Blueberry Buckle

Happy New Quilting Year!

I'm so thankful to leave behind the craziness of the past two years, and look forward to what God has in store for 2012. Our insane, delayed and complicated move (from our house in one state, our rental in another, and all our "stuff" in a storage unit, haha) is over and Eric and I are under one roof. We're making our new house into a home we hope to enjoy for years to come. Josh and Drew (now ages 15 and 16) have settled in and Julia is home from college, preparing for her wedding in April. The older kids are settled into their lives, and we look forward to many visits.

The studio is still a work in progress (a victim of the move), but every day brings it a step closer to completion. I find myself wanting to return to creating the things I love most, and I'm content to begin the new year with a hand-applique project.

Orange Peel Quilt from Remembering Adelia by Kathleen Tracy. Freezer paper applique (a la Alex Anderson) using my favorite straw needles and YLI silk thread. The straw needles are amazingly thin and the perfect length for stitching. Three neutral colors of the thread are all you need to blend with any colors of fabric you may be stitching. There are 64 blocks in this quilt, and I'm s-l-o-w at applique, but it's a great, relaxing, television project. I'm enjoying every stitch of this sweet little quilt.

Happy New Year, everyone!

Progress

We were away for Memorial Day weekend, first spending a day in western Maryland where we are getting our old house ready to sell, then traveling with the teens to the Delaware shore for a couple of days' visit to my son Wills. We had a great time playing mini golf, walking to the beach, watching Wills run a 5K, and eating fish and chips here. Really, if you ever get to the Delaware beaches, you've got to eat at Go FIsh. (And if you don't like fish, try the shepherd's pie. My stepson Josh said the it's the best he's tasted. He knows his shepherd's pie.)

I don't want to lose my quilting momentum, so as soon as I shipped out all the weekend fabric orders from the shop and the other shop, I got right back to the postage stamp quilt.

Thank you for the encouragement for this particular quilt design. It's very popular! Tiffany brought up a good point in her comment about strip piecing. While I'm not able to strip piece due to, well, lack of strips, I have been able to chain piece just as she suggested. I stitched each print square to a white square. I decided to work the quilt in four sections, so I started with one-fourth of the print squares. I chain pieced them by running them through the sewing machine one after another

and then I clipped them apart. Chain piecing saves a lot of time and thread!

I pressed the seam of each pair toward the print fabric and laid them out on the dining table to ensure even distribution of each of the prints. I call this technique "planned random".

I then stacked up each "column" of pairs, placed the stacks, in order, onto the lid of a plastic container, and took it over to the sewing table. In the morning, I'll chain piece the rows together. I love progress.

Speaking of progress, we stopped by the new house this morning and it has siding! They also poured concrete for the front stoop and walkway. We're really getting excited about our home!

Progress is good.

Hello, Quilting Mojo. Welcome back!

I love the postage stamp quilts that I've been seeing on flickr and around the web. They are just so simple and pretty. I'm especially fond of the quilts that alternate white squares with the printed fabrics, and this quilt by oh fransson really inspired me.

I had these in the stash:

Black and white charm packs. (Photo taken last night in poor lighting.)

I promptly cut them into fourths, and attacked 4 yards of White Kona Cotton with the rotary cutter as well.

This is probably the hard way to make a postage stamp quilt, starting with all these little squares and not strip piecing, but you have to work with what you've got, right?

Oh! I thought I'd show you how far our house has come along since the hole was dug for the foundation. This was taken not too long ago.

I can't wait to move. Living in a temporary space has been very unsettling. Last week I wanted to bake a cake and, well, the tube pan was at our house, two hours away. Things like that happen with the sewing and knitting, too, so I'll be very happy when everything is conveniently located under one roof!

Hole in the Ground

Eric's job is transfering him to Dover AFB in Delaware, so we decided to have a new home built by our favorite builder, RC Peoples. We are truly impressed by the quality of their work, and I had a great experience with them when they built my house in Bear, Delaware back in 2004.

Last Friday they started digging, and on Monday morning, it looked like this:

 
Over on the right? In the hole in the ground? That's the new studio. I'll have a nice floor put in.

