Calling all quilters, sewers and crafters!

American Patchwork & Quilting magazine is challenging you to join our efforts to Make a Pillowcase, Make a Difference. Every pillowcase can make a difference in our community. A pillowcase can provide comfort for a cancer patient, hope for a foster child, encouragement for a battered woman, or beauty for a nursing home resident.

Quilting changes everything!

Help us meet the challenge by making pillowcases for the cause! Patterns provided, specially priced fabric kits available.

Thursday, April 15, 2010

10:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.

Michelle Griffith is the creator of Simple and Elegant™ Projects, and beautiful exclusive machine embroidery designs. Simple and elegant are the hallmarks of Michelle’s creations. Her love of sewing and embroidery genuinely shine through her creations. With her meticulous attention to detail, her designs are truly inspiring.

Join Michelle as she presents her Let Me Call You Sweetheart event. Lunch is included as well as a hands-on embroidery workshop. You will build a beautiful heirloom pillow with the look and feel of an elegant keepsake. With 2 custom embroidery designs, decorative stitching, attaching cording, applique, stippling and flower ruching, this project is sure to become a treasured classic.

Let Me Call You Sweetheart

Saturday, May 1, 2010

10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.

Fee: $169, including fabric kit, lunch, design CD and workshop

Seating is very limited so this is a first-come, first-served situation. Sign up early to reserve your place!

Test drive a BERNINA today to experience the unparalleled quality and precision of Swiss sewing craftsmanship.

Hurry in to receive your Scratch-Off Savings Card. You could save up to $5000 – everyone saves at least $100! March 1 – 8, 2010.

Visit our store for full details.

Paula’s newest workshop, Tequila Sunrise, features 2 days of creative fun. Weaving with raw edges, piecing and trapunto quilting will be used to make a striking contemporary 34″ square wall hanging with a pieced border. Designed for intermediate level quilters.

Tequila Sunrise

NOTE: picture shows one-quarter of the project. Your Tequila Sunrise wall hanging will incorporate FOUR of these gorgeous blocks! Click on picture to see detailing.

Friday and Saturday
March 5 and 6, 2010
10:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.

Fee: $225, including fabric kit and lunch for both days

Paula began teaching workshops on her techniques in the southern California region in 1993, expanding to national teaching a few years later when appearances on Simply Quilts brought her to the attention of a larger audience. Now she has decided that nothing is more fun than sharing ideas with the quilters she meets on her travels.

Advance registration is required. Call us at (310) 791-1190 to reserve your place.

See what’s new from Amy Butler. This trunk show includes an array of wearable items, bags, and home decor samples made with her popular patterns. Come pick up a pattern and see this awesome trunk show!

On display through February 23, 2010.

Two weeks only!

Judy Kessinger

Judy started her career owning and operating a small retail fabric store in Louisville, Kentucky. For 25 years she traveled nationwide holding seminars. For 30 years she designed and created ice skating costumes for national and international skaters. In the last few years, she has fine tuned the special art of teaching her students how to fit themselves for a slimmer look. In the process she developed two patterns – tops and pants. An entire wardrobe can be made from just these two patterns. Judy is looking forward to following her passion to teach the home seamstress how to take the STRESS out of seamstress!

Judy’s students have referred to her as the Paula Deen of sewing… Down home and fun!

We are offering three exciting opportunities to work with Judy. She will be teaching three different garments – a top and two jackets – that can restyle your wardrobe in no time at all. Seating is very limited, so sign up ASAP (310) 791-1190

Make It and Take It Tops – Make it and wear it home!

Tunic Jacket – Wear it with jeans or evening clothes. This is the most versatile garment, ever!

Dolman Jacket – Dress it up with a soft frill, or not. You’re the boss!

Looking to fire up your imagination? This class is for ANYONE who embroiders or ANYONE who might want to explore embroidery. Educator Amanda Whitlatch will be showing all types of new techniques and dimensional embroidery. The Tips-n-Techniques featured during our embroidery extravaganza will blow you away! We’ll provide the sewing machine; you provide the energy and enthusiasm for this all-day class.

You’ll take home a CD with the designs needed to create the featured projects, instructions for the projects and video clips of selected techniques. Registration fee includes lunch, snacks, goodie bag, and an unbelievable amount of tips and techniques.

Fee: $30, lunch and kits included

Instructor: Amanda Whitlatch

Advance registration is required. Call us at (310) 791-1190 to reserve your place.

