Quilt Market 2015 Review Part 1

Things are finally settling down now that Quilt Market is over.  Now the fun job of reviewing everything we saw starts!  I took over 600 pictures and that's not including what Queen Bee took with her phone!  We saw so many amazing new fabric lines coming out, new products that are available, and new patterns and books that we want to add to our website.  I'm breaking my Market Review into two posts, simply because there is so much to post about!

First, I know everyone is excited about the new Tula Pink line, Chipper!

Chipper is a great line to pair with her other lines.  We were sad that there were no big faces in this line, but there are some really cute foxes and chipmunks!

Tula Pink is also developing a line of hardware!  8" Shears, Surgical Blade Seam Ripper, and Thread Snips.  We have them up for pre-order currently.

Also, I ran into Tula Pink herself on the market floor and we just had to take a picture!

She loved my bag and wallet set, made by Tilly T Boutique, out of Elizabeth.

She also signed my Tula Pink coloring book for me!

Another big thing that we're excited about it Art Gallery is releasing a line of Denim!

Included in the line are a variety of printed denims that are soft to the touch and hold so many possibilities!  And a heavier denim, perfect for those rough and tumble boys in our lives!  And the rough and tumble girls, too.  They can be just as hard on their clothes!  We will have the pre-order up soon in our group, so make sure you join us!

Art Gallery has some beautiful lines coming out soon and we've had the pre-orders up in the group already.  You can see them all in our group albums.

Cotton + Steel knocked it out of the park with fun, playful lines this fall, with names like Cat Lady (which Bitty Bee is *very* excited about) and Macrame.  Pre-orders are going up soon!

Lewis & Irene is another company that we were in awe of.  They joined the fabric world last year and have been an instant hit in the sewing world.  Last year, their Spring Hare line completely sold out of the warehouse and was in high demand.  This year, they have more lines!  I had to break them into three collages to include all of it!

Mermaids, beach life, bunnies and hedgehogs!

Circus, bike rides, fairies, and a trip to China!

Two great Christmas lines, one of which has panels for Christmas stockings and an advent calendar!

We love getting to chat with Brian from Lewis & Irene and finding out the 

inspiration behind some of his fabric designs.  

Quilt Market 2015 was a lot of fun, we saw a lot of great things to bring to you, and this is just the tip of the ice burg!  Tomorrow I will be putting together another Market Review post to show off more of what we saw!

~*~Princess Bee~*~

Quilt Market 2015 Recap

We're still having fun in Houston, just one day of Quilt Market left, but I want to share all we've seen so far!  We've been posting like crazy to our Instagram feed and in our Facebook Group.

I want to highlight a few things over here.  We're expanding what we're offing on the website to include patterns, books and notions.  We've already started adding notions, in the form of buttons and ribbons and laces.  We picked up some more laces and trims this weekend to add to the site and met with some suppliers that we're excited about ordering from.

Books and patterns will be showing up on the website soon, also!  We ordered a few books and picked some up while we were at Quilt Market.  I'll start adding them this week.  We found some great new clothing pattern designers that we're excited about adding to the website.

We also found some great starter quilt patterns for our customers who are wanting to get into quilting.  I'll actually be making up a sample of one of them to see how easy it is for someone who has never quilted!  Queen Bee will be able to put together kits for the quilts, coordinating accent fabrics with a main fabric of your choice.

Clover has released some new small project looms, and they look really fun!  We are talking about adding some Clover items to the website.  

Beehive Buzz - October 5, 2015

It's Monday!! First off - let's send prayers and uplifting thoughts to our Beauties in South Carolina. I know we have a lot of members there and the scenes of flooding that I'm seeing on the news are just horrible. Please keep the East Coast in your thoughts and prayers this week.

We'll we're getting closer to Quilt Market and I'm starting to see some of the new fabrics that will debut at market. I stumbled upon a new release coming from Camelot that will make a lot of Beauties happy. They are going to be doing Disney!! Yay!! Camelot is a quilt shop quality fabric company and I"m so excited that we'll be able to offer Disney now. As many of you know I don't like the quality of Springs so haven't offered it in the past (the few bolts we did order and have on our website was because grandkids wanted them and who could say no to grands!!). So now we'll be able to offer it in the group.

Also getting closer to our 3rd Annual Quilt Market Sale - we'll be updating the document in the files this week to the new date, October 18th and time (to be determined). This is a fun day and a crazy day around here - we'll also have remnant bundles and sales in the group. So invite your friends to join our group because sale codes will only be available in the group.

Did you see this month's Beauty Box!! If not go to our website and order yours today. Two of our Beauties - Tara and Alexis - used their creative powers to spark yours!! (You can see their creations here) We still have a few left of each color way. This is one that is "out of the box" and you don't want to miss out on this lovely fabric from Allison Glass.

