Quilt Coaldale

Esther, Carrie and I have spent the last few days in our classroom attending Quilt Market Schoolhouse Virtually. We learned lot of new things and have some fun new ideas to try out in the shop! Thankfully the Chrysalis Cafe opened up again this week, and Krisna kept us well supplied with food, drinks and snacks while we were sitting in front of the screen. 

Her new summer menu is full of refreshing treats with options for those that love coffee and for those that don't, stop in and visit her if you are in the area. 

As with so many other things, Quilt Canada was cancelled. We were supposed to be attending as a vendor this year so we are sorry to be missing out. 

We have decided to hold our own safe Quilt Market event instead. 

June 18 and 19 we will host Quilt Coaldale in our classroom. We have invited a couple of our fabric representatives to come and set up a little booth to show off the newest fabrics we have ordered. One of the reps is from the company we order our batting from,he is very knowledgeable about batting and he will gladly answer your questions on that topic. 

We have gotten lots of new products in the shop that we want to show off , and we are carrying patterns from a few different designers as well that we want to share with you. The new products and patterns will be available for you to purchase, because what is a Quilt Market without a little shopping? We also hope to have a table of sneak peeks of products coming into the shop later this summer and fall, and you will be able to preorder these as well. 

Just like the Relaunch Event, you will need to preregister to attend, and once again it is free to come. 

With the registration we can control the number of people in the room at one time. Time slots are 45 minutes each and start on the hour. 

Thursday, June 18 the sessions start at 11am, and run all day with the last one beginning at 7pm.

Friday, June 19 the sessions begin at 10am, and run throughout the day with the last one starting at 4pm. 

We will be using a separate entrance for this event, and the door for that will be clearly marked for those attending. 

You can sign up for the event below, if interested you better do so quick as several sessions are sold out already. Just choose the day you prefer, and than the time slot you would like to come. 

Sign up

Have a great weekend. It is my husbands birthday today so we will be doing some celebrating. 

Kayla

Relaunch Reviews

Happy Thursday, today was the first day of our Relaunch Event and we had so much fun. It was a long day for us, starting early with hanging quilts outside, getting our little presentation table set up and making sure we had the shop already to go with signage and sanitizer. 

We did the day in time slots, everyone got 45 minutes to shop and this method worked really well. It gave us time to clean, organize and catch our breath between groups. 

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The presentations also went really well, and the feedback so far has been great. 

Thank you everyone that attended today and has signed up for tomorrow, although we were very busy during the shut down with curbside and online orders, it sure is nice to have customers in the shop again. It just is not the same without you!

We are closed Saturday through Monday for the long weekend, but we open our doors again on Tuesday. There will be no need to make appointments, just come and shop as usual, we will just give you a squirt of hand sanitizer when you come in. If there is more than 7 customers in the shop we may ask you to wait outside until someone leaves. 

For those uncomfortable with shopping in store or those who are unable we will still offer curbside pickup. 

Have a great long weekend, we have some yard work to do at our place so hopefully the weather forecast remains good!

Kayla

PS no blog post Monday May 18

Relaunch, Reopen Event

It is another new week, a week that I w as supposed to be spending in Pittsburg. Esther, Carrie and I were set to be flying out to International Spring Quilt Market tomorrow, but that was all cancelled. Instead with the Government's announcement of Phase 1 of the Relaunch we will be doing a little event at the shop on Thursday and Friday instead. 

On Thursday and Friday this week the shop will be open by scheduled time slots. We opened them for booking on Saturday afternoon and all  the spaces for Thursday are now filled, there is still a couple open on Friday. The time slots are each 45 minutes long. You can sign up here for the event 

There is some fun things planned for this Relaunch Event. 

For everyone that booked a slot we have a free little gift for you. 

The shop will be 20% off for shopping with bag hardware, interfacing, elastic and already discounted fabrics excluded. 

If you make a purchase of $50 or more you will get a Swag Bag full of goodies from us and a few of our distributors. 

A Schoolhouse Presentation, and a Quilt show, more details below.

One of our favorite things to do at Quilt Market is attend Schoolhouse which are little lectures or presentations designed to teach us about a newly releasing product. 

