Happy Christmas

It`s a while since we have posted a blog, even my dad asked when the next one would be!  Debby and I have been busy, busy.  Poor old Debby has been getting the accounts ready which is quite a task, she is much better at that kind of thing than me, but I have felt guilty because she has had all the horrible stuff to do while I have been sewing.

The shop has been busy, we have found it quite interesting that we are not selling readymade items like we did last year.  Customers are wanting to have a go themselves, or are buying fabric for friends who like to sew.  We have had several wish lists for husbands, and they have all been very dutiful!  Lots of people have been watching Kirsty`s Homemade Christmas and wanting to make what they have seen her making, particularly the hearts, she is now known as St. Kirsty!  We have sold out of the new roll of Fuse-a-Web which would normally have lasted a couple of months, and unfortunately we didn`t have any bells - if you watched the programme you will understand what I am talking about!

We have been organising our workshop list for the beginning of next year, but it has proved very problematic, and we haven`t managed to send it yet.  We had hoped to do it up to April, but every date we want in April is not available at our usual venue, so we have been trying to find somewhere else.  Debby is hopefully going to finalise it today and get the list sent out - fingers crossed.  We have been busy working on samples and trying to sort out what we are going to do.  I will be doing another Beginner`s Course, and this time have decided to do a set of  cushions.  I have started to put them together , but I have quite a lot of quilting to do yet, as you can see from above.  I need to stitch the circles, and can`t make up my mind to do it by hand or machine.  I have used some of the new Moda Etchings Wovens from 3 sisters, plus a charm pack of Panier de Fleurs by French General, with a couple of others thrown in for good measure.  The one below I will do by machine. They would go in my sitting room beautifully, and I am rather fed up with the cushions I have at present, so the may end up there! There are two others, but I have a little way to go with them yet.

Debby who is now the Jelly Roll Queen, is going to do a workshop on Layer Cakes, she has a few ideas up her sleeve, but I thought I would have a go.  There seems to be lots of patterns out there for Jelly Rolls, but the Layer Cakes always seem more difficult to find.  The one I have done is really easy.  I thought I liked the Layer Cake I used, until I started to make it!  The top is completed so I just need to get it ready to quilt, which I aim to do during the Christmas Break.

We will be closing at 12 noon tomorrow, and will re-open on Tuesday 3rd January, giving us both some time to re-charge our batteries.  We hope you all have a great Christmas and don`t spend too much time in the kitchen unless you want to!

Christmas is coming!

I can`t believe it is nearly two weeks since I wrote.  Debby is probably back from holiday, although I haven`t spoken to her yet.  Its been a hectic couple of weeks with lots going on, and of course I have felt very importants being in charge.  Trade is picking up with lots of people buying Christmas fabrics, or fabric to make Christmas presents, some have even bought fabric to give as Christmas gifts!

Last Friday I was asked to go and run a workshop for Apple County Quilters.  If you don`t already know, this group of ladies are very accomplished, and to say I was nervous is a slight understatement.  We had agreed that I would take a Christmas angel, a couple of Christmas wall hangings and cushions.  The group meet in a lovely hall out at Bradford on Tone, and it was so nice to get out of the shop for a day.  In the event I had a very enjoyable day and met some lovely people, who made me feel very welcome.  Hopefully they all enjoyed themselves as much as I did. Some finished, but most had a little more to do - I`m looking forward to seeing the finished results.  Sue very kindly popped to the shop yesterday with a gift for me beautifully wrapped in red dotty paper with a letter thanking me.  Inside was not one, but two boxes of chocolates!  I have to say I have left one in the shop and opened them, unfortunately every time I go out the back where they are they say to me `eat me, eat me`, and of course I do - oh dear!

The angel on the right was the angel I orginally made for my grandaughter which was a huge success with her, and the other two were slightly more refined.  Somehow or other they didn`t look right with the felt shoes, so I left them off.  I have a couple more ideas for them but just haven`t had enough time - nothing new there then.

