INDEPENDENT NEEDLEWORK NEWS

Here is another reader submission for the crazy quilters and/or dyers among us. Fabrics & Frills is celebrating their Grand Opening sale with a 20% off sale on pretty much everything they stock.

Products seem especially tailored toward crazy quilters and include dyes, dyed Venise lace motifs, Venise lace motifs to dye, and a variety of other products you will want to take a look at just because they are gorgeous. Many will make great gift items, and others will be the perfect treat for yourself!

I actually had to laugh because while reading their Policies page, not only did I notice this shop has a minimum order (which won’t be difficult to meet, as it’s $15 … although under the Checkout link, it says the minimum is $10), but they also have a maximum order. That one is $500! Is this actually necessary? I mean, why would they want to stop someone from buying more? I just don’t get it. “Oh, sorry, you’ll have to put the last $275 of merchandise back. Our maximum order is $500. Well, we like to make sure we have things in stock at all times, just in case someone else wants to spend $15. ” I must be missing something.

“We want all our customers to be satisfied, not just you.” OH … well, I do have a tendency to be a bit greedy when it comes to craft supplies. It’s not so much that I don’t leave anything behind for anyone else as that I tend to want way more than I should buy in the first place. You know how that is, too, I’m sure — “because it’s on sale!”

At this particular moment, there is a tutorial on the site called, Donna’s Method for Dyeing Venise Appliques with Ozecraft Dye. It looks handy not just for anyone who has never hand-dyed anything before, but also for the much more experienced dyer who is just trying to dye the textured nooks and crannies of a product like Venise lace for the first time.

All in all, this site looks as if it will be one to keep an eye on for the future. Payment types accepted include PayPal, MasterCard and VISA (by PayPal), and checks.

Be sure to enter the coupon code OPEN during checkout; this will discount your order by 20%! This offer is good through August 31, 2007.

Technorati Tags: Grand Opening, celebration, sale, Fabrics & Frills, fabrics, frills, venise lace, dye, dyed, crazy quilt

A reader pointed me to blog called Vintage to Victorian in which the writer mentioned having bought quite a collection of embroidery threads — including floss pre-wound on bobbins (which was done by Anchor for a while — and I loved that, actually … just as long as I don’t have to wind it myself! … but I am not aware that DMC ever did this, so these may be pre-owned floss bobbins, which would make sense, as some of the floss cones have been partially used but are still an excellent deal), cones of floss, and skeins and balls of perle cotton in varying sizes. She also bought lots of kits and some fabric (mostly aida). The blog writer, a woman named Sue (not to be confused with a boy named Sue ) Meager, bought so much of the materials necessary for stitching that it took her not just one post, but two to cover it all!

Sue has started an online shop, also called Vintage to Victorian, which has quite a few categories which may be of interest to you. The Textiles & Haberdashery section caught my eye, as did Table and Other Linen. You will all know why quite immediately!

In the meantime, Sue has begun to upload the Embroidery & Cross Stitch supplies she gathered, as mentioned in those two blog posts. You’ll want to contact Sue directly for the specifics of what is available and to inquire if she has what you might be seeking because, as you can imagine if you even glance at the pictures in those blog posts, loading ALL the details of what she has available would take more time than she could afford to spare and still keep the prices as low as they are.

I would buy some myself, but the postage to the US is a killer. However, for those of you in the UK or even Europe, the prices may be much more reasonable, especially when the normal cost of DMC for you is so outrageous.

You might also want to check her schedule, and if Sue will be in an area near you anytime soon, be sure to stop by and/or contact her to see if you can order and pay in advance. Then pick up your order in person to avoid shipping fees altogether!

Technorati Tags: cross stitch, embroidery, needlework, sale, floss, cones, perle, pearl, Vintage to Victorian, Sue Meager

Although I don’t see a hint of the news on their website yet, I have it on good authority that Dream Stitchers in Mount Dora, Florida, which is not far from Orlando, is closing for financial reasons.

Sadly, owner Joan Jennings has written that the, “economics are overwhelming,” her, and she just cannot manage to continue. Her reasons for deciding to close aren’t any different than the reasons so many of us stitchers aren’t able to keep our wish lists at much shorter lengths right now, but it’s a terrible shock when a store closes like this. I know that even though Dream Stitchers is a shop I had not heard of, been to, or ordered from online, I still feel a personal sense of loss because another shop is closing, another stitcher’s dream of owning a shop is ending, and another stitching resource is disappearing.

