Three Sisters Blog

Hope everyone had a great holiday with family and friends! My grandfather and aunt came to spend the holiday weekend with us. It’s great to have them here. We haven’t had a Thanksgiving together in YEARS, so this is a treat.

Thought I’d let you know that we are running a first-ever sale on our website. From Black Friday (Nov. 26th) through Cyber Monday (Nov. 29th) all digital quilting patterns, backing fabrics, quilting books and patterns will be 20% off on our website. No discount code needed…. The sale will automatically start running Friday through Monday.

Just wanted each of you to know we’re thankful for you and your business!

Happy quilting,
Allison, Tammy & Jacquie
www.ThreeSistersFabric.com

It’s here! Lily & Will by Bunny Hill Designs for Moda has finally arrived. It’s a wonderful collection of baby fabrics that are sweet and elegant at the same time. The collection includes pinks, blues, greens and (of course) the ever-wonderful brown. Take a look at the fabric and see what you think!

Anyone who knows me knows that I am quite the java fan. I love a cup of good, strong coffee…. A lot. I enjoy lattes, frappes, and really enjoy the chocolate covered coffee beans I can get at my dad’s bulk food store. In short…. I really like coffee. (Have I said that before?!)

That explains some of my excitement about this new pantograph – Cup Of Joe E2E. It’s just my style… And totally reflects a Cup Of Joe – coffee shop style. It’s not “clip-arty”, but classy just like a great cup of coffee at your local coffee shop. And the stitch out is great…. Quick and smooth.

(And the beans?! Aren’t they great? Love ‘em!)

I know this is not a photography blog….  But I couldn’t help but post these pictures.  Tammy and I went to DeFries Gardens with Michael, Jacquie and Caroline to get their family pictures.  I thought you might like to see them. Our little niece is growing up and we are enjoying her so much.

We finally buckled down and tackled our first whole cloth quilt.  The patterns are all ones that I digitized except the smaller inside border that is by Tammy Finkler.  The fabric was picked out by our customer and was a little scary to work with.  It was a polyester of some sort and had a shine to it.  We were a little worried that the synthetic fiber would become very stiff and unyielding, but in the end it turned out great.

Sorry the pictures are not the greatest.  We tried getting shots everywhere we could think of and in the end we still have shadowy photos!  But I guess they work….  Click on them – they get larger and the pictures look better that way. 

Some of you ordered digital quilting patterns from me a couple of weeks ago while we were out of power. I used back up measures to send them out to you as soon as I possibly could. This post is to show a few pictures of the mess and clean up process….  And to thank you for your patience!

We had two storms come through here only days apart. The first storm hit us pretty hard. No tornadoes were spotted, but the winds had reported gusts of up to 80 mph.  Thankfully no one was hurt and we had no structural damage. However, a few trees got pretty badly torn up and our neighbor lost 3 trees in their front yard.  One tree was a huge old pine. As it fell to the ground it caught the power lines, ripping them out of the neighbor’s house and damaging the lines to our house and the pole. It also covered the road in its massiveness.

It is an incredible amount of work to clean up that many trees.  Our church sent over a few guys with chain saws and Michael came, too.  By the end of the day our entire property was clean except for a huge pile in the front yard from the neighbor’s pine.  It felt good when time finally allowed and the remains of the storm were completely burnt.  What an enormous fire!

The second storm brought 4 tornadoes with it, but they touched down just a couple of miles to the north of us.  We had more branches down, but not the major damage that others suffered.  One man had his entire barn picked up off its foundation and moved across the street!  The hay and equipment was still standing on the foundation.  Now, how does a tornado accomplish such a thing?!  But it did show me  that “gusts up to 80 mph” are definitely a different story than a real, true “tornado”.

When looking at the following pictures, bear in mind that we forgot to take pictures until clean up was well under way.  It was even worse…. 

I’m glad that’s over!  Hopefully there will be no more tornadoes for a long, long time…………..