I had a customer in the shop yesterday who I thought I recognised.  When I got talking to her Debby and I had met her at Malvern, she was from Newport in Wales.  She was down in Somerset with her husband who was going on a glass making course near Honiton and she popped in.  While talking to her is turned out she was a longarm quilter.  Her husband popped to the car and brought back some photographs of her work which was fantastic.  So if anyone wants some quilting done then contact us and we will give you Sue`s details.  It always impresses me when husbands come in the shop and show interest and enthusiasm, and positively encourage their wives to spend money - this just wouldn`t happen to me!  It was so nice to see her again, and quite reassuring that people do remember you from the shows, and come and find you!

Earlier this week my husband gave me a lift to the shop and said to me that he usually really liked our window displays, but this time it looked like an old lady`s shop.  I was rather put out by this as you can imagine, I kind of knew what he was trying to say, but I didn`t agree with him.  One window had our wonderful selection of felt in it, and the other our new kits which I was rather pleased with.  However, I began to panic and thought well if he thinks that other people probably do as well, so I got the sewing machine out and started on some Christmas cushions which are now in one of the windows.

I was particulary pleased with the Christmas tree cushion.  I just stitched some strips together and then cut them into triangles and appliqued them on to linen.  I finished them with a little trunk and a green star button. To save on the linen, I made the back in red cotton.  We have just got in the star shaped buttons and they are selling really well.  The felt is still in the other window, but to be honest I don`t know where to put it all when it does come out of the window, and I need to come up with another Christmas themed window.  That said Debby is the Christmas diva, and no doubt within a week or so, it will be all singing and dancing with glitter, lights and goodness knows what else! 

There is a lot going on in Wellington for Christmas.  For the first time the town is going to have late night shopping on the two Wednesdays and Sundays before Christmas, and the council is providing free parking on Saturdays in December.  Sam from Cloud 9 is the driving force behind this, I don`t know where she gets her energy from, but she has worked tirelessly the last few weeks organising entertainment and getting all the local traders on board.  We can`t compete with Taunton, but there are some lovely individual shops in the town, so if you fancy doing some Christmas shopping in a more relaxed atmosphere come on over to Wellington!

We had a delivery of some Moda woven fabrics today in a range of mostly greys, but a little red.  They are beautiful fabrics that almost feel like silk.   I attempted to take a photograph of some of them, but it wasn`t a huge success, but I will show them anyway.  My mind started working overtime whilst cutting the fat quarters, and I think they would look really good with just a touch of shocking pink.

Happy stitching

Better late than never

It`s been a week now since Debby and I came back from Malvern, and a couple of weeks since we last posted a blog, so better late than never - here goes.  The first picture is the lovely converted barn we stayed in, about two minutes away from the showground, but down a little lane and a world away.  It was like being on holiday while there.  Debby had a downstairs room, and I was upstairs, and just outside my room was a gallery, which was wonderful.  What you can`t see are the views, there was a massive pond behind where this picture was taken, and on the other side a fantastic garden with another pond, this time man-made, we overlooked this while we ate our delicious breakfast, it really was all fantastic.  The show was new for us, as it was our first show where we had to travel and stay overnight.  It was very busy on the Friday, and each day got progressively quieter but still busy.  It was certainly worth doing, and was great to see so many of our friends, and meet some new ones, including Lawrence on the next stand, who spent most of the time insulting us, but had us in stitches!  We took lots of fabrics with us, and really our stand wasn`t  big enough for all our stock.  We took lots of felt with us, and sold lots of red - people getting ready for Christmas!  I think I have mentioned before that Debby doesn`t do things by halves, and has bought enough felt to open a felt shop!   That said we have sold nearly all the red, as she bought about 4 times more than the other colours.  We have booked up for next year, but are going to have a larger stand.

