Does Thread Matter

In the past few weeks I have had a lot of questions about thread, so today i will try to answer some questions you all may have. First of all we quilt with a good quality 100% cotton and recommend that to all quilters. 100% cotton is soft and strong, wears well on your projects and doesn't fight the fabric fibres as they are both cotton(that is if you are quilting with cotton). Kayla, Carrie and I love Aurifil thread. And piece with a 40 or 50 weight, 40wt is a bit thicker. Auriful is a high quality Egyptian  cotton with long strands to reduce lint and thread breakage. We also longarm quilt with the 40 or 50 wt but find the 40 wt shows up a bit better than the 50 weight. I guess if you don't want to see the quilting 50 wt would be great.

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Aurifil thread comes in many different weights from a 6 strand floss, 12wt, 28wt, 40wt, 50wt, and 80wt. we mostly have 50wt in the store with more than 120 of the 270 colours, we have some 40wt and 80wt and are hoping to build our collection very soon. We also have some sets by designers, many designers have signed on with aurifil and have thread colours to match their fabrics. That being said for piecing I use a light tan, light grey, white and a med./grey or brown for everything. I do match colours when appliquéing and like the 50 wt for that. It shows nice and lays flat on the fabrics.

We also love King Tut variegated thread for long arm quilting, we try to keep all of the King Tut colours in stock.  We have some magnifico for appliqué, it has a shine to it and  if you like hand appliqué, wool work, and stitchery we have some valdani and cosmo flosses and threads. 

Lots of time people gasp at the price of a good quality thread but when you think of the cost of your quilting project why wouldn't you spend a couple of dollars on good thread, and really thats all it is, a large spool of thread is only $14.50 and I'm not quite sure how many quilts it makes but I don't take many spools of thread home so I'm guessing about 5-6 projects maybe more depending on size and pieces and how much picking you do:(.  And your sewing machine will also love you as thread quality also affects the lint build up.

Last of all here is a bit of a chart to help you pick thread weights.

12wt-hand appliqué, hand embroidery, embellishing

28wt-cross stitching, hand embroidery, hand appliqué, hand            piecing, lace

40wt-machine piecing, machine quilting, machine appliqué,              long arm quilting, top stitching

50wt-machine piecing, machine appliqué, machine quilting,              long arm quilting, top stitching

80wt-hand turned appliqué, english paper piecing, machine              appliqué

                                                                                 Have a great weekend

                                            Esther

                                                                           

Shop Local

Well my family is back from vacation, and Esther has handed the blog writing back over to me. She did a fantastic job while I was gone, and I thank her for this. .Now that the holiday is over it is time to get back to everday life again, this includes work, and so this morning Esther and I made a trip to the border. Esther makes the trip several times a month, and it is really worth it. When we ship some of our products to the border rather than to Canada we save a substantial amount on shipping. We can in turn pass these savings over to you.SXLLM​​

 Our GO! products are where we probably see the biggest savings by shipping to the border and picking them up ourselves. Our prices are very competitive, and we are the same and even cheaper on some products than the Canadian Accuquilt site, and they charge shipping on top of their prices.

Aurifil thread is another big one, our prices are $6.50 for the small spools and $14.50 for the the 1300m spools. While visiting some shops in Texas last fall, we noticed that their Aurifil was also $14.50 but theirs were priced in American Dollars.

Sometimes we will get asked why our fabric prices are high compared to those in the States but if we do a breakdown, our prices are similar in that regard as well. Many of our cottons are priced at $19.50 right now,but the last few shipments have been coming in at less, and the newest one today was priced at $18/meter. This by the way was Savannah by Gingiber for Moda, which I am thrilled about. But back to my little bit of math here, lets go in the middle of our prices and work with $19/meter. One yard is 0.9m, so 1 yard of our fabric is $17.10. Now if we take prices from an American site, they are at about $11 per yard. That's in American currency though so if we translate that into Canadian Dollars we are at $14.85/yard. Now that is still $2 a yard cheaper but you have to pay shipping and duty on top of that per yard price, as well as wait at least a week for it to come to your doorstep. 