I spent much of the day today cleaning up some details for the new shop, like making a new set of those little labels with all the color names and the name of the new website. That took hours and hours. Whew! Let me tell you, based in that chore alone, SimplySolidFabric.com is permanent and forever. I'm also trying to figure out how to set up shipping for those Kona Cotton fat quarter bundles so I can get them listed. Yep, still working my way up the learning curve of the new website.

I'm also working on a little project that involves linen, pretty cotton prints, and this tutorial. I'll show you tomorrow!

Home

Sitting down to write a blog post about a sewing project, because I thought it would be nice to have some sewing-related content for a change, I logged in to typepad and saw that I hadn't blogged since last week. Oops.

After my last post, I successfully retrieved my youngest son, Drew, from the airport. He returned last Friday morning, in the wee hours, from a trip to Asia with his grandmother. It was a pretty good deal: three weeks excused from school (he does have to pass his exams and write a paper), a few days in China, a stop in Russia, a cruise ship to Japan, and then visits to several cities in Japan and an extended stay there.

His plane landed in Baltimore just a couple of hours before the earthquake.

Our television has been mostly tuned to CNN since we woke up after a short sleep on Friday morning. My husband's family members in the Tokyo area are all accounted for and well. Inconvenienced to be sure, but unharmed.

We're praying for everyone in Japan: the family members of those who have perished; the survivors who are suffering hardships of makeshift shelters, food shortages and cold; the rescue personnel, emergency relief organizations and government officials who have a huge task ahead; and the power plant engineers and workers who need time and resources to prevent further tragedy. Our hearts go out to those whose lives are changed forever, and especially to those who have lost their families and communities.

Fixed

My Etsy shops are back up and operational. Woohoo! This weekend I'll go through them to figure out what's what with expired listings, etc. I'm continuing to move forward with the new .com shop, though, (listing a lot of new fabric) because my eggs will no longer be in one basket. Way too risky.

I am not able to comment on my communication with Etsy. While they are very business-like and procedural and did eventually fix my shops, I just wish it felt like they cared a little more about their clients. They need someone there, maybe a Director of Warm Fuzzies, someone who is expert at calming panicked sellers who feel as though the sky has fallen. That would have helped.

When the dust has settled, I will be so happy to have time to get back to quilting!

In the meantime, this boy is on his way home from touring Asia:

 
Apparently he gave guided tours in China. Love that!

One of my older sons is coming over for supper before we head to the airport to greet Drew's plane at midnight. I hope I can stay awake that late!

Kona Cotton Color Card Give-Away

Yep! I'm giving away a color card over on the Simply Solid Fabric Facebook page. All you have to do is Like the page. If you've already done so (thank you!), you're already entered.

 
So, how can I sweeten the deal.....?

I'll give away TWO Kona Cotton Color Cards if there are more than 500 people (total) who like the Simply Solid Fabric facebook page by the end of the giveaway.

So please tell your friends and send them over to facebook!

The giveaway ends on Saturday, March 12 at 10pm my time. (I would have made it midnight, but I know I'll fall asleep, so we're just being realistic here.)

Hello, SimplySolidFabric.com

 
I'm taking a quick break from data entry to tell you the exciting news: My new website is up and everything works! Hooray! After hours of learning a new software and tweaking the settings so everything is just perfect, the shopping cart works, the shipping calculations work (to the penny), and, well, it all seems to be in good shape. Whew!

The Best Part Is...

...that I've added a few features that I love, love, love:

Each listing shows you how much stock I have on hand so you can immediately put the yardage you want into your shopping cart. Woohoo! This is a huge advantage over the Etsy shop, where we had to message back and forth so I could set up custom listings for everything over 1 yard. No more waiting for that custom listing! Do you love that, or what?!

Each listing allows you to buy yardage as well as fat quarters of that particular color. So you can easily fill your shopping cart with exactly what you need!

There's a Wishlist where you can add items so you'll remember your favorites and things you'd like to purchase in the future. You can also share your wishlist with others who'd like to shop for you.

