Hearts Ahead! (click images to enlarge)

Congratulations, Darcie! You've won our FIRST drawing for the Valentine's Day Contest!  Thanks for using the Snoopy Valentine Fabric for your beautifully-embroidered and quilted pillow!

****IMPORTANT: DEADLINE EXTENDED TO FEBRUARY 28TH ****

We have had so many days of restricted driving due to heavy snowfall, we are going to double your opportunities to win this Valentine's Day Contest! We will hold a drawing for a winner on February 14th as scheduled, but will hold a SECOND WINNER'S NAME on February 28th! It's not too late to begin a project using our sweet collection of Valentine Fabrics!  Remember, winter hours are 2 - 7 pm, Wednesdays through Saturdays.

Our first, new quilting event for 2015 will be a Valentine's Day Contest: come in to see our new collection of fabrics and make something for a loved one using some of our Valentine quilt-quality cotton.  We have several bolts to select from, and you can design your own project. Maybe a lap quilt ... or a pair of comfy quilted slippers, or a Valentine's Day box, or bag, or hat ... or a yoga mat, or a set of placemats and napkins ... there are so many ideas on the internet today, and we have some of these as patterns in the shop! Be creative and come up with something someone you love will love!

Here's how the contest will work: there are three potential levels of your choice.

•   If you use at least one of our new Valentine's Day fabrics in your work, you'll qualify for a level one prize ... a ten dollar gift certificate for Wooden Toy and Gift or Quilters' Quarters.  
• If you use two of our fabrics, you'll qualify for a level two prize ... two $10 gift certificates, to spend or share with your Valentine.  
• And if you use three or more of our Valentine Fabrics in your Valentine Gift, you'll win a $25.00 gift certificate for either Rick's shop or Terry's ~ the winner chooses! Both shops are located together at 59 North Street, Georgetown, Massachusetts ~ just two doors north of Perley School.
• Bring your finished Valentine's Day Contest project in to our shop by Friday, February 13th to have a photo taken of it. Your name and the photo of your project will be put into an envelope and then into "the heart sack" and the winner will be drawn on Saturday, February 14th.

Wooden Toy and Gift puzzle

If you're not familiar with Rick's Wooden Toy and Gift shop, stop in to see it, or visit his website: www.WoodenToyandGift.net.

Here is our new collection of Valentine Fabrics; we also have a "make your own yoga mat and carry sack" pattern for only $2.00! And don't forget to mention that you are entering the Valentine's Day Contest - because that will get you a ten percent discount on the Valentine's Day Contest fabrics (prices range from $4.00 to $11.00 per yard.) You can also purchase these fabrics at our webstore: Valentine Fabrics

Fabric collection from Quilting Treasures,
an employee-owned company in the U.S.A.

Yoga Kitties in their Yoga positions...

with a matching paw-print fabric

Snoopy fabrics with kind, encouraging messages

This panel makes a fabric book of "Tips from the Gang" 

Lots of blending hearts and flowers fabrics

As always, if you are reading this update in your email, thank you for signing up for the newsletter. We usually publish it about twice a month, but in between editions, we also update the various pages that comprise this blog. December additions are at the Georgetown Quilts of Valor page,  and progress on current quilts at Terry's Quilting Journal 2014 page.  Come visit us at the blog and see what else is happening at Quilters' Quarters

Feel free to share this email or blog link with your friends and families. Thank you for sharing our pages.

Terry, web page TerryCrawfordPalardy.com, email: needlesandpens@comcast.net
Rick, web page WoodenToyandGift.net, email: woodentoyandgift@comcast.net
Rick's blog: WTandGNews.blogspot.com

Holiday Hours

Hi everyone,

Quilters' Quarters and Wooden Toy and Gift will be closed for the holidays next Wednesday, Christmas Eve and Thursday, Christmas Day.  So that means that we have only TOMORROW, Saturday December 20th, as an official open day.

But we will probably be around town on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday of Christmas week; the signs may not say open, but if you need some last minute stocking stuffers, we'll be happy to open our shops for you. Just give us a call at 978-352-2676 to schedule a visit; if we're not home, we'll hear your message later in the day and return your call if you leave your number.

Post Christmas we will be open our regular hours (11 to 7) on Friday 12/26 and Saturday12/27.  We'll be closed most of the week of New Year's (Sunday 12/28 through Thursday 1/1/2015) with just early afternoon hours on New Year's Eve.

Post New Year's Day we return to our regular schedule of Wed. > Sat., 11-7 pm.

Sunday	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday		Friday	Saturday
					12/26 Open 11-7		12/27 Open 11-7
12/28 Closed	12/29 Closed	12/30 Closed	12/31 OPEN 11 am - 3 pm	1/1/2015 Closed	1/2/2015 Open 11-7		1/3/2015 Open 11-7
1/4 closed	1/5 closed	1/6 closed	1/7 OPEN 11-7	1/8 OPEN 11-7	1/9 OPEN 11-7		1/10 OPEN 11-7

There are new listings at the web store now for Quilters' Quarters - the winter fabrics are there, and Terry's patterns for not only the Row by Row 2014 but also the Quick and Clever tube pillowcase, and the snowflake applique.  Kits are also available for the pillowcase and snowflake ... look elsewhere on the webstore page for those.

Valentine's Day fabrics have just arrived in the shop this week, so watch for those in our next newsletter.

