How We Stock the Quilters' Quarters

Every now and then I'll post a new resource here.  Quilters' Quarters is in its fifth month of existence this week, and our goal was to have a strong presence in town and on line by the time we have our first annual celebration. That gives us seven months to be sure that we are carrying things that you want us to carry.

Here's a look at some of our suppliers, or resources:

New England Quilt Supply

•  Located in Pembroke, Massachusetts, NEQS is a four-floor warehouse of fabrics, notions, batting, books, rotary mats, cutters, blades and threads of all sorts. Because Quilters' Quarters is a registered retail store with them, we can buy goods at wholesale prices. We then sell them in our shop or online at retail prices, but can discount to promote however we wish (and can afford to do.)
  
• This company has an online catalog of all of the products they carry. Customers can go to the catalog, where they will, upon clicking open an item, find retail prices, order numbers, manufacturing details etc. A customer can then browse at leisure and let us know via email any products that you would like us to carry or stock personally for you. As we will have to buy a full bolt or at least a half-bolt, we will do order and if it is something that we think other customers will want as well, we will order it and sell at retail the limited amount that you want .  But, if it is truly unique and we don't think we'll find another buyer to buy the rest, or at least more, of the bolt, we will ask the customer ordering it to buy the full or half-bolt from us. Most bolts at NEQS are 15 yards, but they will split a bolt in half if asked, charging a small fee of $1.00 per bolt.
• You can find a link to our shop on New England Quilt Supply's Retail Store Locator by clicking Massachusetts on their map. A large number of local quilt shops work with new England Quilt Supply and their websites and locations are available at this link. We are happy to refer to other quilt shops to help our customers find what they are looking for as quickly as meets their needs. 

Quilting Treasures

Click Here to Link to the Linus Project Fabrics

• Located in Cranston, Rhode Island and owned by employees who live in many areas, this company has a long history of providing quality quilt-shop fabrics. Once made in a factor in western Massachusetts, the fabrics are now ordered and delivered from South Carolina and New Jersey. The designs, patterns and kits are all developed specifically for Quilting Treasures. Our Quilting Treasures Sales Representative lives nearby in Southern New Hampshire.
• Each season a new line will be released, and will be available for at least two years. Fabrics that sell well will be repeated for another two year cycle. Designers are creating new sets of pattern designs continually. 
• One of the panels I've ordered (which will arrive in mid-March, 2014) is of Linus holding his blanket; this is part of the Linus Project, which the Merrimack Valley Quilt Guild has supported. I'm happy to be a part of that guild, and will continue offering fabrics that are child-centered.
• As with New England Quilt Supply, we will order full bolts of 12 yards each. 
• Quilting Treasures also has a second line of fabrics called V.I.P., which have lower prices per yard and sometimes fewer yards on a bolt. These are fabrics that you may also find at large retail chains like JoAnn's and Walmart. We can order those also. 
• Customers can view fabrics of Quilting Treasures at their website. 

A Traveling Salesman named Joe

• Joe travels from shop to shop offering fabrics from many manufacturers (similar to the lines of fabrics offered at New England Quilt Supply, with whom he works directly.) Joe's bolts are  10 yard bolts, and prices are very similar to both NEQS and QT. 
  
• Joe does not (to my knowledge) have an online catalog of his own: however, he does deal in fabrics from Timeless Treasures, Henry Glass, RJR and many more. I bought several bolts of 'blender' fabrics from Joe on his first visit to our shop. Blenders are tone on tone small prints that provide complementary backgrounds for quilt blocks.  
• Joe deals only with quilt-shop quality fabrics. I will get a complete list of the companies he deals with in the near future, and customers will be able to browse those company's sites and I will be able to order through Joe to find those fabrics being sought. 

Online fabric and notion websites

Occasionally, I will go online to purchase something for the shop.  Some of the sites I favor for this shopping are easily accessible, and most offer "follow by email" links to give a heads-up now and then for special sale items. Shipping is always an expense, but occasionally free shipping is offered if buying in quantity. Here are my favorite on-line sites:

• Keepsake Quilting a shop in New Hampshire filled with fabric!
• JoAnn Fabrics lots of coupons for special sales
• Annie's many pages of fabrics, notions and classes
• Craftsy video classes for nominal fees, and easy to save and refer to when needed
• Fons and Porter more notions and books than you could shake a stick at - fabric quarters, too.

And, don't forget: You Tube has a lot of FREE videos on specific quilt skills and ideas! Once you try one, you'll see many more along the side margin.  Some of the advertisements can be skipped after a few seconds. Give it a try! This one is one of the companies that has many videos that are very clear. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHfIXnk_W4A. 

Enjoy some quiet computer time that will whet your appetite for visiting quilt shops! I love having company in the shop and talking with quilt makers - such nice people!

If you're reading this in your email - THANKS! for signing up to follow the blog:  http://AtQuiltersQuarters.Blogspot.com

Happy sewing! ~ Terry

New Fabrics in Stock!