We started a project with our quilt guild, Maple Leaf Quilters. It’s a Pillowcase Challenge and even though we haven’t finished the challenge, I’m enjoying it so much that I am willing to “highly recommend” it! I hope you don’t mind.

Here’s how it works: We each picked out our own pallet of fabrics. Then we placed them in a pillowcase. At each guild meeting we will pass the pillowcase to the next member in our Challenge group (there are 10 people per group) until the pillowcases go through the complete list of members. Each member has one month to use the fabrics in that pillowcase to make any block she chooses. We applied certain limitation to the blocks that can be made – i.e. no smaller than 6″ square and you cannot make the same block every month. Blocks can be rectangle or square, they can be large or small. The challenge will be at the end of the 10 month rotation to put all the differently shaped and sized blocks together into a quilt. I can hardly wait!

I am looking forward to seeing how all these blocks turn out. It is going to be a wonderful challenge to find a creative and attractive way to put all of them together. Last night at the guild meeting, a member of the guild brought a couple of Pillowcase Challenge quilts she had done. They were stunning! It was encouraging to see a finished challenge turn out so nice.

I’m hoping my blocks will be big enough to make a queen sized quilt with, but if not I will be very happy with a throw. I used the pinks and creams from the Martinique collection along with the greens from the Glace collection. Moda is so great…. The green was a PERFECT match!! Martinique didn’t have any greens (my all-time favorite color) in the collection and I really wanted a breezy French country look to this quilt. I am totally happy with the final results. I sure hope the next 10 months fly by……

Tammy used the mahoganies, creams, and browns from the new Park Avenue collection. She was really hoping the fabrics would arrive before we had to bring our pillowcases to the guild meeting. They arrived just a couple of days before the meeting and match her color scheme better than I even expected. She had been a little hesitant about the commitment to the challenge… But after last night she too has caught the bug and is glad she’s doing it.

This month I have Carol Honderich’s pillowcase…. From previous posts, you know I consider her a special quilter in my life. Can’t wait to make her a wonderful block! Tammy has Marie Troyer’s pillowcase. She’s a special quilter friend too. We met her at the same time as Carol Honderich. (They came to visit our quilt shop in Michigan at the same time along with a Edith Shanholt and Janis Nelson.) It should be a great month!

This was a major accomplishment for me! Park Avenue arrived on our doorstep and made it to our website all in the same week! The fabrics are beautiful and I made it an absolute priority to share them with you.

I promised these pictures a while ago and then I realized that I better not post them until after the wedding lest a family member log in and see the quilt before the Big Day. Wouldn’t want to spoil their gift.

We really did enjoy working on this quilt. It had been a while since we put “our all” into one of our very own quilts. Since we started our quilt shop all of the quilts we make are usually shop related… Fabric that needs to be displayed, new patterns that have to be demoed, or quilts for other people. This time it was for a family member and for Jacquie so we made exactly what we wanted. I hope you enjoy the pictures.

For those of you interested in the patterns used on the quilt… The border is Abundant Feathers and the block was Emily’s Feather – Square. All patterns can be found here: Three Sisters Fabric Digital Quilting Patterns – Feathers

My cousin is getting married on May 30th so we have been working to finish a special quilt for him. The piecework is all done, and it is now in the frame being quilted. The center of the quilt came from “Meadowsweet Home” by Need’l Love.

It has an applique center with tiny nine-patches surrounding it that are set on point and alternated with blank square blocks. (I haven’t done any applique work in a while and really, really enjoyed doing it again. It reminded me of my fondness for handwork!) The quilt has a nice, scalloped border surrounding it to allow for pretty quilting. I spent more than a day working on digitizing the patterns for the quilt.

It was such a pleasure to finally load it in the quilting frame and see it start getting stitched out! The nice thing about this quilt is that we made TWO of them…. One is for Adam and Gail, and the other is for Jacquie and Michael. I’m glad the cousins will have identical quilts. I think it’s kind of special – especially since they both started their married lives so close in time to each other.

Check back for the pictures of the quilt. I plan to post them when it’s finished.