I'm still listing fabric, and hopefully, by tonight, it will all be there. It just takes time to set up each one, and as long as I don't run out of steam (or caffeine!), I'll keep plugging away at it until everything is there. If you need fabric, though, please don't hesitate to contact me with your request and I'll get your fabric listed right away.

I'm so encouraged by the feedback I've received already from you here and on my facebook page. If you're on facebook, I'd love to see you there! My page is SimplySolidFabric.

Poof!

I know many of you are following my Etsy saga and I so appreciate your kind words and support, including those who have attempted to contact Etsy on my behalf. Thank you!

So, on Wednesday afternoon, without warning, my Etsy shop, SimplySolidFabric was deactivated. I emailed Etsy support and received the standard auto-reply. In my panic, I also google searched for a telephone number and found one number for the whole of Etsy and, of course, it only goes to voicemail, so I left a message.

I was unable to even log in to Etsy, so I couldn't ask for help on any forums.

On Thursday morning I hadn't heard back, so I emailed them again and called and left another message. I was literally in tears by the time I hung up because this is devastating.

On Thursday afternoon I hadn't heard anything by either email or telephone, so I created a new Etsy ID, using my real name, and logged in so I could try the Live Chat. I was able to talk to someone who said that I needed to contact Etsy via email and promptly deleted my new ID. Apparently I crossed the line in making a new ID in order to chat with a real person.

As of this time, Friday night, I haven't received any response from Etsy. It's been over 48 hours and, quite frankly, this is ridiculous.

I love Etsy and I've had great success there, but there is an obvious problem in the system when a corporation with over $50 million per year in revenue doesn't offer tech support, or at least enough that they can get to everyone in a timely manner. It seems like they need more help.

In case anyone from the Etsy forums is reading:

1. No, I didn't call anyone out on the forums. I've never posted on an Etsy forum that I can remember.
2. I didn't have an undisclosed second shop. I had a second shop that I wasn't using and both shops were mutually disclosed. And yes, they're both gone now.
3. I don't sell off Etsy (yet) so I didn't redirect to another site. I will have a new website, simplysolidfabric.com in a couple of days because I sort of have a lot of fabric here and I'd like to be able to pay rent again this month.
4. I checked my spam folder and all my emails are forwarded to the same gmail account, so I haven't missed any emails.

So, I'm still in a bit of a panic because I am/was a full-time Etsy seller and the loss of my shop is like getting fired without notice and, well, I have bills to pay like everyone else. It's also quite devastating because my shops were my babies that I put my heart and soul into. I'm also quite upset that I've left customers hanging. I had made custom listings for people that they were never able to buy, and I hadn't yet answered several convos. That makes me sad.

Well, I put all my eggs in one basket and did that end well?

So, while I wait for Etsy to respond, and I am very hopeful they will, because I have always loved Etsy, I am setting up simplysolidfabric.com. It's a huge undertaking, and I've I'm hoping that I'll at least have Kona Cottons listed by sometime tomorrow.

Some really cool things about the new website:

• A new logo and tagline.           
• Same fast service, same me packing and filling orders and answering your questions.
• Each item will list the quantity available (yippee!) so you can order the exact yardage you need without waiting for me to answer a convo. =)
• New products that just came in today and more new fabrics that are due to arrive next week. These are SO pretty:

                   

          

Just wait 'til you see all the new Quilter's Linen colors and Essex Linens. I have my eye on some Essex Linens to make some skirts for spring.

It's getting late here and I need to submit this post because something strange is occurring. I'm sitting in our recliner with my laptop, and every time my husband tickles my toe, I lose internet. Weird.

Yes, Simply Solid Fabric is here!

I'm in a panic, but you need not worry about your orders, convos, etc. because I'm here, alive and well and in business.

About an hour ago, my shop disappeared completely from Etsy. So, until Etsy tech support gets that sorted out, you can contact me here (via comments) or on my facebook page. Please let me know if you need anything and I'm happy to help!

And pray that Etsy gets back to me soon. Ugh!