Well, I didn’t get a blog post up last night because I was just so completely worn out. So I’ll try to recap things for you today! For the most part, I’ll be showing you things we’ve already decided we’re going to be running as new block of the months in the shop. We are by NO MEANS through, since we haven’t hit all the aisles yet (and I haven’t even had a chance to walk the floor at all since I’ve been working our booth), so there will most likely be more to come. The first offering we have to show you is Freedom Rings by Red Crinoline (fka Bonnie Blue). This will be a 13 month program that will begin in, I believe, September or October. As soon as all the details are worked out, I’ll have it up in our webstore, and you’ll be able to sign up.

For those of you who are William Morris fans, we have Dear William, designed by Michele Hill. This one won’t be starting until December (and I’ll definitely have a better picture of it for you long before then). It’s quite a bit more intricate than Arts & Crafts sampler was, and believe me, it’s a beautiful piece of art!

I know that many of you will be thrilled to hear that Blackbird Designs has a new quilt out that we’re going to be doing as a block of the month! We purchased and held on to Blackbird’s entire Meadow line earlier in the year, so we have the perfect fabric for the program. The book won’t be available for another couple of weeks, but we will be starting this one in July. We already know it will be $24.95 per month for 13 months. This price will not include your book, so you will need to purchase that separately. We’ll have limited quantities of this one, since it will only last as long as the Meadow line we already have tucked away. If you’d like to have your name put on the pre-order list, you can email the shop or you can wait until it goes up on the webstore some time in the next couple of weeks.

The last one I have to show you today is called Secret Garden. This quilt is designed by Verna Mosquera. You can click on the image to see it bigger, although the glare from the lights sort of hides some of the blocks. It really is a beautiful quilt, though, and I’ll definitely have a better picture for you once we put it up on the webstore. The bunnies are so cute!

I’m sure I’ll have more things to show you this evening, and hopefully I won’t be as wiped out as I was last night. If I am, though, I’ll do my best to get a post up tomorrow morning before we get started with the day, like I did today. Have a wonderful Saturday!

Day Two of Spring Market arrived and today was the day for School House! Let me explain a little what School House is. From 10 am to 6 pm there are sessions, each lasting anywhere from 15 to 30 minutes. Each session has approximately 20 different classes ranging from new fabric lines to new notions to new ways to promote or display things in your shop. You get a little booklet first thing in the morning with a list of all the available classes, descriptions of the classes, names of the presenters, and which session they’re available, and you pick and choose which classes your going to attend.

Then you run from class to class, learning what you can and usually enjoying what you learn. It’s sort of like high school only without the snobby mean girls making fun of you for wearing jeans and t-shirts to school every day instead of dressing up in the latest fashions.

…Or maybe that was just me.

This year, as we did with Patriots in Petticoats, we were presenting a School House on our new Block of the Month, Women of Courage. We were really pleased with how the presentation went, and the ladies that attended (around sixty of them!) also seemed to enjoy it. They took lots of pictures and asked some very good questions. Peggy, Candy and Dana handed out the charm packs, postcards and flower seeds that were gifts for all who attended the School House, and we had a drawing for 3 fat quarter bundles of the new Women of Courage fabric line. 

Once our presentation was over, we had to take all of the quilts and projects back upstairs to our booth and finish getting everything set up. We’ve got They Also Served, Generals’ Ladies, Gingerbread City and Summer Song up on the walls, and all four of the bonus quilts from the Women of Courage block of the month hung as well. We also brought a few of the quilts for our other original patterns with us as well, such as From Past to Present and Miss Scarlett. They’re not hanging, but they’re available to be shown if someone is interested in seeing them, since we have the patterns here to order as well.

We moved a few things around and changed our minds about placements a couple of times, but in the end, we were really pleased with how our booth turned out. It was more work than we expected, but we had so much fun with with it.

See? Even the President of Windham Fabrics thinks our booth looks fantastic!

Once we were done setting up, it was back to the hotel. My mom and I had to make a stop at a store, due to some unexpected occurrences, and in the process we found the Best Grocery Store Ever. Seriously, this place is amazing! It’s a grocery store, a wine store, a deli, a salad bar, a buffet diner, a health food store, and more! I was thrilled, and that ended up being where we all returned for dinner. Man, it was so nice to eat healthy instead of the junk we were subsisting on at the convention center.

And now Dana, Susan, Peggy and Candy are off to Sample Spree to see what kind of other goodies they can find. Mom and I don’t do Sample Spree. She doesn’t do it because if there’s something she really likes, she just buys it for the store and then she can get whatever she wants. I don’t do it because I have issues with crowds and man alive, you don’t get much more crowded than Sample Spree. It’s like…well, have you ever seen the bulls running in Spain? Yeah, it’s a lot like that. The guy running in front with the face full of terror? That’s me.

Once they get back and we’ve had a chance to look at what they found, we’ll be off to bed again. Tomorrow is the first day of actual Spring Market, so it’s going to be a really busy day. Or, at least, we certainly hope it will!