Over in the Bee Quilted Sewing Lounge there is a pillowcase swap going on. Join in on the fun!! Also, that's the place to share, ask questions, and just hang out!!

Later today in the fb group I'll be updating the "Order Status" and tomorrow I'll have the "International Shipping" updated. I want to thank y'all for your patience in waiting for me to cut and ship. As most of you know I also run an embroidery business and this past month or so it's been very busy with school starting up and 3 different large events that I do work for. I'm on the last event so shipping should get back to normal. Please remember that the embroidery business partially funds the fabric shop (at this time) so I have to get those orders out to be able to pay for the fabric coming in. Thanks for your support!!

~*~Queen Bee~*~

October Beauty Box

This month, we have a fresh new Beauty Box featuring fabric from Allison Glass!

And this fabric is beautiful!!!  It's from her Handcrafted line and the colors are vibrant and eye-catching.

We asked two of our talented Beauties to "bee" inspired with this month's Beauty Box and these two ladies have knocked our socks off!

First up, we have Alexis Wright, owner of My Sweet Sunshine.

Alexis brought the fabric to life with this stunning dress.  We asked her to share a little about her experience.

My Daughter and I both loved the fabric design and colors. She really like bright colors along side graphic prints. I loved colors too  and even more importantly to me was the ease of sewing with it! I LOVE working with  Renaissance Ribbon. It is easy to work with. Super soft and beautiful prints and colors.

I'm in awe of Alexis's talent!

Next up, Tara Thomsen, owner of Tilly T Boutique, put together this sunning purse and wallet set.

We asked Tara to share her experience with us, too.

As far as thoughts on the fabrics they are so much better in person than in pictures even. The depth of color and slight variations from being hand dyed are hard to capture in the pictures. I love each of the fabrics individually, but I'll admit that they weren't anything I would have pulled to go together. Yet somehow once they were all together it worked. This group of fabric was a lot of fun to work with to break me out of a creativity rut.

I adore the set she put together with the Allison Glass fabric!

These Beauty Boxes are now available on our website, we only have 7 of each colorway available, so get your fast, before they sell out!

I can't wait to see what our other Beauties do with this beautiful fabric!

~*~Princess Bee~*~

Something Wicked This Way Comes

My favorite time of year is upon us!  I love autumn and Halloween is my favorite holiday of the year!

We have been getting in some pretty awesome Halloween fabrics and Bitty Bee fell in love with Wicked Eve from Timeless Treasures.

She donned her witch hat and took to the woods to cast a few spells!

She conjured up a breeze and nearly lost her hat!  I think it startled her a bit!

Poor Bitty Bee discovered that sometimes, fire is hot and falling wax from candles burns!

Don't worry, no Bitty Bees were harmed in the taking of these pictures 

and the magic was just in her imagination!

She does really like her new Halloween romper (pattern by Ellie Inspired) and can't wait to wear it to her co-op classes and show it off to her friends!

And now, I have to get to work on some awesome Halloween costumes!

~*~Princess Bee~*~

Cultivate in Fall Wrap Up

About a month ago, I saw Art Gallery Fabrics post about a new contest, Cultivate in Fall.  It was a simple contest, create something with Bonnie Christine's line Cultivate and email it in.  Then, all of the entries were posted to Pinterest for voting.  

The winner was chosen by popular vote and the Beauties pulled through for me!  

Thanks to all of our fans and my friends and family voting, I took first place!

I made this cute dress with the Giselle Pattern by Kate & Rose Patterns.

I made the dress out of voile to keep it nice and lightweight for fall.

Gamer was my photographer for this dress and for 10 years old, I say he's got some talent!

I had a lot of fun during this contest and got to sew for myself, which is something I don't do much.

And the best part?  My prize package came in today!

I can't wait to get sewing!  Once I get caught up on a few other projects, first...  lol

Happy Sewing, Beauties!

~*~Princess Bee~*~

Indian Summer: One Thimble Blog Tour

The new issue of One Thimble, a quarterly sewing ezine, is out and it's full of cute patterns!  I especially love the versatility of the Cosmos Reversible Skirt by Sew Maris Designs.

I used some Art Gallery fabric from a couple years ago that I had in my stash.  The line is called Indian Summer and Bitty Bee loves it!  For the first side, I picked a light background with trees and teepees and mountains.

For the reverse side, I chose a darker fabric, this one in teal with feathers and cacti.

To go with the skirt, I found a teal long sleeved shirt and added a touch of embroidery to the front.

I really like the length of this skirt, it comes down to her knees, 

which is a good length for back to school.
Plus, it's "dad-approved" at this length!

