Chicago, Chicago! I hope we can get everything ready to go to Chicago. Time seemed to be flying by faster than we were getting stuff done. Shortly after Chicago we’ll be in Paducah, so we are essentially getting ready for 2 shows at once! Thank God for good friends who are pitching in to help us get done 
what we need to do to make sure we bring the best that we have to those of you that will be visiting us in either place. If you come to Chicago, we are in booth 1241 and love to meet new visitors and chat with some friends we met in the past year. Batiks by Design has grown so much since we did our first quilt show in April of last year during the AQS Paducah Show. I’m still amazed and I have all of you to thank.
On top of everything, a quilt kit that I’m providing for a mystery quilt by Kimberly Einmo published in The American Quilter has been in high demand and we’ve had to order more fabrics and will be putting together kits this week and getting them in the mail. The fabrics are all Bali’s and are beautiful! If you haven’t seen any of Kimberly’s quilts, you should check out her site at www.kimberlyeinmo.com . She does some fantastic designs and is a wonderful teacher if you ever get a chance to take a class with her. You can purchase the kit by calling me or on the Internet at www.batiksbydesign.com once we get them back in our online store.
My husband is in the process of getting our income tax records ready to go to the accountant. As he does every year, he procrastinated until the last minute and is now rushing to get it finished. In other years, I’ve been able to help, but so much of my time is taken up with my business that I have to focus on it and my family and let him struggle through it by himself this time. He’s unemployed at the moment, so he has time on his hands! He’s hoping to go to Nepal on a short term project in the near future and will be working on a USAID project to evaluate school systems in other countries as well as a consultant. He loves working overseas in other countries and meeting and learning about the people. With the business and Kristen, I’m not ready to go back anytime soon, although I’ve enjoyed our time spent in several countries. Our daughter is getting ready to go to high school next year and we’ve been busy reading the high school handbook and picking electives. Some days I can’t believe she will be in 9th grade next year.
Another shipment of traditional batik designs has arrived and will be showcased in Chicago and Paducah before going online. There are some gorgeous new designs that you will just love! The fabrics is sent my ocean freight and arrives in Los Angeles, where it has been pre-cleared through customs, and once it is unloaded, it is placed on a transfer truck as a partial load and makes its way to Paducah to the freight terminal where we pick it up. Would you believe it costs more to get it from Los Angeles to Paducah than it does to ship it from Jakarta to LA? We picked it up on Friday night and Saturday morning, Kristen and I unloaded it. My business is located in the finished basement of our house, so we used our new wooden cart to get them from the trailer to the garage, then put the bolts into shopping carts, brought them into the house, and threw the bolts down the stairs. My husband then piled them up where he could find room, which was hard to find since I keep taking over more and more of our basement! I should have taken a picture of the pile of bolts at the bottom of the stairs!
We will be spending a lot of time this week getting the new items ready to take with us by cutting FQs, pre-cut yards, and rolling the fabric onto smaller bolts. When I receive the fabric, it is rolled onto a piece of cardboard literally cut from a box. There is anywhere from 32 to 60 yards of fabric rolled onto that poor little piece of used cardboard. Recently, I’ve purchase a “fold and roll” machine to take the fabrics and put them on a cardboard “board” or “reel” that we are used to seeing fabrics on. Candy and I worked for several hours on Friday to practice using the machine and we still don’t quite have the hang of it yet. We had a few good laughs as the fabric “walked” off the board as we rolled it and had to start over again. It’s really meant for taking fabric off a roll and folding it before it gets rolled. Well, our stuff is already folded and so we aren’t using it exactly the way it should be used. In the future, I hope to be able to order the fabric on rolls to make this whole process easier.
Last week, my friend Shirley and I made Moon Glow using a batik tablecloth as the center. She took it home to quilt and I should have it this coming week. She also made Carousel for me and is quilting it too. I think you’ll love the samples we’ve made and I hope to show them to you in my next blog. Cary Flanagan, the designer of both of these, made a sample of Rule of Thirds for us and we should be getting it this week. I can’t wait to see it.
It’s raining again. After the drought of last summer we’ve had record amounts of rain this winter – and now we are starting spring the same way. I love spring, with the flowers blooming and the new leaves on the trees, it is a time of renewal for me. I hope that you will feel this too as spring comes to you as well.
Happy Quilting,
Patti
Batiks by Design
