So I know I haven't been posting much recently but the school year has started again and I've been in Dallas, Texas all week for the Pfaff convention. (More about that later though) We drove to Dallas on Tuesday night, and got here a day before the convention to make stops at the Moda/United Notions and P&B Textiles warehouses to shop for the quilt shop before we had to go to classes.

We started at Moda/UN at about 7:30 am. First of all, it's a beautiful building, and the lobby is nicely decorated with many of the Moda premade house things and many of the sample quilts are hung off the balcony upstairs.

We of course started in the clearance section, where it almost looks like a normal everyday fabric store. Bolts on racks, flat folds, notions, and fabric headers all for sale (other than you have to buy the whole bolt!). So we did a bit of shopping, picking up some more pieces of the Roman Holiday Collection, and picking a lot of more random fabrics to fill in some holes on the color wall. Everyone who works there seemed really happy, and they all wear thouse cute Moda aprons. Even better several of them were riding around the warehouse on tricycles with big baskets filling orders. We also bought a bunch of great jelly rolls for the shop since they've been so popular recently (Monkeys, repros, and great trendy prints)!

We also hit the United Notions side of the warehouse, picking up lots of odds and ends for the shop, including scissors, books, and Mary Ellen's Best Press (If you haven't tried it you have too- it's amazing and it smells nice. It also doesn't leave crap all over my iron).

Above the United Notions warehouse is their showroom. As one of the staff members explained it to us, it's their idea of a perfect shop, and it's even better because no one messes it up! I've included a couple of photos, but you can find more in my flickr account! They've got one of the coolest classroom spaces I've ever seen, and use it for business meetings and conferences. It seats 12 students, all at their own table and chair with lighting that's independent from the rest of the shop area. You can also see it's in the middle of the area, so everyone shopping can see how cool the class is.

Just off the showroom was possibly the coolest feature of the whole place. They have a Moda fabric library, where they've kept a half a yard of every fabric Moda's EVER PRINTED. It was awesome to look through and see fabrics that I have and love, or remember seeing in the stores or in great quilts. There are literally thousands of pieces, labeled by name and the year and month they came out!

The P&B warehouse was hot, way smaller than the other, and not quite so customer friendly (Though I do understand... it is a warehouse after all). Though the awesome part was that there were people working while we were there putting fabric on bolts from the hug commercial runs! They were working on these big awesome machines that I'm not sure what they're called (Folders?) that take the big commercial bolts, folt the fabric, and spin it on the cardboard ones we all know and love.

More tomorrow on sewing machines and convention!

I haven't posted in a while and I'm sorry- My personal life is a bit of a disaster area right now and I've been super busy with the end of the semester and the start of summer field work.

The uber-fun monkey pillowcase pictured is an awesome fun little embroidery project. The money head is chenilled in the hoop, and then cut afterwards- it was easy and fun.

I do and I love it. I do hand work too, but there's something soothing and relaxing listening to the machine run. (besides you can start the machine, and sew on a second machine and be twice as productive) It can also be quite hypnotic to watch the needle jump up and down.

I buy many of my designs at the shop I work at, but I also really like being able to buy my designs individually. Unfortunately design collections can be really expensive, and as cool as they may be, if I'm not going to use them all it's just not practical. So here's my reviews of some of my favorite places to get machine embroidery files online. Some of the sites are country specific (I'm in the US) so if you have a problem let me know and I'll see if I can find you the right link.



Embroidery.com is one of my favorites for downloading both packs of designs and individual designs. They're the online vendor for Cactus Punch designs and you can buy them individually as well as the whole package. They also sell lots of smaller vendor designs, and I've never purchased anything that has stitched out poorly. Make sure you get on their mailing list, they've got amazing sales.

I also have a coupons for 5 free designs from them... We hand them out at work for people to try the site and start embroidering on their new machines!
1. Go to www.embroidery.com
2. Enter your sewprize number in the box on the upper right hand corner AFG6K8PC427J
3. You can then download the 5 designs in your choice of formats

Ann the Gran.com

Ann the Gran has lots of designs as well, including large names like Dakota and Vermillion Stitchery. They also have a large section of the website devoted to free designs that can be stitched on items to sell, give, or keep for yourself. The free designs vary in quality as they've been digitized by users of the site and not necessarily an individual company or a professional.

Criswell Embroidery and Design

The Criswell site is full or gorgeous machine embroidered lace. They do sell through dealers as well so you may want to see if there is a store or shop near you that sells them. They're thread intensive, but are amazing once they're finished! My personal favorites are the snowflake lace and the Peacocks 2 CD.

Embroidery Library

Again- lots of designs and well organized. Also well digitized, and they offer various free and cheap designs. They have great sales a well and routinely have 17 cent designs.

Zundt Designs

These are some of the most elegant designs available. They've got religious designs, kids, lace, etc. They're amazing well digitized and again, stitch intensive. I have one of the butterfly CDs and it's unbelievable. They sell hard copies (CDs) and downloads.

Pfaff Software Online

These are a sampling of Pfaff Embroidery Designs online (often including the ones they use in their advertising campaigns). These are the FREE designs :) click on the Downloads sections, and then on "Showcase Sample Designs" for the different groups. It's a random assortment of files, all well digitized, but only available is *.VIP, *.PCS and *.DST. You can always convert them if necessary. Pfaff's home website also has a few free designs available here. The design to the right is from the Grand Elegance Collection by Pfaff (Not Free though, Sorry).

Inspira

Inspira designs have been bought by VSM (which owns Pfaff, Viking, and Singer), and are now available here. They're great for kids, but not so much of it is grownup looking. They're pretty straightforward designs, few color changes, and nice.

Bernina Designs

Bernina designs are in the same quality bracket as Pfaff and Viking. They stitch amazingly and they're expensive. So even better if they're free! Bernina has an inspiration gallery with free designs located here.

Viking Sewing

Viking again are high quality designs, and expensive. They have a selection of free designs on their website here and here.

Whew! That's a lot of links for you to look at- This is just a beginning, I'm sure There will be more to come.

Life has been a bit nuts recently, as evidenced by my lack of posting. I'm sitting here actively procrastinating my final exam for statistics this afternoon (whomever decided finals should be on a Saturday was EVIL)

This weekend is also the shop hop of quilting shops here in southern Louisiana! (which I'm missing most of because of said final). I did successfully complete the pattern I wrote to make this adorable children's book from the 5 Funky Monkeys fabric panel from Moda! I wrote up a pattern with lots of photographs and directions for fusible binding techniques.

For the book itself I used a coordinating fabric from the same line for the inside and back of the covers, and did a fusible binding for the edges. I 'bound' the book with eyelets and yarn and tied a cute bow on the back!

The patterns were a big hit the first day of the shop hop, we sold several which is always a happy event to know that people like your patterns. They're also available here at ShootingStar on etsy, my second shop for supplies and destashing. I'll slowly be making more of my patterns available online...