Happy Birthday Megan.

Well, would you take a look at these sensational fabrics.  Floral Gatherings by Primitive Gatherings is a collection of 25 fantastic tone on tones.  We have reds, greens, yellows, pumpkiny cheddars and beautiful double pinks.

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These fabrics make you whoop with delight just looking at them, and that is before you start thinking about all the amazing things you could use them for.

If you have been enjoying the Quiltmania book, The Red and Green Quilts from The Poos Collection" well the reds and greens from this range will have your fingers itching, and of course lots of us have a love affair with cheddars and double pinks, so what is not to love about this range of fabrics.  If you would like to tempt yourself with a little bit of each, we have 1/8 packs, with all 25 fabrics for $75.00

We also have new pre cut fabrics in the shop this week.  We always love our muffins for a colour hit now and then,

but these gorgeous little fabric rolls give us a triple colour hit....great selections for appliqué projects, or when you just need a new injection of colour for your projects.

There are 3 colours in each roll, 12 fabrics, 4 of each colour way, 4" by 21".  These rolls are $15.00 and will look so pretty in the sewing room until it is time to use them.

We have had birthday fun in the shop this week...Happy Birthday to Megan from all of us....We are all off this weekend for a fabulous girly weekend away to celebrate Megan's Birthday.  Champagne, wine, chocolate and lots and lots of sewing, all weekend long...sounds like utter bliss, dosnt it...so thank you Megan for having a birthday so we can help you celebrate in style.
It is a girly weekend so Kurt and Sammy will be home alone...aawwww..but we are sure they will have fun too....The boys together.

Have a great weekend every one....stay cool.....and we hope you all get lots of weekend sewing done.

Show and Tell.

We hope everyone had a good long weekend...we had a great day in the shop on Monday and we have some fantastic show & tell for you.

Thank you to Laurel for sharing her gorgeous quilt, all quilted and ready for a binding....it is full of the best collection of teals and soft pretty blues...we are sure you will all agree that Laurel's combination of colours has made a really stunning quilt.

We also had a visit from Olga and her husband Zan, looking for a backing for this absolutely amazing and totally breathtaking quilt top.  Everyone in the shop stopped what they were doing when Olga took her quilt top out of the bag and we all gathered round to feast our eyes on it.....Olga has spent two years hand piecing this wonderful quilt and her husband Zan put the last two stitches in to finish it off...We think that is so romantic but Zan says that was his reward after two years of no conversation and no attention....we didn't dare ask Zan what Olga had planned for her next project. Thank you for sharing Olga...you are a Star.

Our only disappointed customer on Monday was Billy who came in especially to see Sammy...alas Sammy was having a true Australia Day holiday and was at home for the day...Billy was very sad to miss Sammy but he did have time for a good sniff around while his mum picked out some fabrics.

We have two new Patchwork Tsushin magazines in the shop this week...any one who knows these fantastic Japanese magazines will know that they are always full of the most amazing projects.  These magazines are published in Japanese but luckily this does not prevent us from enjoying all the goodies found inside.

Time for us all to get back to work after a holiday weekend, Sammy is well rested and back in his chair, ready to supervise the weeks work.

Big Change

Well...as we leave January behind it is getting closer and closer to the weekend of March 14th & 15th when Castlemaine Appliqué Group hold their first exhibition of quilts...we have already told everyone to save the dates but now we have more very important news.

We have a change of venue and the exhibition will now be held at the Historic Market Building in the centre of town.  This beautiful building offers us more space so there will be even more quilts for us to feast our eyes on.

 

The market building is just around the corner from Threadbear, it is a beautiful venue and it is surrounded by heaps of parking so we are now even more excited.  We hope everyone can join us for the quilt show as it promises to be a wonderful weekend.

Now, we would like everyone to meet Bernie and Joy, and then let us tell you the most amazing show and tell story.  Bernie and Joy are great friends and sewing buddies....they had not done any needle turn appliqué before, but despite that minor detail they decided to take on The Civil War Bride......and just look at the result....

Bernie & Joy are an absolute inspiration, just 5 minutes in their company will have you beleiving  you can do anything.  And as if finishing The Civil War Bride as their first appliqué project is not amazing enough, they are now going to donate the quilt to their local quilting group to be raffled with all proceeds going to local charities.....what an amazing story.

There is even more to tell....when Bernie and Joy came for a visit yesterday to show us their finished quilt top they brought us some very posh champagne to celebrate...Megan suggests that this should become a tradition.

Sammy is all ready for  Australia Day Celebrations.  Threadbear will be open on Saturday 25th and closed on  Australia Day, Sunday 26th but open again on Monday for the Australia Day Holiday...we will be open from 11.00 to 4.00 on Monday, so if you find yourself with some time to spare on the public holiday we would love to see you at Threadbear for a catch up.