Are you tired of saving all those precious scrap fabrics for a rainy day? Jump on board with the hottest, coolest craze to get organized and use your scrap fabrics! Convert your twisted wads of fabulous quilting fabrics into projects. You need a plan… You need Scrap Therapy!

Scrap Therapy is a two-part program. First, you will come to the Cutting Workshop and learn a special cutting and storage system. Cut all of your scraps into specific sizes of squares and store them in an orderly manner so you can easily retrieve them for projects. The Cutting Workshop is required to take any of the project classes.

The second part of the Scrap Therapy program consists of projects that just eat up your new squares. Projects include both smaller and larger pieced items such as place mats, tote bags, quilts, and much more. You’ll find lots of things to catch your interest while you clear out that stash.

We’ve just added several Scrap Therapy classes to our schedule. If you type scrap therapy in the search box in the column to the right you’ll find descriptions and pictures of all of them.

What did Sir Winston Churchill, Ernest Hemingway, Virginia Woolf, and Thomas Jefferson know that we don’t know?

They all worked standing up! Each used a work surface conveniently set at a comfortable height for standing. They discovered standing while working gave them more energy, clearer thinking, and made them far more productive than when sitting.

Makes sense to me! I’ve been standing up to embroider for years, and it does make me more productive. Perhaps it’s the lovely, broad surface right next to my machine for hooping up fabric, or it could be that it’s easier to see the work in progress closer to eye level. Setting my laptop on the opposite end of my high cutting table works well, too. It’s very easy to just step around to the computer when editing designs. Whatever the reason, I’ve always gone back to the standing option every time I’ve experimented with sitting while embroidering.

The only problem is that I love to sew as well as embroider. Sewing works better for me at a lower height level. So, I found myself moving my embroidery machine from the high cutting table down to the sewing cabinet. It’s a solution, but not a good one.

Horn 2000 MultiLift

Enter the Horn MultiLift Adjustable Table. I love, love, love this solution! This table includes a lift for your sewing machine which raises the machine up to sewing position or drops it down below the table surface so you have a wide cutting surface. Nifty, but no different that the other Horn cabinets. The real treasure in this table is that the whole table has another automatic lift that raises and lowers the height of the entire table. So, up high for embroidery and then down low for sewing is achieved at the touch of a button. And, I don’t have to actually move the sewing machine at all!

Dimensions:

• Width: 60″
• Height: 29″ to 42″
• Weight: 194 pounds

Features:

• Dual electric lift legs allow for smooth height adjustment
• 2 button controller raises or lowers the table to the right height for you
• Three position touch release airlift to raise and lower your sewing machine
• Power strip included for easy connection of your machine and other electric accessories
• Large 60″ x 29″ work surface doubles as a cutting table
• One drawer on nylon rollers with stop and storage slot for filler board and insert
• Completely assembled – just install casters
• Optional 3 drawer caddie (05.81) available for more storage (fits under 2000 drawer)
• Optional insert available – custom fit around your sewing machine and flush with the table surface

Horn MultiLift Table Closed

This table was originally designed to make cutting fabric easier on your back. Makes sense, especially in light of a study done with Boeing employees several years ago. The Spine Resource Clinic at the University of Washington studied the backs of 31,200 Boeing employees and found that sitting puts 40% to 80% more stress on the back than standing. Another interesting report of a study I came across states that standing will burn nearly 10,000 more calories per month than sitting. Now, I couldn’t verify that study but a girl can dream, can’t she?

There are a few little lessons I’ve learned along the way with this new work system.

Take some time to find the perfect height for you. My perfect height is 35″, but it could range anywhere up to 42″. You should be comfortable at your work surface and not need to lean over as you work.

Don’t lock your knees as you stand at your table. Just put a little spring in your knees – no need to squat like a duck! Locked knees can inhibit blood flow and make you dizzy. I learned this while attending a Coast Guard graduation ceremony. Two of the young men keeled over like fallen trees right in the middle of the event. They were hauled off quickly and reappeared later no worse for the wear. It was quite a shock for the families in the audience, though. Upon further inquiry we were told that this was quite common and happened often during the ceremonies. The kids had been trained not to lock their knees, but the stress of standing at attention in front of a large audience often caused them to forget! Easily avoided with a little spring in your knees.

When you get tired, sit down for 5 or 10 minutes; have a cuppa. During the first few days you will probably feel tired fairly frequently, but this goes away soon and you’ll enjoy your improved productivity and mobility.

posted by Suzy Poor