Rick and I had a wonderful shopping trip to New England Quilt Supply this week, and came home with several more bolts of fabric.  I'm posting some pictures here to let you have a virtual tour of what new bolts you will find in our shop.  

In addition to the fabrics, we brought back some more Omnigrid rulers, some cute little seam rippers with rubber tops that will pick up the "otts" (bits of cut threads) left behind when a seam is unsewn, and some dear little sandpaper "dots" that our friend Bev recommended for holding the rulers still when rotary cutting fabric:

Come visit us, Wednesday through Saturday, 11 am - 7 pm. Pull in the driveway or park out front. Street parking after four pm and on weekends, or across the street all the time. We look forward to seeing you and learning what you like and would like to see in our shop.

~Terry and Rick

email:

 needlesandpens@comcast.net 

woodentoyandgift@comcast.net

websites: 

www.woodentoyandgift.net 

http://wtandgnews.blogspot.com 

www.terrycrawfordpalardy.com

http://atquiltersquarters.blogspot.com

Official "Buyers"

Rick and I will be making another trip to the wholesale fabric shop in Pembroke this week. I've never really thought of myself as much of a shopper ... I go looking for a specific item, like a pair of shoes for back to school, or a pair of sneakers every other summer. Every few years, I'll buy a bag of multi-colored summer socks, or take a trip up to Freeport, Maine to find wool socks for the winter. I don't have the knack for looking at clothes on a rack and figuring out which of them would fit me well. I tend to buy the same clothes over and over ... dungarees in the men's department, turtleneck jerseys or mock turtle sleeveless for summer wear. Whichever is on sale is the one I decide is right for me. And now that I'm retired I don't need to think about school clothes and can simply wear what I already have on hand. What a relief!


But shopping for fabric - that is a different thing altogether.  It's a little overwhelming to walk into a building with four floors of fabrics, plus notions, and crates full of batting and remnants sold by the pound. It took a bit of getting used to, but I'm beginning to know where to look for certain items. And I'm learning to remember to bring a specific list with me, and cross things off when I either find them or see them and decide I don't need them. Most important is having Rick with me, for he remembers where we've already been and what we're looking for on a certain floor.

In any fabric shop I'm used to always buying a bit more than I think I need, because yes, I have been the quilter looking for just one more row of that certain fabric for a nearly-finished border. But in the warehouse, most of what I buy comes in bolts of 10 or 15 yards. So the dollars add up quickly! The workers will, for a very small fee of $1.00 per bolt, split a bolt in half. That's what I've been doing with some of our first bolts, to add some variety without overbuying anything. Until we see a steady customer base we're buying blind when building our stock.

I will shop for my customers at the warehouse if what they need is what I could also sell in my shop. If they want just a few yards of a certain fabric, and I have to buy at least 7 or 10 yards, it has to be something I believe others will want to buy as well. And it will have to be in combination with other fabric and notion shopping  for our own business, because there is a minimum purchase amount for each shopping trip. I'll talk with customers as they visit the shop and invite them to search the warehouse on-line catalog for notions, threads and such, and perhaps a bolt of fabric that we can split.

A salesman called a week or so ago and introduced himself to me and asked if he might come by to show me fabric samples. I told him we were working with the warehouse in Pembroke, and he said he is, too. So I invited him to come, and he brought in large portfolios of fabric samples. Truly, I think he had a Mary Poppins' bag, for he pulled sample after sample until my entire cutting table was covered about twelve inches deep! He had many of the fabrics we'd seen in Pembroke, and new fabrics due to be released this spring. I decided to order half a dozen bolts with him of what is called "blender" fabrics ... small prints that coordinate with the dominant blocks in a quilt. They will be delivered by UPS, and we'll know then how much the shipping weight is.

Rick and I may, in time, be comfortable ordering by telephone or email from Pembroke and having fabrics shipped to us. Right now, when we go down and buy several bolts of fabric we think we are saving a lot on shipping cost. We estimated, using the federal mileage reimbursement figure, that each time we travel down to the warehouse we are using about sixty dollars in reimbursement or deductible terms. Until I'm able to purchase fabrics without touching them or holding them side by side, we'll continue to shop in person. A day on the highway with Rick is always a pleasant day, capped off with a brownie and lunch on the way home.

We plan on running the Quilters' Quarters and Wooden Toy and Gift for the next few decades; the characters in my new mystery series, Helen and Henry, are foreshadowing folks whom Rick and I might become in time. It's like writing a script of what we'd like our future to look like.  And when something is written down, it's not forgotten and can become a road map of where we want to be. That's a powerful feeling!



email:
 needlesandpens@comcast.net 

woodentoyandgift@comcast.net

websites: 

www.woodentoyandgift.net 

http://wtandgnews.blogspot.com 

www.terrycrawfordpalardy.com

http://atquiltersquarters.blogspot.com