re: my tech support issues from last week! Luckily, the issue was corrected relatively quickly – it’s just the aggravation and inconvenience that were so annoying!

One of my most favorite Christmas fabric lines from the collections we’ve had this year is one called “Winter Welcome” by Wilmington Studios. The focus print of this line is a beautiful Victorian-esque scenic print that has proven to be perfect for large-scale patterns and even borders. This was a very small line of fabric and it probably isn’t one that a lot of people have seen, so this week’s giveaway is one yard of the Winter Welcome scenic print to add to your stash of Christmas fabric.

Here’s how the Friday Favorite giveaway works:

• Leave a comment for one entry.
• Leave a comment and post about the giveaway on your blog and receive 3 entries.
• Leave a comment and add us to your blogroll or become a follower of my blog and receive 5 entries.

Remember to leave a link to your blog and/or an email address so we can contact you if you win! I’ll announce the winner in the next Friday Favorite post!  Good luck!

This will be the last weekly Friday Favorite giveaway; instead I’m going to change it to “First Friday Favorite” and do a monthly giveaway on the first Friday of the month. I think I’ve cleaned out most of the good stuff that was hidden away in the storage room! Since next week begins a new month, there will be a “First Friday Favorite” giveaway next week so be sure to come back and check it out.

Here’s hoping you have lots of leftovers for the weekend so you don’t have to cook, and if you were out shopping in the Black Friday crowds today, I hope you found everything you were looking for!!!

I know, I know, I’m very very late posting today, but it IS still Friday so technically I’m not late! But really, it wasn’t my fault. It seems that AT&T upgraded my DSL service yesterday and managed to mangle not only my website and internet access, but my email accounts, too! I have resisted this upgrade for over a year because I knew suspected this might be the result. But they happened to call last week and got Mike on the phone with the promise of a “free” DSL upgrade and he said “sure, go for it!”  So that “free” upgrade has cost me about 10 hours worth of headache and frustration trying to get the mess straightened out. I so hate tech support issues!!! But in all fairness, I will say that the young lady at AT&T Tech Support who helped me was very courteous and patient, even in the face of my extreme frustration.  Did I mention how I hate tech support issues??? (For those who don’t know, that was my life for 20 years before I opened the quilt shop – I thought I had left all that behind!)

Anyway, I digress. What you’re really here for, I know, is to find out who won last week’s Friday Favorite giveaway, right? It was a backpack made from the Dandelion Girl collection by Fig Tree Quilts, remember? OK, OK, the winner is JoyP!  Congratulations, Joy, I’ll contact you by email.  You have to go take a look at Joy’s blog to see the pictures of the biggest cat I have ever seen! Fred is his name, I think! Amazing!

Moving on to this week’s giveaway, I’m still in cleaning mode around here and I ran across some patterns that were left over from our ModaU Club a while back.  There are only four patterns shown in the picture, but there are actually five in the giveaway. I found another one after I had already taken the picture and I was too lazy busy to go back and take another picture. The 5th pattern is also a ModaU pattern, and it is called Hearts Aflutter, designed for a panel but can be modified to use without a panel, too. You’ll just have to trust me – it is a cute pattern, too!

Oh yea, the pattern on the left is a “Swatches” pattern that actually includes a set of 2 1/2″ swatches from Moda’s Chocolat fabric collection – remember that one? Another one of my favorites from a while back …

Here’s how the Friday Favorite giveaway works:

• Leave a comment for one entry.
• Leave a comment and post about the giveaway on your blog and receive 3 entries.
• Leave a comment and add us to your blogroll or become a follower of my blog and receive 5 entries.

Remember to leave a link to your blog and/or an email address so we can contact you if you win! I’ll announce the winner in the next Friday Favorite post!  Good luck!

I hope you all have a fun weekend planned. I’m planning to go to a Holiday Celebration in a neighboring town on Sunday afternoon – can’t wait. I’ll share pictures next week.  Go quilt something …

FINALLY! I’ve made it back to blogland to post the Friday Favorite winner from last week’s giveaway, and to share a new Friday Favorite with you! What a day! Thank goodness for great employees who understand delayed payroll checks!;  happy, sharing customers who know just when to bring in a treasured show and tell to distract me; and a super-fantastic web host who jumps right in to figure out a problem even though they are on the other side of the world (the United Kingdom to be exact!)  A significant glitch with our website consumed my attention this morning, but happily the problem has been identified and even better – fixed!!!  So on to what you’re really here for – the giveaway winner.

