Big Excitment!

Tomorrow at Tammy Tadd Designs we are having a big party to celebrate the fact that we are featured in Better Homes and Garden's Quilt Sampler magazine as one of their top shops! To see more photos of the shop, click here.

To celebrate, we are having a sale, special drawings, cake from Sweet Dreams (this alone is worth the trip out) and most excitingly (I think I just made that word up), Terry Atkinson is going to be there to demo and autograph and the such. Terry designed my favorite pattern of all time, The Yellow Brick Road. It's my go to pattern and it's what I teach my beginning quilting friends with. I've made so many I've lost count. I whipped one up this week, start to finish, in 4 nights. That's right 4 nights from ironing and cutting to binding! I did cop out on the binding and sewed it down by machine, but I didn't have time to do it by hand and get it to the store by Saturday. It would take me just as long to tack the binding down as it did to create the thing! The backing is Moda's version of Minky called Fireside. It's sooo soft! I'm calling Ice Crystals, I think. And I used metallic threads for the first time. I had to quilt slower than I usually do, but it only broke 6 or so times. I don't think that's too bad from what I've heard others say about metallics.

We had the photo session for the magazine back in April. It was really interesting. The crew from Quilt Sampler were great. The photographer was really nice and got us all smiling at the right times.

There were two exciting surprises when we finally saw the magazine. The first is that Nan, who does the long arm quilting and is the most excellent supreme store decorator has her thread catcher design featured in the very front of the magazine in the company of, now get this quilting friends, Heather Bailey, Carrie Nelson (Miss Rosie), and Sandi Henderson! Jennie and I totally freaked. I know for a fact that I squealed! I mean, 3 renown designers in the quilt industry and our Nan! How excellent is that! (For those non-quilters, a thread catcher is a heavy pincushion on the top and a baggie that hangs off the table to put your threads and fabric snippets into.)

This is the other exciting part. See that uber-girly Girly Girl purse made of Lakehouse and Ava Rose fabrics? The pink and blue one right in the middle? That's my purse! I squealed about that too. Quilting and fabric make me squeal in delight, am I a quilting dork or what? You can't see the really cute pink plastic purse handles in the photo, but you can on my Flickr site. You can also see how even though I was super careful to cut the fabric out so the roses are right side up, I wasn't paying attention when I sewed it together and one side is upside down. As DiscoJen would say, Oh Well, it's done now! I have to say, the Girly Girl pattern is quite easy and you can make is as frilly or modern as you like. Jennie made a black, white and red one that's just fabulous.

If you are in the Chicagoland area, I hope to see you at the party tomorrow! I'm pretty sure I'll be wearing a pink and green apron. Maybe I'll whip up a pink headband tonight to control my badly-in-need-of-a-drastic-cut hair!