We have decided to do a little Schoolhouse Series during our Relaunch Event, to give you a taste of what it is all about. 

We will give short presentations on a variety of subjects that we get the most questions about as shop owners. The timing of each is designed to be right before or right after the scheduled shopping times, that way you can come early and stay after your shopping appointment to listen to our presentations. These are not mandatory at all, and will be short, probably about 10 minutes each. They will take place outside, on the Eastside of our building. 

The schedule is as follows:

Thursday May 14

10:15am Panels and Precuts
11:15am Marking Tools

12:15pm Which Ruler When

1:15pm Batting and Beyond
2:15pm Why Buy a Pattern
3:15pm Pins and Needles
4:15pm Cutting Smart

Friday May 15
10:15am Which Ruler When
11:15am Batting and Beyond
12:15pm Panels and Precuts
1:15pm Why Buy A Pattern
2:15pm Marking Tools
3:15pm Cutting Smart
4:15pm Pins and Needles

We also have an outdoor Quilt Show planned. All of us have been doing a lot of time sewing in this shut down so we have lots of new quilts to display. 

After the event we will be closed Saturday-Monday for the long Weekend, and will reopen on Tuesday. This will be walk in as it was before the closures happened, with just a few more safety protocols in place.

Safety Protocols

We will be following Government Directives,
if dates change or we are told to again close doors to public access
we will comply immediately.

For those that come to shop we will be using the East door as our entrance.
We will be starting with allowing 7 customers plus staff in the shop,
so there may be the need to wait outside for a few minutes.
Sanitizing Station will be set up either right outside the door or right inside,
depending on the weather.

Please use the sanitizer available before fully entering the shop.
When inside, or standing in line outside please follow the 2 meter apart rule.
Inside the shop we ask that only one person at a time be in the
pattern or bag hardware sections as these spaces are a little more confined.
For the rest of the shop stay behind the marked lines at the counter and till.
Also please avoid leaning on the counters.

Do not come to our shop is you are experiencing any of the following:
cough, fever (over 38°C), shortness of breath, runny nose or sore throat.

For those that do not feel comfortable entering the shop
we will still offer curbside pickup.
The new pickup location will be on the Northside (main street)

Have a great week everyone, and I am so excited to start seeing your faces rather than just your cars. I am off to finish a few more quilts before Thursday rolls around. 

Kayla

Lethbridge Festival of Quilts

Happy Friday. Today was day 1 of the Quilt Festival in Lethbridge. I was at the show almost all day, I just stepped out to grab a few things from our shop and a coffee from The Chrysalis Cafe. It was a busy day at the show, I was told they even had to open a second lot for parking, because the first was full, and they have never had to do that before so that was great.
I loved meeting so many new people as well as reconnecting with friends.
Esther and I also did a presentation this afternoon. actually Esther did the presentation and I stood there nodding, and occasionally holding up a bag for her. Anyways our presentation was on Bags, and how the interfacing and hardware you use can transform your bag. We showed off some of our favorite bags as well.
I had a chance to walk through the show as well and there are some gorgeous quilts on display, and lots of vendor booths to do a little shopping at, some of them are local, but there is a good number of vendors that did some travelling to attend the show as well.
If you didn't make it out to the show today I highly recommend that you take some time to go out to the college tomorrow and browse through all the booths as well as look at all the beautiful quilts on display. If you do get there be sure to stop by our booth and say hi, and to take a picture with Mrs. Peck our new mascot. If you take a photo with her post it on Instagram with the tag #mrspecksadventures or post it as a comment on our Facebook page on the Lethbridge Quilt Show post, for a chance to win a gift basket from our shop.
Everything in our Booth at the Show and in our shop in on sale 20% off for the festival as well.
I hope you have a fantastic weekend. I am ending my busy week with a mini soccer tournament for my boys tomorrow morning and helping out either at the shop or at the show in the afternoon.
On a totally different topic altogether, I spent the day at Beauvais Lake yesterday on a field trip with my oldest. I haven't been to Beauvais for almost 20 years, but it is a park that I need make a point of visiting more often, it was so beautiful there, and my son loved the hiking and looking for frogs and tadpoles in the reeds around the lake. Have you visited lately? What parks around here do you love to visit?
 Kayla