Just thought you might like to see Debby by her van.  It was her van, as I never drove it once, I would have had a nervous breakdown just at the thought of it!  I was a  little shocked on the morning we left to find that she had never driven one before (she has driven a minibus) so  I just decided to go into denial about that. I cannot deny that I am a very nervous passenger, and I must drive her mad.  In fact she says she has started to behave like me when she is in the car with her husband Chris, and he is not amused.  However after about five minutes she was driving like an old pro, apart from the parking.  I am sure she won`t mind me telling you that after the first night parking at the pub where we ate each evening she decided to park on the road!  She had an audience of smokers, who she was convinced were laughing at her, which wasn`t good for her pride!  I just made what I thought were supportive noises, but probably drove her mad! We came back very tired on Sunday night.  We managed to pack up quickly and were on the road by 5 pm.  We were about half an hour into our journey when Debby said had I taken the quilt off the wall, and of course I had forgotten, however we decided to leave it there, and when I rang the next day, the organisers had very kindly taken it down and are sending it back to us.  My fault entirely.  Then of course, when we got back we had to leave everything in the shop so Debby could take the van back early next morning.  On Monday morning, I had a shop that looked like a bomb had dropped in it, and needless to say it way busy, goodness knows what the customers must have thought. 

 

 

 

 

Just thought I would show you this picture of my husband, John. I bought him a days falconry for his birthday earlier in the year.  He had a great day, and the birds got progressively bigger, until this one arrived a Eurasion Eagle Owl, which he says was very heavy.  He had a great time, no thanks to Wayne who was his guide for the day.  I still keep laughing that he buys sausage meat for his birds, from Mr. Potter the butcher in Wellington as he thinks they are the best in the area and obviously nothing but the best will do for his birds!

My treat this week was a gift from my daughter to go on a Chocolate making course.  We drove over to Wales on Sunday morning, left John at Katie`s house, and travelled up to the valleys to Blaenavon where we went to Chocs Away, a lovely little cafe where the workshops are held and whose slogan is `Take what you make`!  It was great fun.  There were only 6 of us, Pam who owns the business doesn`t take any more on the Sunday afternoon sessions.  We started by melting chocolate and pouring it into moulds, mixing the different kinds of chocolate, I made little butterflies, with milk and white chocolate.  We then went on to more complicated stuff including snobette`s!  These are little chocolate cases filled with ganache and topped with beautiful little decorations, I used little sugar hearts on mine.  We made fudge, different fillings such as lemon, raspberry and mint, and truffles.  We were given spoons every time we made anything so we could basically lick the bowl, and it was all delicious.  Half way through the afternoon, we stopped for tea and Pam produced a chocolate fountain with loads of fruit, fudge and marshmallows, it was great!  Before we left we were given presentation boxes  and ribbons to decorate the boxes and we really did take home everything we made, apart from the ones I had eaten!  It was such a lovely way to spend a Sunday afternoon, and I can`t recommend it highly enough.  If you are interested the website is www.chocsparty.com. and you can easily get there in an hour and a half from our part of the world.  Below my finished chocolates, all packed up and ready to go, not quite as beautifu as I would have liked, but edible!

 Back to patchwork and quilting now!  We have had a very busy week which is good.  I had a beginners workshop on Saturday, and once again I had a lovely group.  They were very adventurous, as most of them made small quilt tops, I won`t say they finished them, but most were well on the way to completing by the end of the day.  Debby is off on holiday now for two weeks, so I feel very important, she has left me in charge!  She has given me my instructions, and doesn`t want anything to do with me, or anyone else for that matter, for the next two week.  Her and Chris are off to North Wales to stay in a National Trust cottage in the middle of nowhere -lucky her! 

 

 

 

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Exhausted

Joan is now back from holiday, refreshed and full of beans whereas I am struggling to keep upright and looking forward to my holiday in November although not sure where it will be yet.

Before Joan went away we were approached by the Craft Focus magazine, they wanted to write a short introduction to our business which was brilliant but they emailed asking for a photo of both of us and wanted it straight away.  Neither of us like having our photo taken and with no chance of going to the hairdressers to get our roots done (I know that is surprising) or to have a facial (also surprising) this was a major thing.  I had had a few late nights and was suffering with black circles under my eyes, Joan had no lipstick and even worse we had no-one we trusted to make us look beautiful to take the photo.  First choice was to ring my husband but he took too long to get to us so we asked Helen, our landlady.  I rushed to Superdrug to get some cover up for my black circles and half heartedly offered Joan a lipstick from my bag  - a major thing for me because I am such a germ freek but she politely refused.  Typically I had dressed in my Mama Cass clothes that day, not at all what I would like to be published in but our photographer managed to make us look half decent and spent ages making sure we were happy (particularly Joan).  So now we are in this months magazine, if you see a copy have a look.