I did change up the construction just a little,
I made a casing for an enclosed elastic waistband after sewing the bottom scallops and turning, instead of the fold over elastic waistband.

I look forward to taking the time to read the rest of this issue of One Thimble, the patterns all look amazing and I hear there are some really good articles!

~*~Princess Bee~*~

8/13 Pattern Revolution, Call Ajaire, Happy Okapi

8/14 Rebel and Malice, Handcrafted by Red, Lily Shine Boutique

8/15 Lady and the Gents, Horris and Deedle,  Bee Quilted Blog

8/16 Create 3.5, Lulu and Celeste, 

8/17 Beri Bee Designs, Finn's Door

8/18 Hibbadoray, HattieLu Handmade

8/19 Made by Sara, Snickerdoodle Stew

8/20 Stitches By Laura, That's Sew Kari

Adding Pockets for Bitty Bee

Bitty Bee has taken a fancy to rompers this summer and has tasked me with making her some new ones this summer.  Normally an easy task, but she also loves having pockets and not all romper patterns have pockets.  For example, this free romper pattern from The Purl Bee.

When trying out new designers, I like to make a trial run out of some of my older fabric stash before cutting into good stuff.  For this trial run, I had some really pretty green Native American style fabric.  Bitty Bee loves that it has horses running across the front.

The fit was pretty good on her, she's tall for her age and I made the size 8/9.  For future ones, I'm adding about an inch to the bodice length and an inch to the length of the shorts.

The challenge she gave me for her next one: she wanted pockets!

I can do this, easy peasy!  All I needed was a shorts/pants pattern that has pockets.  For mine, I used Simplicity 1625.  This pattern uses a single piece pocket instead of two separate pieces, like I've seen in many PDF patterns.  I prefer the single piece pocket.

 

I took the pocket piece and cut out the pocket curve from my romper front short pattern piece.  Then I made a new pattern piece for the fold over pocket, since the Simplicity pattern has a slight curve to the hip.  I kept the overall size of the pocket the same, just made the outer edges of the pocket piece straight instead of curved.

To insert my pocket, I lined up the shorts front to the pocket piece, right sides together.  I used a 1/4" seam allowance for my seam.  Make sure you clip the curve before turning to press.  I topstitched along the curved edge after pressing.

Next, to make the pocket, I folded the pocket piece so that the edge lined up with the side seam of the shorts and pressed in place.  Then I ran the bottom of the pocket through the serger.  I basted the pocket edges the side seam and top of the shorts front to make the rest of the construction easier.  (I forgot to take a picture of my basting.  Oops!)

After adding the pockets to the shorts, I followed along with the remaining instructions on The Purl Bee.

The Exploding TARDIS fabric can be found on our website.

This romper is becoming a staple in my summer sewing collection!  Bitty Bee love the style and with the elastic in the bodice, she is able to get it on and off without untying the straps.  That's a definite win for me!

~*~Princess Bee~*~

Beehive Buzz - July 15, 2015

It's been a busy week around here and I haven't had a chance to sit down to write any updates!

I've been busy uploading more and more fabric to our website, we have a lot to go through and inventory!

We have also been talking about a new addition to the website: patterns!  Queen Bee has found some really cute paper patterns that she's ordered and we also met with some really awesome designers at Quilt Market last year who we're looking at placing orders with.  I will be looking into adding PDF patterns to our site as well.  We're both really excited about this new expansion in our shop!

New preorders have been posted in the group on Facebook, please join us if you haven't yet!

I'm looking into teaching some simple sewing classes soon and will be sharing the projects from our classes in the coming weeks!  I was given a great idea for a simple class by Queen Bee, who saw a youth sewing class in progress yesterday.  I can't wait to teach this class!

~*~Princess Bee~*~

Time to Celebrate, times two!

Tomorrow, we, as a country, will celebrate our independence.  Celebrate the birth of our nation, the start of this glorious country.  Bitty Bee and Gamer have been down at the Beehive all week, but I'm joining them today so that we can celebrate together tomorrow.  I've been missing my babies, the house has been too quiet, and I'm looking forward to lots of hugs tonight!  

Tomorrow, we, as a small business, are also going to be celebrating a new step in our journey.  We recently launched a brand new website and have been in a "soft launch" mode.  On July 4th, as we celebrate our nation's independence, we will kick off our official launch of the new site with a big sale!

Everything on the website (excluding Beauty Boxes) will be 40% off with code FREEDOM, starting at 12:01 am and lasting until 12:00 pm on July 4th.

Also, in our Facebook group, we will be having special fabric sales all day tomorrow.  These will be fabrics that are not on the website at this time.  Come join us for these extra, exclusive sales!

Have a Safe and Happy Fourth of July!

~*~Princess Bee~*~