June Events

Today marks the last day of May, and for me personally, June is one of the busiest months of my year. It is the last month of school for my boys, and with that comes year end field trips, our annual School Sports Day, year end parties, and trying to stay on routine until school officially lets out. With the warmer weather it is so easy for me to forget about bedtimes and homework. Soccer and softball are both going strong, though soccer only has a few weeks lefts. Also my husband and I both have our birthdays in June, as do several others in my family. As for the shop it looks like it's going to be a busy month as well.
This weekend marks 3 years since Esther purchased the shop, and so we are having a little Anniversary Sale for that. We have some blenders, batiks, and Kona solids on sale in our classroom.
 On Wednesday, June 12 at 7pm we have Rob from Trendtex coming to do a presentation for us on the process of designing and producing Moda Fabrics, and Esther and I will do a little talk about out trip to Market at this time as well. You do need to pre-register for this presentation, and you can do so by clicking this link. There are only a few spots left, so if you interested don't wait too long.
June 14 and 15 is the Lethbridge Quilt Festival. This is a fun event with vendor booths, lots of quilts to see, various demonstrations and a quilt raffle. We will have a booth at the event and we will be doing a little talk on Bag Hardware at the show. To see more details about the event just click here.
Our shop is participating in Row By Row again this year, and this fun Shop Hop type event begins on June 21. The theme this year is Taste The Experience, and Esther has designed a fun block featuring a food truck.
Coming up in July is the annual Settler Days in Coaldale. Our shop will have a float in the Candy Parade, and we will also be having a quilt sale that weekend. The quilts are all samples that we have made for the shop and no longer need.
Esther and I are busy putting together the fall class list right now, so if there are any classes you would like to see please let us know.
Have a great weekend,
Kayla

Quilt Market Highlights

Esther and I attended Spring Quilt Market in Kansas City last week. We arrived late Tuesday night, and headed straight to our hotel rooms for the night.
Wednesday we got all our badges for the event at the conference center, which by the way is built directly over top of several interstates. Afterwards we found a couple places for parking during the event and than headed out to Hamilton, which is the home of Missouri Star Quilt Company. Esther and I spent a few hours touring through the 12 shops, and met and took a photo with Jenny, of course we did some shopping while we were at it. We had a lunch at J's Burger Dive, and those were some really good burgers!
Back in Kansas City we went to the Steamboat of Arabia Museum. This steamboat sunk in the Missouri River in 1856 and was located in the middle of a cornfield in 1988. The boat was full of cargo destined for new mercantiles, and so all the artifacts are brand new, never been used 1856 originals. It was really neat to see a Museum full of brand new but old things, all the dishes were in perfect condition, and there were lots of boots, buttons, hardware and other household items as well.
After dinner at the Texas Roadhouse we add a break at the hotel, than decided to go out clothes shopping for a little while, Esther and I both found some fun summer outfits, as well as a great kids store that we did some damage at as well.
Thursday was a day full of Schoolhouse Sessions. These sessions are quick 30 minute lectures on a variety of topics. The topics ranged from class ideas, upcoming book releases, new fabric and patterns. shop display ideas, and more.
After Schoolhouse was Sample Spree. A number of vendors have booths set up with their product at a slightly discounted price, when it opens it is a free for all with people running all over the place and grabbing whatever they can get their hands on. It is so intense and so much fun! Esther and I came away with some great fat quarter bundles and several Aurifil Thread Boxes.
On the way back to the car we were trying to guess how much fabric we had and we decided there was no way we could have 150lbs worth on our shoulders, but when we got to the airport the next day it turned out we had close to that, as between our three suitcases we had over 150lbs and had to move some of it our carry-ons, and our suitcases together weighed less than 50 lbs on the incoming trip.
Friday was the actual Market. Exhibitors from the quilting world all come together to market their goods to shop owners and industry professionals. There are fabric designers, pattern designers, notion companies, books, batting, threads, and more. It is so neat to walk through all the booths and meet the people behind the products we love and use all the time.
Esther got her Moda All Stars On A Roll book signed by many of the Moda Designers that contributed patterns to the book. And I was able to get an early copy of Sunday Best Quilts by Sherri McConnell and Corey Yoder, and they kindly signed it for me too.
We met with Aaron Hoffman of Hoffman California, and showed him some of our recent quilts made using their fabrics, and he was thrilled to here that we have nearly all of the Call of The Wild Digital Prints in our shop.
We reconnected with Brad from Aurifil and talked about how things were going, and we talked about some new things with the Aurifil App. In the app you can "stash" the colors and weights of Aurifil that you have and make wish lists for what you still want, you can also see stores that carry it, what each weight should be used for, ad more. Brad said they are working on a color matcher for the app but it is not quite ready for the public use yet.
We also met with many of the fabric designers from Moda, Hoffman, Art Gallery and even a few new companies that are just starting out.
There are some fun new products coming from some of our favorite notion companies as well.
After walking through all the booths it was time to head home. We arrived at the airport with 3 heavy suitcases and boarded the first of two flights home. We were a little worried about our connection time, which was only 40 minutes, but storms across the North Western States turned that 40 minute connection into a 4 hour one. When we arrived in Great Falls at 1:30 am we headed to a hotel instead of the highway. After about 6 hours of sleep we got on the road and made it safely home to spend the remainder of Saturday with our families.
It was great to attend Quilt Market again this year, and we have some fun new ideas to implement, new classes for the fall, and new fabric to start making fresh samples. And there is a lot of new fabrics coming to the shop this fall!
To say our brains felt like exploding from all the new inspiration is not an exaggeration.
We truly love what we do, and we are so excited to be able to share the love of quilting with all of you!
Kayla

