Three Sisters Blog

Good morning! I sent this picture over to Accomplish Quilting this week because they are updating their sales rep information. It’s not the greatest picture because we don’t seem to have photography talent in the lighting department! But that’s OK, I guess. I figured you may still want to see a picture of me at my machine.

I really do enjoy longarm quilting! I took a quilt from a wonderful customer yesterday. I always feel honored when someone trusts me with their quilt. It is a scary thing to hand your top over to someone who has the potential, with a high-speed commercial machine, to RUIN your quilt in minutes! This dear lady, Carol Honderich, is a special part of the history of Three Sisters Fabric. She is a very talented designer of quilts. She and her friends found us while they were vacationing in Onekama, MI before our Michigan quilt shop was open to the public. They begged to come in anyway, and were so encouraging when we felt so small and unworthy. Eventually, our business grew and we enjoyed their annual visits to our store. As change sometimes happens, we needed to sell our store in Michigan and moved – of all places – to the very area these ladies are from! We were so thrilled to know we’d be moving near quilting friends.

Now, here we are in New Paris, Indiana and we are enjoying the privilege of building new relationships and also continuing to develop old ones from the past. Can you see why this quilt is so special to me? Why I feel like it is such an honor to work on?

Check back soon for pictures of the finished quilt…. Smiles, Allison

Great news! We’ve expanded!!! After our move we decided to make a temporary decision to only carry fabric designed by 3 Sisters for Moda. It was a tough decision because we love fabric and we love variety, but it was necessary because of the recent upheaval.

Thankfully, we are finally starting to expand our offerings! We’ve already started adding gifts, notions, and patterns. But now we have the joy of adding more fabric!

The Whimsy logo

I introduce to you – Whimsy by Fig Tree Quilts for Moda!!! It is a delightful collection reminiscent of childhood days and good old antiquity. The colors are the typical softened shades characteristic of Fig Tree Quilts, but yet have a clarity to them. I hope you enjoy them as much as we do.

A delightful Jelly Roll to please your creative side

Watch for the new patterns and kits to be added soon that use this wonderful collection of cotton quilting fabric!

We are wiped out, but it feels sooo good! Thanks to a lot of help from our good friend, Ruth, we’re done with the first stage of the demolition project.

First we had to clean out all the stuff that was in the building from our move. That wasn’t too hard. We loaded the back of our Malibu Maxx (It’s a hatchback.) full of stuff and then drove it over to our garage where we picked a nice, empty corner and stacked it all there neatly. Of course, it took a few trips, but it got done rather fast.

Tammy – AKA Drillcilla

Then we dove into the unknown. Could we do it? It looked almost like fun, but would we girls be able to tear into all these shelves and oddly constructed cabinets and tear them down and burn them? Well, we did! We renamed ourselves Drillcilla, Pryanna, and Sludge after our tools of preference. It was rather funny to see how each of us were more comfortable with certain tools and were less adept with others.

Tammy and Ruth – with their less preferred tools

It took us two full days, but we are done. And it feels so good! Now, the walls have to be torn out and we are going to let the guys from church do that for us…. We’re worn out! When they’re done we are going to wire and insulate. We’ve insulated before and think it’s rather fun. Michael (my brother-in-law) said he’d teach us how to wire. I imagine that will be rather fun too. I’m looking forward to learning it.

We are very anxious to move in…. I suppose I need to remember that nothing gets done over night and prepare myself for a new lesson in patience! But really – I’m very, very happy to be making progress on our new longarm quilting studio!

Smiles,
Allison

Good news! We’ve begun the remodel process and will (hopefully) be in a new studio soon. Of course, we’re just in the very early stages. We’ve done a walk through with our contractor (who happens to be my brother-in-law) and now Tammy and I will start the clean up in preparation for him to begin the “tear apart”.  Yes… Most of the inside needs to be torn down and put back properly.

Here are some pictures of the building as it is now.  It was used by the former owner as a woodworking shop.  That has been cleared out and we’ve been using it for storage lately.  We are looking forward to the finished project, landscaping included!

Is “quilty” a word? I guess it is around here!

We are expanding our website this year.  Since our move, we have only been carrying the bare necessities.  (Of course that mainly included fabric by 3 Sisters for Moda!)  We are really excited about the newest additions that are arriving.  We’ll be adding some more designers to our collection of fabrics, new patterns, books, notions, and digital quilting patterns for the Statler Stitcher and Intelliquilter.

Today I thought I’d show you our new gift items for quilters.  We got in some great new stationery!  I’m not much of a writer, but I do like pretty stationery.  I guess I know I should write, and I really do love my friends, and having stationery at least makes me feel closer to my goal – a letter in the mail box. 

I guess I’ll start with the easiest kind of notes.  Small, yet big enough embossed note sheets.  These are my favorite.  It is very easy for me to keep these on my desk and quickly jot a note to a friend or a customer without feeling overwhelmed.  It helps me keep it short and sweet, and yet it gets DONE!  I love the scalloped edge of these sheets and the pretty lavender color is delicate without being too immature.  And of course, the embossed quilt blocks at the top brought the first smile to my face when I saw these.  They are really cute!

Then there are the note cards.  I love note cards.  They give you room to write a decent note and let someone know you’re thinking about them, but they don’t give you enough room to write a journal that will never make it to the mail box.  (I’m very familiar with the un-mailed “journal”.)  These cards come with  matching envelopes and a cute carrying pouch that fastens with Velcro.  How nice!

Check out the other design we have too!

Hope you like them as much as we do!

Smiles,

Allison

Well!  Here I am starting this blog….  again!  I started this blog about two years ago, only to find myself neglecting it continually.  The few, ancient posts had so much time between them that it was almost pointless to try and revive the thing.  Instead I am starting fresh!  Hopefully, I will faithfully keep all of our family, friends, and customers up to date on our lives.

Family.  Friends.  Customers.  I will obviously be covering a wide variety of topics if I am to keep all of you interested!   Please disregard anything you find dull, boring, and uninteresting.  Hopefully, I will eventually get to a topic that will interest YOU!

Smiles to all!  ~Allison