After the first week of being open we are looking forward to the next steps for the store.  Suggestions are certainly welcome.  We will be starting with Saturday Specials - each week a different item will be on sale for one day only, starting with needles of all sorts and all threads on September 17. 
    Our next project will be something different, we have lots of ideas and are figuring out what to do first.  How about a sew and chat - coffee, baked treats and sewing time with friends sharing ideas and expertise?  Maybe a Wash Tub Club following the adventures of the fictitious 1930's  Wash Tub Club meetings in the home of Ethel May?
    Soon we will start planning classes to start in January.  To get ready John is working on the classroom, new paint, new tables and work spaces.  Look for more information about classes, demonstrations and other events in the next couple of months. 
    New quilts are hanging on the walls, with many thanks to Lynne and Sue.  The shelves are almost full, with little room to spared.  Come see the new exciting fabric showing up on our doorstep with amazing regularity, I can't wait to see what pretty pieces everyone makes with all this fabric.

Ann

    We are here - and we are open.  It has been quite a journey starting more than a year ago when I visited Mom in Hartwell and looked around to see that there was no local fabric shop, and lots of quilters.  Opening a quilt shop had been a thought building in the back of my head for a while and it seemed like this might be an goal to work toward.  As things turned out many things came together over the last year to create just the right opportunity for us to pack up our house in Vermont, sell it and move south.
    We got to Hartwell on July 13, 2011 - the temperature was over 100 and we wondered what we had gotten ourselves into.  Maya, the chocolate lab, had no desire to hang outside - the yard was too hot.  Maya has some labrador challenges, including no desire to swim in the lake, silly dog.  The weather stayed hot through the rest of the summer, and we moved from the house, where we have been working on unpacking and re-arranging to the store, where we have been unpacking and re-arranging, with periodic jaunts to the lake to let Maya play in the shallows. 
    The house is still in need of major unpacking, but the store has no (or almost no) packed boxes left, the furniture is all arranged, the fabric put away and the notions hung everywhere.  I have been shopping and having a wonderful time buying fabric, looking for something for everyone. 
    The store opened September 1, right on time.  The fabric is so bright and clean it is a joy to walk into each morning.   Now that the set up is done I have started to have time to work on some quilts.  John is learning (probably more than he ever wanted to know) about fabric and quilting and has been busy cutting fat quarters, kits and helping to wait on customers.
    Two crib quilts were completed in the last week.  The Windham Chelsea collection makes up into a cute scrappy quilt using a bundle of fat eighth's and the Clothworks Critters collection project is a very cute whirligig quilt in blues or pinks.  We have the complete collection and have kits for the projects.  Next I start on a large quilt using the Henry Glass Black White and Currant collection.  Come check out the progress, I think this one will take me a little longer.
    More fabric is coming almost every day, so keep coming in to see what is new.  Let us know what you want to see, we will do our best to find it for you.
    Stitching all my pretty pieces,
Annie