Classroom Update

On March 25 the renovation on our classroom began. Since that day it has undergone a vast transformation. The walls were framed in, drywalled, and painted. We got a real ceiling hung just this past weekend, and today Hermans Carpets laid down a new floor us today. We are also getting more lighting installed by Live Electric so the area will be nice and bright.
Esther and I had the opportunity to design a custom studio for the space as well and this will get installed by Adora tomorrow. We have a nice cutting table to do demos and our own cutting on. We have a custom ironing station that will fit our monster wool pressing mat, which measures 22"x60". There is lots of extra counter space for us to have our most used notions at our finger tips, and customized storage for those that are a little more specialized and for projects.
For the new classroom we have new chairs and new sewing tables that are nice and sturdy, as well as 3 designated counter height cutting tables and 3 ironing stations that will also have wool mats and Oliso irons for you to use.
There are a few more things that have been added but we will be having a big reveal on May 9 and 10, so you will have to come check it out than to get the full picture.
This weekend we have our Bionic Gear Bag Workshop, and I will post a recap of it on Friday Evening.
On Saturday, Chicken Feed Quilts will be featured on Instagram for The Great Canadian Shop Hop that began at the start of the month. If you are on Instagram be sure to follow us.
As mentioned on May 9 and 10 we will have our Classroom Reveal Party. There will be snacks and demos in our newly renovated classroom and some flash sales as well, so come check out our new space and learn about some of our favorite tools.
Also in May, Esther and I will be attending the Spring Quilt Market, which this time around is being held in Kansas City. We hope to also visit the Missouri Star Quilt Company while we are there. I love attending Quilt Market and always come home with so many new ideas and inspiration for the shop and new projects.
In June we have another information presentation planned and will I post more information about it in a few weeks. Also in June is the Lethbridge Festival of Quilts, which is a Quilt Show put on by the Lethbridge Centennial Quilters Guild with lots of quilts to see and vendor booths to shop at. We will have a booth there during the event.
These next two months are looking to be busy for us again, but I must say I love every bit of it.
This week is Easter Break for my boys, and I have spent the last few days hanging out with them at home, getting them to help with some spring cleaning (we cleaned the deep freezer out today) and doing some sewing, my oldest made himself a pillowcase today, and now my 5 year old is asking when he gets to make one.
Hope to see you at all some of these upcoming events,
Kayla