Last Wednesday we went to the launch of the Sedgemoor Ward at Musgrove Hospital to see the Memory Quilts and the work that they had done to improve the ward.  I photographed the quilts on my phone but they are not very clear so I will go back with my proper camera and retake.  The ward itself is really bright and cheerful, completely different to what it used to be, they have done a lovely job.

1960's quilt

1970's quilt

1950's quilt

1940's quilt

If you have really good eyesight you maybe able to see one of your squares.

We are now building up to the Malvern show and both panicking about how much work we need to do - we have no idea what to expect.

More to follow

Debby

Back from Kefalonia

I arrived back from my holiday today so this is just going to be a short post.  Debby and I were so busy before I went away, and didn`t have time to update the blog.  In the meantime, I have been away for a fortnight, and Debby has been holding the fort, and sounded rather tired when I spoke to her this afternoon! 

I can`t tell you much about what has been going on in Dotty Dolly`s world for the last two weeks, and I won`t know until I go in tomorrow, but I am assuming things have been going along like a well oiled machine!  So while Debby has been busy, I have been sunning myself in the lovely island of Kefalonia.  We arrived to a heatwave, it was very hot, and then had one day of rain - that wasn`t supposed to happen.  Finally the weather settled down, as did we.  We developed a lovely routine of basically lying round the pool on a sunbed, lunch, lying on a sunbed again, and then John my husband would go off late afternoon for some snorkling while I would go back to our appartment for another lie down to get out of the heat.  The day would finish with drinks on our balcony, before going out for a meal, and back to the bar for drinks with all the lovely people we met - bliss!  I took some sewing with me, but didn`t take if out of the bag.  I read lots of books and generally we just chilled out.  We were very lazy, and hardly saw any of the island, although one day we went to Ithika a small island nearby and where Madonna has a villa, lucky her.  Anyway enough about that!

I think we have said that  we are going to Malvern at the end of October, so our next task is to start to get ready for that.  We are hoping to launch some kits which we have been working on, we just have to get our act together.  I have a feeling I might need a kick start. 

Just before I went away we recieved a delivery of some lovely Michael Miller fabrics, no photographs I`m afraid, but they are very bright and contemporary, but with a slight retro feel to them, if that makes sense!

The weekend before I went  we went to a lovely exhibition at Come 2 Quilt. If you want to know more about it look on Stitcherydo, Shirley has written about it with lots of lovely photographs.  It was a really lovely exhibition, and we were made to feel very welcome.  We met lots of our lovely friends and customers there, and quite a few new people as well.

Our First Birthday

It`s back to me writing the blog again this week as Debby is busy doing important things on the computer, like getting the accounts ready for the accountant, and working on the website.  I have had the easy bit for the website as I have taken the photographs and Debby is doing whatever it is she has to do before they go to Mel the lovely lady who is actually building the website for us.  I have taken loads of photographs and have one more lot left to do on Monday.  It has been very difficult because of the lighting in the shop, and they aren`t brilliant, but it`s still easier than Debby`s job.  I shouldn`t go on about it really because I feel very guilty that Debby is the one who is doing all this.  She tried to show me what she was doing the other day, but I just don`t have a clue what she is talking about most of the time.  I know I will have to learn how to do it, and I will, it`s just going to take a little longer than she thought!  Heaven help Mel when she trains us, or me at least.

We have had a fairly eventful week as we celebrated our first year of trading on the 1st September which was exciting.  We were rather overwhelmed by the response of our customers, we had cards, and even flowers!  Lots of people came into the shop to say hello which was great.  We told everybody that there would be tea, coffee and cake, which there was, but there were so many people that we kept forgetting to offer them any - sorry Pat!
If I am being fair, Debby was on her own in the morning as I was at our regular Thursday morning class - we had plenty of time for cake and tea.

