Christa’s Soapbox – Celebrate Your Fabric Independence!

June 30, 2012March 19, 2013Leave a comment

With the 4th of July holiday coming up next week, it reminds me of all the things I have to be thankful for – like freedom and independence, and entrepreneurial spirit!

I’ve always had a dream to own my own business ever since I was little. When I was just a little kid, I earned money selling home-made suckers from my front yard, renting out video game time on our neighborhood’s first electronic game console, and going door to door selling carwashes that I provided myself! I’ve always had the belief that if you work hard enough, anything is possible!

About a week after I learned to quilt (almost 20 years ago) I was hooked and immediately thought of ways to support my habit and start making money from my craft. I sold quilts, taught quilting classes, and for the last 6 years Jason and I have been selling fabric full-time.

It’s been rewarding, exciting, time-consuming, frustrating, heart-wrenching, and thoroughly exhilarating. We are not getting rich by any means, but it sure feels great to get up each day and love what we do.

In the spirit of independence, I’d like to introduce Fabric Shoppers Unite, a worldwide network of independent quilt and fabric shops, e-tailers, and design studios who have joined forces to promote shopping independents.

According to their statistic, 95% of fabric purchases are made through chain stores, and they are trying to change that, encouraging people to shop “local” whether that’s around the corner, or across the world!

By shopping independent shops, you support that movement and join with consumers just like yourself to ensure that you will have access to the best specialized quilting and sewing supplies, no matter where you live.

Here are three top reasons as to why you should support independent and local business:

1. Excellent Service
At independents, you can expect caring attention to your needs.

2. Superior Knowledge
Independent shops are staffed with enthusiastic quilters and sewists, and have
unsurpassed knowledge that they pass on to you.

3. Count on Quality
Fabrics, notions and tools available at independents are of the
best quality.

This Independence Day, make a concerted effort to shop independents!

Soapbox – Quilt Your Own Quilts

June 16, 2012April 4, 20132 Comments

I’m starting off on my soap box this week with a plea – try machine quilting your own quilts.

Now, before I have any long-armers getting upset with me, I do understand that there is a time and a place for beautiful long-arm quilting and quilting for hire. However, when I used to teach beginning quiltmaking classes years ago, I always encouraged my students to make at least one quilt from start to finish, so that they would know what the process entailed.

And you know what? Just about all of them went on to make many more beautiful quilts with the confidence that they could indeed, quilt their own quilts.

Do you need to have a fancy machine to be able to quilt your own quilts? No! You can even do decorative machine quilting with a walking foot. My friend Tamara came over so I could teach her how to machine quilt her lovely green rail fence that she pieced. We basted it together several months ago – you can read about that here.

This is Tamara’s first quilt so I started her off with an easy wavy stitch using the machine’s walking foot. It’s called a serpentine stitch and rather than quilting in the ditch, the stitch wiggles back and forth creating a really cool texture without the need for perfection. You can see her practice piece below and then how it looks on her actual quilt.

She’s going to fill in all the seam lines with this wavy serpentine quilting and it’s going to create a wonderful texture on the front and the back.

Click the pictures for larger images.

So I implore you – try to machine quilt at least one complete quilt before you give up and begin to “quilt by check”. Take as many machine quilting classes as you can to learn this fun technique. Read as many books, watch as many demo videos, and scan as many blogs about free-motion quilting as you can. I promise, once you get the hang of it, you’ll be hooked!

Christa’s Soapbox

June 9, 20122 Comments

I’ve come up with a new idea for my blog – I want to try and blog nearly every day and would like to start rotating through different topics on a weekly basis, with each day dedicated to a specific topic. One idea that’s been stewing for awhile is they idea of a soapbox- my fabric soapbox where I can discuss ideas that I’m interested in, and generate some conversation about whatever the topic of discussion is.

Sometimes the topics may be a little controversial, but they’ll be mostly quilt-related (quilting controversy-what’s that??). We quilters and sewing enthusiasts can be quite opinionated when it comes to our craft so I welcome discussion, debate and ideas.

I think I’ll start posting my soapbox once a week on Saturdays. I’m mostly done with my work for the week by then so that gives me a little time more time to write. I’ve already got lots of great ideas for discussion that I’ll start with next week; for example, my opinions on quilting your own quilts, whether or not to pre-wash fabrics, what makes the best quilting thread, why “premium” quilting fabric is so expensive compared to Wal-Mart, etc., etc!

If you have an idea you’d like to chat about, please post a comment. I’d be glad to discuss it!