Monthly Newlsetter
Custom Quilts and Sewing Center
5676 Okemos Rd
Haslett, Mi. 48840
Ph. (517)-339-7581
e-mail customquiltsinc@live.com
Custom Quilts & Sewing Center
5676 Okemos Rd
Haslett MI 48840
517-339-7581
Open Monday, Wednesday, and Friday 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Tuesday and Thursday 10 a.m. to 8 p.m.
Saturdays 10 a.m. to 5 p.m
www.customquiltsinc.com
www.quiltsgalore.com
October & November
Newsletter
We will be combining October and Novembers Newsletter into one this month. This means that there will be two feature articles by "Charlaine Ezell" in this Newsletter. We would also like to take this time to thank Charlaine Ezell for writeing our monthly newsletters this year. Char has taken the time to write and edit our newsletter and we sincerely appreciate it. We couldn't have done these wonderful articles we have had all year without you Charlaine Thank you.
The Nuts behind the Bolts
Sometimes I think you must be crazy to operate a quilt shop, especially when you are asked to be a vendor at a show. On the other hand, being a vendor takes stamina, determination, and a love for quilting and quilters that few people possess. Take the fact that Custom Quilts owner Susan Myers and web sales coordinator Raymond Hunter had a vendor’s booth at the Capital City Quilt Guild’s bi-annual show this past spring and another at the St. John’s Mint Festival in August. And both times, their booths were irresistible, with fabric to tempt the eye, notions and Creative Grid rulers—more and more available every couple of months. “Both places were great places for us to showcase our shop,” Susan said, “and they are worth the work of getting ready for the show.”
But I imagine it is a little like moving out of your house, staying away for a day, then moving back in, in time to open it up for visiting relatives. Think of it: Quilt shop employees have to sort, package, load, drive, unload, sort, display, answer questions, cut fabric, sell goods, share stories, advertise and finally drive home to unload and have the shop open and ready for business the next day. That’s enough to make you want to put your feet up for the rest of the week!! Many shop owners find that standing for a full day—or two or three—is hard on the feet. It takes physical strength to carry heavy bolts of fabric in sufficient quantities to attract the eyes of beholders—which is why many shop owners may be reverting to packing fat quarters rather than full bolts. But where would we quilt show-goers be without them. To me, half the fun of a show is going to the vendors. So hats off, or, in quilter’s lingo, “a flash of the stash!” to all those wonderful quilt shop employees who make going to shows so much fun for the rest of us.
----Char Ezell
The Nuts behind the Bolts
Sometimes I think you must be crazy to operate a quilt shop, especially when you are asked to be a vendor at a show. On the other hand, being a vendor takes stamina, determination, and a love for quilting and quilters that few people possess. Take the fact that Custom Quilts owner Susan Myers and web sales coordinator Raymond Hunter had a vendor’s booth at the Capital City Quilt Guild’s bi-annual show this past spring and another at the St. John’s Mint Festival in August. And both times, their booths were irresistible, with fabric to tempt the eye, notions and Creative Grid rulers—more and more available every couple of months. “Both places were great places for us to showcase our shop,” Susan said, “and they are worth the work of getting ready for the show.”
But I imagine it is a little like moving out of your house, staying away for a day, then moving back in, in time to open it up for visiting relatives. Think of it: Quilt shop employees have to sort, package, load, drive, unload, sort, display, answer questions, cut fabric, sell goods, share stories, advertise and finally drive home to unload and have the shop open and ready for business the next day. That’s enough to make you want to put your feet up for the rest of the week!! Many shop owners find that standing for a full day—or two or three—is hard on the feet. It takes physical strength to carry heavy bolts of fabric in sufficient quantities to attract the eyes of beholders—which is why many shop owners may be reverting to packing fat quarters rather than full bolts. But where would we quilt show-goers be without them. To me, half the fun of a show is going to the vendors. So hats off, or, in quilter’s lingo, “a flash of the stash!” to all those wonderful quilt shop employees who make going to shows so much fun for the rest of us.
----Char Ezell
How Big is a Bed?
For years, I got by with sort of eyeing up the queen-sized bed that my husband and I share. When we make quilts, I delegate the task of measuring the bed, the sizes of patterns and the templates to my mathematically-talented husband, because anything to do with a number in it has me doomed from Day One. And we buy fabric just for the fun of it, so “having enough to finish a quilt” is never a problem.
But in a recent talk with Susan Myers, owner of Custom Quilts in Haslett MI, I discovered there is actually a very nice formula that you can use to determine how much yardage you might need for a bed quilt. “Normally a queen-sized quilt takes 3 or 3 ½ yards of fabric for the background, 1 ½ yards for the focal fabric and smaller increments for other fabrics, depending on the pattern. You add these up and get a total of 6 yards for the quilt top. So of course, you’ll need 6 yards for the backing.”
Twin-sized quilts, the next most common size, take this much fabric: 5 or 6 yards for the backing, because you’ll have to seam it down the middle, and 5 or 6 yards for the top. Your background fabric for the top takes between 1½ and 2 yards and your focal fabric will take ¾ yard. This is a good rule of thumb for buying fabric when you are using your own pattern designs.
Most yardage recommendations in books are pretty reliable. The same is not true of quilt kits, however. Several cutters may be working on multiple packages and cutting fabrics off bolts over the course of several days or weeks, and mistakes are likely to occur in the packaging. I’ve purchased two expensive quilt kits and discovered that both had shortages in a couple of crucial fabrics, which meant calling the seller, explaining the problem, then waiting for the fabric which might or might not be the same dye lot at the original. This is not to say that fabric cuts in kits are unreliable, of course, but as soon as you purchase one, even if you know you won’t get around to making the quilt until the year 2050, double check the yardage to be certain your kit contains the yardages in the materials list as soon as the UPS guy has returned to his truck.
Also beware of the fabric recommendations and templates for free quilt blocks online. While the patterns themselves are great, the yardage isn’t always correct and sometimes the templates aren’t either. Susan tells a story of an online pattern, very pretty, where the template for the house was a ½ inch too big and the template for the tree was a ¼ too small. So always make a test block first, then measure your remaining fabric to be certain that you have enough to finish the rest of the quilt.
One last item about online patterns. If they require you to use a photocopier to make additional templates, or paper foundation patterns, use a flat bed copier or scanner as opposed to one where you must slide your pattern paper in the machine. These last will often distort your copies just enough so that they don’t match up when you try to sew them together.
If you don’t use kits or use online patterns and you find you rely on your own gut feelings about how much fabric to buy, you might follow our advice: We often buy an additional ¼ yard, just in case we decide, halfway through the design process, that we want to change a color in a wallhanging and an additional ½ yard of a special fabric if we are making a bed quilt. The additional fabric never goes to waste: we use it as stripes on the backing, or save the remnants for scrap quilts for charity or auctions or making baby quilts, or cat beds.
We hope that you find these words of advice useful and we look forward to seeing what you have done with your quilts. By all means, bring them to Custom Quilts so we can enjoy your pride in your success.
----Char Ezell
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