Last week, our Friday Favorite was an oldie, but goodie that I found stashed away at the shop – a selection of Cinnamon Stars from Fig Tree Quilts for Moda.  And the winner is Anita Amodeo!  Congratulations, Anita! (Be sure to go over and visit Anita’s cute, cute blog, too!)

Since you all seemed to LOVE Fig Tree, I found another Fig Tree product that I decided to share this week. In addition to fabric collections, Moda also has a division called Moda Home, which has ready-made items that are sold not only to quilt shops but also to gift shops and boutiques. Some items feature Moda’s fabric collections and others are more theme-based. We do special orders from Moda Home for our customers, but I don’t generally stock Moda Home items in the shop. I did find, however, a special order piece that the customer never picked up so it is time for it to have a new home.

The Friday Favorite this week is a Moda Home backpack made from the wovens in Fig Tree Quilts’ Dandelion Girl fabric collection.  (This one is in soft yellows, sage green and apricot colors whereas the one shown in the picture features the aqua colorway.)  A perfect everyday tote for yourself, or that favorite pre-teen or teen girl in your life!

If you’ve been following my Friday Favorite posts then you know the drill, but just in case you’re new here, the giveway works like this:

• Leave a comment for one entry.
• Leave a comment and post about our giveaway on your blog and receive 3 entries.
• Leave a comment and add us to your blogroll (or tell me we’re already on your blogroll) and receive 5 entries.

Remember to leave a link to your blog and/or an email address so we can contact you if you win! I’ll announce the winner in the next Friday Favorite post!  Good luck!

Have a quilty weekend!

Actually, I know several but for today I’m focusing on just this one! My friend and fellow quilter-in-crime (remember our Excellent Adventures???), Pat, has a block design featured in the collector’s edition of Quiltmaker’s 100 Blocks From Today’s Top Designers!  Woooo-Hoooo! I always knew I’d be able to say “I knew her when…”

You will want to head over to Pat’s blog RIGHT NOW because today she is featured on the Quiltmaker blog hop, and she has a cute little table runner tutorial and a fantastic giveaway in the works.

Are you still here? Click on over there and tell Pat I said “HI!”  Don’t forget to come back here a little later, though, because it’s Friday, which means I’ll be drawing the winner of last week’s Friday Favorite giveaway AND sharing a new Friday Favorite, too.  (Sorry, I gotta do my payroll first – my employees seem to think they should be paid for all the fun they have around here!)

See you back here in a bit …

Sorry I’m late posting today – I thought it was Thursday until I looked at my calendar to see what was on the schedule for today and realized it was already Friday! I lost a whole day somewhere this week! And on top of that, I had a class to teach this morning! I had to do some scrambling to catch up, let me tell you!

At any rate, thanks for ALL the comments to last week’s Friday Favorite giveaway; seems everyone wanted that Shangri La fabric and the winner is Pokey! Congratulations, Pokey, and thanks so much to everyone who commented for a chance to win!

Ready for another Friday Favorite giveaway? Remember I said I’d been finding all sorts of forgotten goodies tucked away at the shop? Well, here’s another “oldie but goodie” that needs a new home!

This is Cinnamon Stars by Fig Tree Quilts for Moda, and it is probably 3 or 4 years old! Once again, I’m sure we cut this for a project of some sort (loooong forgotten now!) but surely it will spark someone’s imagination! If I didn’t already have so many projects in the queue I’d keep this one for myself. The giveaway includes 65 – 5×5 inch charms, plus 3/8 yard of the gold and 1 3/8 of the large brown floral. If you missed adding Cinnamon Stars to your stash the first time around, now is your chance! Aren’t you glad I’ve been in a “cleaning mood?!?!?”

Here’s how the giveaway works – help us spread the word and get more chances to win!

• Leave a comment for one entry.
• Leave a comment and post about our giveaway on your blog and receive 3 entries.
• Leave a comment and add us to your blogroll (or tell me we’re already on your blogroll) and receive 5 entries.

Remember to leave a link to your blog and/or an email address so we can contact you if you win! I’ll announce the winner in the next Friday Favorite post!  Good luck!