It`s been an interesting first year, hard work, but much more enjoyable than my old teaching job.  I did enjoy working with the students, but I had less and less time with them because of the volume of the paperwork.  I felt I had become more of a manager than a teacher. I never mind taking work home with my new job, but I certainly did when I was teaching. Really the only thing I really miss is the salary!  My life is much less stressful now.  Debby is a much calmer person than me, and I must drive her mad at times.  I still don`t seem to have time to do everything I want to, but that`s because I have so many ideas buzzing around in my head for new projects.  At the moment I am trying to finish bags for the workshop in October.  They are all cut out and ready to stitch, and they will be in the shop next week.  They absolutely have to be completed before I go on my holiday!  I have also got some Christmas projects that I need to complete, because if I don`t do them now they will never get done!  The busier the shop gets the less time we both have, which is great, but doesn`t leave enough time for everything else.  We have made some lovely new friends, who have become loyal customers, and met some really interesting people since we opened.   We have introduced the craft to new people who are now addicted - they know who they are!

Finally I must show you another  photograph of the fabric cake that Debby made for our window.  A few weeks ago Martin from the carpet shop down the road, who started trading on the same day as us and asked what we were going to do to celebrate, and we said we weren`t sure. He came up with the idea of making a cake.  When I told Debby she embraced the idea wholeheartedly which is just as well, because I really didn`t have a clue where to start, and below are the results, which I am sure you will all agree with me are great.  I can bake cakes, but I`m rubbish when it comes to decorating them.  In another life Debby belonged to a sugarcraft group, and decorates cakes beautifully. It`s amazing what you can do with a bit of calico, suffolk puffs and circular cake tins!

Back to normal again next week.  Once again thank you everyone for the loyalty and support you have shown us, it is much appreciated.  Hope you all have a lovely weekend - weather permitting!

Nearly normal

Not sure if its good or bad news but I am nearly back to normal, still not able to drive the car which is frustrating but probably easier for Joan who drives much slower than I do and I have probably frightened her to death for the last year when I have arrived at her house late and whizzed up the motorway at break neck speed.

My very patient husband has been my taxi driver for the last four weeks and I think he has just about had enough, he is practically throwing me out of the car in the mornings.
On Thursday we will have been open for a year which is amazing and it has gone so quickly, I think we have worked much harder than we did when teaching but the enjoyment factor has been far better.  So we are having a special day on Thursday - if you spend more than £20 you get 10% off, if you spend over £10 you will automatically be entered into a raffle.  Prizes include a Moda quilt kit, a free workshop or a voucher for £10. There will also be tea, coffee and cake so it would be lovely to see you. Our new workshop list is also ready so if you haven't received it via email there will be copies in the shop.
Last week I was on my own which was a shock, not used to working a six day week.  During the week I had a visit from Alan (one of the reps) who has been quite ill recently so it was a surprise to see him, he also arrived on a Wednesday not a Thursday (which is our agreed day as Joan is in and my lack of self control with regard to spending can be double checked) so when he asked if I wanted to look in his car boot I thought it would be rude not to especially as he has been unwell and we haven't seen him for a long time. Luckily he didn't have very much left so I didn't spend an absolute fortune but still got persuaded to buy two rolls of oil cloth type fabric which Joan and I had agreed we would not stock - oops.

I also met Anne Marie who had travelled over from Holland with her family - not just to see us, she was in Devon on holiday but took the time to visit the shop.  She and her daughter were lovely. Her poor husband was very patient and after a while I suggested he might want to go to 'Steptoe's Yard'  which is a local junk yard and not called that anymore but I don't know the name. He left for quite a while, when he came back they were still choosing fabric.  As she was leaving she left Joan and I a lovely tissue holder made in dutch fabric which Joan has already photographed - what a lovely lady/family.

We are now desperately trying to get all the fabric on to our new website, we had no idea how long it would take and so far we have got 76 listed only another 300+ to go so I don't think it is going to be up and running in time for our anniversary. 

Yesterday Joan had left a message on the phone to say that yet more fabric had arrived, goodness knows where we are going to put it as we are already using the floor as shelving.

So we look forward to seeing you all this week and if you see someone walking up the street from one side of the pavement to the other looking like she is way over the limit don't panic but if you see her driving a car really panic.

Debby