I haven’t done much traveling for a while due to health issues (which are much better now, thank you!). And frankly, air travel just isn’t much fun any more. So when I have the opportunity to take care of 2 big events in one trip, I’m a pretty happy camper. The last week of August, I headed off to Ohio for the Checker Distributors Anniversary Open House and to do some more filming for Quilting Arts TV.

I flew into Cleveland and drove to Maumee, home of Checker Distributors. It’s pretty amazing to see how they transformed a part of the HUGE warehouse into a really nice space for authors and vendors to visit with the shops owners that came in for the day. If you want to see more about the open house, go to the Checker Newsletter and search for “Open House Review”

I was stationed next to Rayna Gillman, author of Create Your Own Hand-Printed cloth. We had a great time making a mess as we showed the shoppers how to transform fabric with paintstiks, liquid paints, rubbing plates, stencils, masking tape, and miscellaneous other stuff. (How’s that for a technical term!) Near the end of the day, a nice tall gentleman took a photo of us. Hard to believe we were still smiling after being on our feet each day, but it really was lots of fun. There were about 200 shops at the event, so we had LOTS of people to talk to.

In addition to the usual paintstik demo, I was showing people how to use paintstik color to paint zippers, velcro, and Handy Tabs from Lazy Girl Designs. I’ll share more about this in another post, but Joan (chief Lazy Girl) and I had a good time sending customers back and forth. I used Joan’s Handy Tabs to hold the handles on my new Bosa Nova Bags, and Joan sent people over to me to see how they could paint the tabs if they need a different color. We’re all in this together, so we may as well help promote each other’s businesses.

Here’s a sneak peek at the new Bosa Nova Bags. No, the pattern has not gone to the printer yet, but yes, it will be ready for fall Quilt Market at the end of October. You’ll just have to wait! The Handy Tabs are just wonderful because 1) you just pull them out of the bag and stitch them right into a seam when you need to hold a handle or drawstring (or whatever) and 2) there is no added bulk. If you make your own tabs, you always wind up with some lumps from the extra seam allowances (and it takes time to make them and I am learning to be very LAZY!) Visit the Lazy Girl Designs site for more good information on these neat little tabs.

A big thank you to the wonderful staff at Checker for taking good care of us during our visit to Maumee. If we needed any thing, we just flagged down anyone in a blue Checker shirt, and they got it done. Things should always be so easy!

After a welcome night of rest, it was off to Cleveland again for Quilting Arts TV… but more on that later.

I know it’s been ages since I posted anything to the blog. We’ve been totally busy here at the office. Lots of things happening here, including moving the business to a new location in the booming metropolis of Miltona. It’s a tiny town in the middle of Minnesota, but the office is only 5 miles from home, so it’s a wonderful location for us!

Rubbing plates have turned into a really interesting adventure. Our paint supplier works with a lot of school supply accounts and placed our plates with  a couple of large accounts. We used to think it was big to ship a few hundred plates for an order. Not any more… Check out this photo from a shipment we made just before we moved to our new location. Leanne and Jack packed up more than 2500 sets of plates that day. I know it’s a big order when the stack of empty cartons is taller than they are.

Lots of people ask where we have the plates made, and I’m very happy to tell you they are Made in Minnesota, from start to finish. Here’s how it goes:

I work with graphic artist Matthew Mills to formulate a set of designs. Matthew does all the technical illustrations and designs the packaging. Matthew now lives in the Twin Cities and works for Target Corp., but he has been wonderful about continuing to work for me on the side. Yeah!

Once we get a good set of designs, we send them off to our manufacturer in Brainerd, MN. I was so lucky to find this company! I can’t tell you how many companies “didn’t get it” when I was looking for a source for these plates. The company is only 75 miles away, so it’s easy for me to visit, or for my rep to visit us with prototypes. No manufacturing in China for this girl!

We also have 2 printers in Brained, both of whom do outstanding work. It took a couple of tries, but I finally found printers who are big enough to do the job and small enough to care! Many thanks to First Impression and Range Printing for turning out great work in quick for us.

Once the parts are ready, everything goes to the incredible people at the Alexandria Opportunites Center. The AOC is a sheltered workshop, providing jobs for many clients with developmental disabilities and injuries that keep them for working in other environments. I can’t even begin to tell you how much I appreciate the clients and staff at AOC. Without them, there is just no way we could have done this product in the first place — let alone keep up with the demand. Becky is the staff person in charge of our products and she sent a few pictures of the plates as they are assembled at the AOC.

Once the plates are packaged, we bring them back to our warehouse. Leanne packs them up into cartons of 24 sets and they are ready to ship. All right here in Minnesota!