As always, if you are reading this update in your email, thank you for signing up for the newsletter. We usually publish it about twice a month, but in between editions, we also update the various pages that comprise this blog. Recent additions are the Massachusetts Women Artists' page,  and progress on current quilts at Terry's Quilting Journal 2014 page.  Come visit us at the blog and see what else is happening at Quilters' Quarters

Feel free to share this email or blog link with your friends and families. Thank you for sharing our pages.

Terry, web page TerryCrawfordPalardy.com, email: needlesandpens@comcast.net
Rick, web page WoodenToyandGift.net, email: woodentoyandgift@comcast.net
Rick's blog: WTandGNews.blogspot.com

My favorite season begins!

Remember that you can click on any photo to enlarge it for detail. :)
Temperatures here in northeast Massachusetts have been yo-yo-ing this past week, from below freezing to warm sixties. We've had a few dustings of snow, never more than 2 - 3 inches, which is about right for early December. The weather forecasters make "much ado about nothing" and when we don't have enough to satiate them, they spend a great deal of time talking about the weather elsewhere in the country and beyond.

winter fabrics in blues

My favorite season is winter - partly because I was a school teacher and the occasional cancelled school days did give me extra hours at home to catch up on correcting, scoring and reporting. But I'm also enamored of the elimination of things like mosquitoes, and the clean look of snow-covered autumn debris. The slowing of traffic is balanced by the quickened pace of walkers, and the world seems purposeful, and centered.

When the snow covers the dying grass
and reaches to the bottom of the windowsill,
all will be right with this scene.

Many suffer from the loss of sunlight in winter's darkened days, but I had chosen to avoid the sun decades ago, due to heat intolerance of multiple sclerosis then un-diagnosed but clearly present; the more recent diagnosis of melanoma confirmed my decision to avoid the sun's rays as much as possible, and so winter doesn't have the same effect on me as on others. I'm happy when I'm inside, with doors closed until opened to welcome friends and customers.

Our Sugar Plum Fairy

This is a month of celebratory get-togethers: this week I vended at our Essex County Needlecraft Guild on Wednesday, and then participated in a notions swap at our Merrimack Valley Quilt Guild on Thursday. Good food and good company in both of those settings. And between events,  the change of seasons has seen Rick and I moving things around in our shops, getting ready for our next holiday event: on Saturday December 13th, we'll be participating in Georgetown's Holiday Shop-Hop, treating customers to sales and light refreshments, Christmas music and Season's Greetings.  And then the following day I'll go to the theatre and watch my niece dance once again as the Sugar Plum Fairy in the Nutcracker Ballet. I'll be working later this winter on a quilt made of her costumes through the years of ballet recitals.

dark background,
metallic accents

Many Christmas fabrics!

Our new Christmas fabrics are in stock and are beautiful. In bolts of Hoffman's and Timeless Treasures, red cardinals and green firs on a gold-metallic-trimmed black fabric, with white snow covering off-white birch branches on another cardinal print... a small print of poinsettia  blossoms and another of blue jays.

Pillowcase kits and pattern

Soft flannel prints of green and blue backgrounds are sporting prints of snowmen wrapped in brightly-colored scarves (duly printed with the warning that they are not intended for children's sleepwear.) I'm offering a $3.00 pillowcase pattern free when the flannel kits are purchased.

Tea Cozies made from my
pattern and kits

 I also have patterns for tea-cozies for sale, which come free when a kit of quilt-quality fabrics are purchased to make your own lovely tea-cozy. Or you can buy one ready-made by me!

We have another fabric artist sharing remnants of her beautiful choices: we're calling her collection

Barb's Yards

"Barb's Yards" and show-casing them in the antique black bureau of our shop. Barb Harrold makes sculpted fabric characters and creatures of the most amazingly eclectic fabrics!

We've collected an abundance of rulers, needles, pins, cutters, mats and other notions and arranged them in an area we call the Quilters' Toolbox.

Quilter's Toolbox

A tree full of notions!

Come and see the special collection which includes a Tucker's Trimmer, Dear Jane's triangle and square, Olfa's rotating 15" cutting mat and so many more. We've even found an ergonomically correct cutting wheel from Martinelli's that is for left handed quilters! We got one for the right handed, too.


Come visit us any Wednesday, Thursday, Friday or Saturday from 11 am to 7 pm. We'd love to see you and share our first full year of collecting fabrics and tools for you.

Vintage Machines 

We always have tea and cocoa along with quality products and reasonable prices to warm you. And on the thirteenth of December, we'll have those light refreshments as well! And sales! And a raffle ticket drawing at check-out for total sale discounts!

Green blenders with a mellow birch fabric

Christmas novelty prints that kids love!

Another vintage machine

As always, if you are reading this update in your email, thank you for signing up for the newsletter. We usually publish it about twice a month, but in between editions, we also update the various pages that comprise this blog. Recent additions are the Massachusetts Women Artists' page,  and progress on current quilts at Terry's Quilting Journal 2014 page.  Come visit us at the blog and see what else is happening at Quilters' Quarters

Feel free to share this email or blog link with your friends and families. Thank you for sharing our pages.

Terry, web page TerryCrawfordPalardy.com, email: needlesandpens@comcast.net
Rick, web page WoodenToyandGift.net, email: woodentoyandgift@comcast.net
Rick's blog: WTandGNews.blogspot.com

Fabric Christmas book and more panels