We hope you all have a wonderful long weekend...Lamingtons and barbecues and back yard cricket are fine but it is 3 whole days of sewing that that we love.  Have a great weekend everyone.

Aaaahhhhhh.....Cool Weather.

Hoorah...new fabric today.

 

 We are all such fans of Jo Morton so we love these prints from "Jo's Prairie Rose" range, beautiful colours and great medium to small prints.

 We also have 1/8s packs of these fabrics, with 12 fat 1/8s for $36.00.  These packs are always such a good way to have a little bit of all of these great fabrics, and very handy for stash enhancement.

Now just look at these three sensational prints from Barbara Brackman's "Modernism" range....can you imagine how useful these prints will be...stems,leaves, flowers, gorgeous little bird wings and tails...and all sorts of other things.....very useful fabrics indeed.

Well, thank goodness it is cooler here this week...perfect weather for Sammy, who couldn't even stay still long enough for a proper photo today, we had to catch him on the run....he is way to busy, there is lizard hunting to do.

Magazine News

This week we received our delivery of Quiltmania magazines...Issue no.99 is the edition we have all been waiting for as it has the first installment of Di Ford's Mystery Block of the Month, "Mountmellick." As you can imagine, it was with great excitement that we ripped open the boxes and each grabbed a copy for a quick peak at this much anticipated issue.

It is great to finally see block one of Di's Ford's Mystery Block of the Month quilt with all the instructions we need to get started on this beautiful, and very exciting project.  If you have signed up with Threadbear to start this quilt using Di's choice of fabrics you will receive your first mail out by the end of January...it may be a mystery quilt but we already know it will be beautiful and it will be a topic of conversation all year as all our quilts start to take shape.

Issue no.99 of Quiltmania proves to be a must have issue for lots more of reasons.  Not only does it have block one of  Di's quilt, and all the usual articles and wonderful projects, but there are also more fantastic Australian designers featured in this issue.
The wonderful and talented Robyn Falloon is the guest artist featured in Quiltmania's regular feature "Quilts and Enchanting Homes" with photos of some of her beautiful quilts including the stunning "Blessings" quilt.

Also featured are Louise and Lisa from the "Max & Louise Pattern Company"...more great photos of  lovely quilts from these talented Victorian designers.

We stock patterns from both Robyn Falloon and "Max & Louise Pattern Company" here at Threadbear, and if you have fallen in love with Louise and Lisa's fantastic "Unknown Quilt" featured on page 7 of this issue we have the pattern and starter packs in two colour ways for this amazing quilt.

As you can see from these little snippets, we are in for hours of fun once we get our hands on a copy of Quiltmania Magazine no.99.

We have even more magazine news this week, with a wonderful article in Handmade Magazine vol 32 no.3 featuring the ladies of the Castlemaine Appliqué Group.

The feature talks about how the group was formed and what jolly good fun is had by all at every gathering of the group...and also reminds us all the the first exhibition of quilts from the group is now not far away.  We hope you all already have the dates, March 15th & 16th, marked in your diaries as you won't want to miss this wonderful quilt show.  All the details can be found on our website,  March 15th & 16th promises to be a great weekend and we look forward to catching up with everyone.

As you can imagine no one is looking forward to the weekend of the quilt show more than Sammy. All those wonderful quilts on show, yeah yeah, that's ok but all those pats and cuddles from visitors to the shop...that's what's really important.  For now though Sammy can think of only one thing...it is so HOT!!!!
We wish you all a wonderful weekend, with lots of sewing time, and to everyone in Victoria, stay cool and stay safe.

Stay Cool

As you can imagine, whenever we get a book delivery from Quiltmania we are always excited to see what has arrived.
"The Red and Green Quilts" from the Poos Collection by Kay Triplett is one of our favorite titles and if you haven't seen it before then this little look is sure to excite you.

 If you love red and green quilts and have ever thought of making one then this book is for you....as always the photos are gorgeous, lots and lots of stunning quilts, lots of quilt history and 5 great projects to make.

We also have "Quilts and Rugs" by Polly Minick and Laurie Simpson.  As the title suggests this book is full of projects for both quilts and rugs.  There will surely be a project in this book that you will want to add to your list.

We are sending a big thank you to Vera today for this amazing show and tell.  Vera really didn't want to show us this quilt until it was finished and so we have promised her another photo of her finished quilt if she would allow us to share her work so far.

We totally fell in love with it and just had to share it.  Vera is making her quilt using Di Ford's "Miss Porter's Quilt" from her book "Primarily Quilts" and we just love Veras choice of colours.

 She is using the "Heartfelt" starter packs we have in the shop, cut for Margaret McDonald's wonderful quilt "Heartfelt"

  Vera has used these starter packs to great effect in this stunning quilt.....Vera we can't wait to see more of your beautiful work.

We are having a bit of a heatwave here in Victoria with temperatures set to rise to 41 degrees today...Sammy has only one thing to say...."can you turn the air conditioner up please."