A 30% off sale of everything in the shop including models and fixtures, began on August 10th, 2007. I don’t see a mention of this sale applying to online orders, so if you’re interested in placing an online order, it would be best to contact the shop first to verify, either by phone or by email.

It’s always a sad occasion when a needlework shop closes its doors for the final time. If you stop by to purchase during the sale in person, or order from the store online, please be sure to tell Dream Stitchers how sorry you are to see them go. Even if this is your first time ordering from them, these are words they should hear more of when, unfortunately, much of what they will be hearing are shouts of glee from stitchers thrilled to be getting such a good deal on something.

I should know. I was at a shop’s closing sale a year or so ago, and watched exactly that situation occur. It sent the shop owner into hysterical sobbing because where WAS that customer months before when the shop was trying to stay afloat? By the time it was my turn to be checked out and I heard my total, I said, “Highway robbery — of you, that is.” Apparently, I was the first stitcher to even make a comment acknowledging that my gain was because of her terrible and heartbreaking loss — and the inconsideration of so many people just blew my mind. If I could have bought everything she had left in the store to save her from the unkindnesses she was almost assuredly going to continue to suffer, I would gladly have done so. I hope that by sharing this awful experience, perhaps I can help prevent the same thing from occurring at Dream Stitchers because a few people will have read this and taken it to heart.

Technorati Tags: Dream Stitchers, Joan Jennings, store closing, needlework, cross stitch, Mount Dora, Orlando, Florida, sale

You’re going to see that Jenna or I are adding some tools and buttons to the sidebar such as this one, but please use the Digg picture link in the right sidebar instead, as that will rate the entire site rather than this particular post:

The purpose of these tools is to help readers find Independent Needlework News while surfing the Internet based on the positive recommendations of other needleworkers.

Getting picked up by search engines is fairly simple, I’ve discovered, but Digg and other similar tools are basically word of mouth reader recommendations, which is very powerful advertising. So I’m taking advantage of it, and if you “dig” Independent Needlework News, then I hope you’ll click the Digg button (again, please use the Digg picture link in the right sidebar instead, as that will rate the entire site rather than this particular post) — and if you have time, I hope you’ll add comments explaining what you feel the site is about and why you like it so that other stitchers who discover it for the first time through Digg will know more about it and be interested in checking out the site.

I’ll also be adding many of the other similar tools because sometimes people use one over another exclusively, and I hope you’ll also take the time to click on those (the click itself doesn’t take much time, although some sites do require a brief registration process first) and add comments whenever you have time.

Here’s another one which I’d appreciate a click on if you have a second (literally, LOL) and agree I fit the category:

I recognize all these different technologies which pretty much seem to do the same thing can be inconvenient and kind of annoying. I have wondered more than once why there isn’t some organization in charge of the Internet which could have made some agreement in advance so that everyone would be using the same things, but we are fortunate NOT to have anyone in charge of the Internet trying to push us around and take away our freedoms, or to enforce the rules of one country and culture onto all the others. Also, I’d hate to be in a world with no variation, so I’d much rather put up links to several different reader recommendation tools than be stuck with someone else’s idea of what I should do, especially when I might not like or agree with that idea at all.

Technorati Tags: digg, recommendation, Independent Needlework News

I’ve been informed by a reader of a new-to-me auction site primarily dedicated to fabric auctions, and apparently intended to have quilters as its primary customers based on the product listings available.

Not only is this site useful to quilters, however, but it’s also helpful to stitchers, who are always looking for just the right fabrics to add to our stashes so that we’ll have the right backing fabrics for ornaments, needlebooks, and so on. So AuctionFabric.com seems like a good resource for all of us to know about and investigate.

The only negative I noticed in browsing around myself yesterday and today was that it appears almost all of the auctions are for fabric lots — either fabric put together in a matching lot so that you can make a particular quilt, or else fabric compiled into a lot as if someone is trying to quickly organize and reduce her stash. This isn’t necessarily a negative, but if you are looking for just a small bit of fabric, AuctionFabric.com may not help you. Or maybe I just happened to be looking on a bad day for finding the particular types of deals which would appeal to me most.

Technorati Tags: fabric, quilt, quilting, auction, crazy quilt