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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!

Several years ago, I was invited to join a postcard exchange. To my good fortune, the group was the original art2mail exchange group and I have been blessed to be a part of this group for 3 years. This is a fascinating group of women from the around the world. I’ve met most of them “online” through our discussion group, and had the pleasure to meet several members in person at various quilt shows and markets.

It’s always a challenge to figure out what to do for my postcards and I have used this exchange do try something that is not related to paintstiks. This year, I decided to pull out the felting machine and see how it works. While rummaging through my closet (which I will NOT be posting photos of…) I rescued a rather large bag of glorious silk fibers, wool roving, incredible yarns, and all manner of lovely stuff that I have not been able to resist taking home with me over the past 10 years. I also ran across a box of vintage eyelets I had tucked away, so those went into the pile as well.

After just playing with the machine for a bit, I settled on a simple design. (If you are going to make 30 postcards, keep it simple!) It was fun to choose the eyelet colors and find a pattern that complimented each card. For the backing, I found a little deck of self-adhesive card stock from the scrap booking section of a local craft store. I love it when I can peel and stick something to get it done quickly! The adhesive gummed up my needle as I stitched around the cards, but a little bit of solvent cleaned that right up.

I put a little bits of silk roving under the eyelets to add a little extra color and hide the white on the back of the card stock.

Now, I just have to stick on the stamps and got those cards in the mail! At least I know that I’m not the only member of the group sending out my 2007 exchange cards several months into 2008

I just got a few lovely photos from Mary Brandt, my trusy trade-show companion and special projects go-to gal. Mary loves to play with the paintstiks and try out new things, especially when she has a new pattern to work with. Mary got a copy of the Sassy Bag pattern from Lazy Girl Designs and just could not wait to put one together. Visit the Lazy Girl Designs website for more information and to see a video on the Sassy Bag.

Mary used our paintstiks to create the irregular stripes on the turquoise fabric for the bag flap. The light fabric on the bottom of the bag is a batik from her stash. This is a truly quick and easy technique that you will want to try for yourself, so here’s how it works:

1. Choose a relatively plain piece of fabric from your stash. Press to remove any wrinkles.
2. Tape your fabric to a work surface, or use a Grip-n-Grip mat under your fabric to keep it from moving around while you work.
3. Tear a piece of paper to create an uneven edge.
4. Lay the paper on your fabric, leaving about an inch of fabric exposed.
5. Apply paintstik color to a palette surface and load the paint onto a stiff brush.
6. Brush the color off the edge of the paper and onto the fabric.
7. Move the paper over about an inch, and continue to add stripes until you have enough painted fabric for your project.
8. Heat set your paint and get started!

OK. the official instructions are to let the paint dry and then heat set before moving on with a project, but there really is not much paint on your fabric when you make these soft stripes, so here is the “heat in a hurry” tip — Just put your fabric between 2 pieces of parchment paper (look in your kitchen for baking parchment) and press for 10-15 seconds over each part of the fabric. The paint will be dry enough to continue working without getting paint on your hands or sewing machine.

Mary tells me the Sassy Bag goes together very quickly. I may have to try one out myself. She was having so much fun that she painted another piece of fabric for a checkbook cover, and then finished off the set with a Wonder Wallet. That seems like way too much for one day.

Happy painting!

Hey there, paintstik fans. We had a lot of requests for some warmer colors in the minis, especially Barn Red. We hear you! A new set of colors has just come in from the factory. It’s called American Country and contains Barn Red, Yellow Ochre and Olive Green. Here is a little sample I put together to show off the colors.

These are matte colors (not shiny) and they are just perfect if you like traditional projects or just need some warmer colors without investing in full-size paints. After all, if you are stenciling, there is a LOT of paint in one of those minis! Don’t be too hard on your favorite retailer if you can’t find these in the next day or two. It takes more than a day or two to get everything into the pipeline.

Happy painting!

Welcome to the CCT Blog. It’s a challenge to keep up with the changes on the internet, but I decided it’s time to stick my toe into blog-land. For my first post, I thought I would take you along for a backstage pass.

At the end of January, I made another trip to Cleveland, Ohio to tape a couple of segments for Quilting Arts TV. When I looked around my hotel room, it looked like a bomb went off in my suitcase, spewing forth all the materials I so carefully packed for my segments . The quilts were laying around as I attempted to remove the wrinkles. I like to roll my quilts rather than folding them, but I didn’t have a good way to drag them though an airport in a long tube. Ah, well. The rest of the stuff? Well, let’s just say I didn’t quite have everything done when I left home. So what else is new…

This was my second trip to tape segments, so I didn’t feel like such a rookie. At least I had a fair idea of what to expect at the studio. Somehow I had it in my mind that taping for TV would be very glamorous. Silly me. It’s a ton of work to figure out what to say in the alloted time, come up with just the right set of steps and samples, and remember not to say the brand name for anything. After all, it is public television. I have no idea how Pokey Bolton (delightful hostess and editor of two incredble magazines) manages to figure out 13 segments and keep track of all her guests, not to mention the 13 changes of clothes. It gives me a totally new appreciation for the term “multi-tasking.”

The taping process itself is nothing short of amazing. Segments don’t get filmed in order — it all depends on who is available at what time on a particular day, and how to make the fewest changes on the set. I have no idea how they keep it all straight. I discovered that they have a magical wardrobe room that can save the day. When I pulled out my hot pink sweater and Pokey was wearing orange for one segment, we all looked at each other and said “I don’t think so!” Katherine rescued me with a perfect little jacket. She also graciously provided batteries when my camera quit. There is not much that they can’t take care of in a pinch. And thank heavens for a good make-up artist. I have to admit that she makes us look pretty darn good under all the heavy lights!

Here we are, ready to go!

The most exciting part for me is meeting the other guests. I had a delightful dinner with Jane Davila, Rayna Gillman and Clare Shipman on Sunday evening. Jane’s husband was a wonderful sport. I’m pretty sure he didn’t get a word in edge-wise with the 4 of us going on and on about this and that. I have to say that I’m very much in awe of the art that these ladies create. I feel very honored to meet them and see what they are doing.

So, the next time you watch Quilting Arts TV (or any program), you’ll have a little better idea of what happens to make those segments look so easy. You can read more about the taping and other guests by visiting the Quilting Arts Blog by editor Pokey Bolton. Enjoy the show!