While we are clearing up some questions about prices here, lets talk about kits. Some people think that buying a kit is more expensive, however this in untrue. When we cut kits, we read the pattern first and cut accordingly, some patterns call for a lot of extra fabric and we try to cut this down somewhat making the kits a little cheaper. Also in our kits you only pay for the fabric and the pattern, we do not upcharge for labour and time.

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 Now that we have gone over prices, and determined that local doesn't always mean more expensive lets look at some other reasons to shop local.

 Customer service is a big one. The owners of local businnesses often have their livelihood at stake. Therefore the service they extend will be better than that from a big box store.

At Chicken Feed Quilts we care about our customers and want to help you. We will listen to what you want. Do you have something you love and wish we would carry? Perhaps there is a new fabric or pattern designer that you love, or a notion that you use all the time. Let us know and we will do our best to figure something out. Feedback is so important to us, and the only way for us to improve is to know what you do and do not like. 

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Have you ever heard the term "local multiplier effect'? This phrase refers to the dollars that re-circulate amongst other local businesses. For example, we will need some new doors for our expansion, these doors will come from Bethel WIndows and Doors, we just got another cutting table made at Adora Kitchens and Cabinetry, the construction, electrical and plumbing that needs to be done will be taken care of by local contractors. 

In a small town Local Businesses are so important, I am not referring to just our little quilt store, I am talking about all the independently owned shop and businesses in our area. The next time you need to do some shopping or need some work done around the house, check out the local businesses to see what they have to offer.

 Now I have to get back to my sewing room, I am falling behind on the Luxie Lunch Bag sew along, and I have several quilts cut out that I am itching to finish as well.

Kayla

Kansas Troubles Workshop Recap

The long awaited Kansas Troubles workshops and trunkshow have come and gone!

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We had a fantastic two days spent with Lynne and everyone that attended the workshops and the trunkshow! Thank you to all those that came out, I hope you had as much fun as we did! A thank you to Lynne Hagmeier as well for making the trek all the way from Kansas to visit our shop, and sharing her techniques and quilts with us, and to her granddaughter as well!

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During the 3 workshops Lynne taught us an amazing technique called Layered Patchwork and we applied it using several of her templates, all of which were designed to be used with precuts. The first quilt we did was a sampler quilt with several different styles of blocks involved, and everyone was able to complete a few of each style. Today we had two sessions. The first one several ladies were able to finish their tops, and there was even some trading going on, to create two borders instead of just one, I love the creativity that flows when you get 30 quilters together in the same room. Our second project today was called Twisted, and because I was actually sewing this one, I have no pictures of it, however everyone was able to compete a couple rows of the quilt!  

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At the end of the first day we kicked everyone out of the building for an hour in order to set up for the dinner and trunkshow. When everyone arrived for the evening portion, we shared a meal together. Afterwards Lynne gave us the history of Kansas Troubles Quilters, and showed us many quilts and patterns, each with a different backstory.

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For dessert we had some fruit from Edible arrangements as well as a beautiful cake and some delicious cupcakes made for us by Crazy Cakes from Lethbridge.

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We realize that there was limited room in the trunkshow and the workshops, and also that July is a difficult time for some people to attend, and so we will be teaching some classes this fall at our store using Lynne's patterns and techniques.

Now that we have some some room in our brains again we will be starting to work on the fall class list though it won't be released until August. We do need a little bit of brain recuperation time first. We also have some new promotion ideas that we have been

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 tossing around, and will finalize the details on those!

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Esther and I have taken lots of notes, and we have  learned a lot from hosting this event and are super excited for the next one. Yes we are going to be doing more of these! If you have any feedback please let us know.

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Thank you again, from all the staff at Chicken Feed Quilts. I know I write that often, but we really do thank you, without your support this event would not have happened!

Kayla

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