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So, what does Moda Fabric and Teacher shave in common? Well technically nothing... but both have been the focus of Hand-Made-Hugs this past month.

First of all, Hand-Made-Hugs.com is please to announce the arrival of Moda precut fabrics to our website! They will be posted within the week, so we will be letting you know when they are up.

I have to tell you, when I began quilting, I believed fabric was fabric. If it was cotton, it was suitable for sewing/quilting. WRONG! There is a huge quality jump between WalMart fabric and high quality quilt shop grade fabric. It's akin to comparing a point and shoot to a Nikon digital SLR. There is no comparison. I learned that when I began working at a quilt shop and was able to "feel" the difference. Sewing with high quality fabric is so rewarding. The color, the texture... both are worlds different.

We will be posting many Moda Fabrics Jelly Rolls, Charm Packs, Turnovers, Layer Cakes (hungry yet!?) and much much more! We hope to add other fabric companies to our assortment, so keep checking back!

Now onto the teachers! Miss Self of Hampton Park was the first teacher to recieve a 2009 teacher quilt. This quilt was designed by Cheryl Childers. The children of the class wrote their names (digitized and then machine embroidered onto the grass area) and drew tulips. The tulips were appliqued onto the "stems". Miss Self is now the proud owner of three Hand-Made-Hugs creations!

If you tried to get to the site over the past couple of days, there were some, well... rather choice words you may have been surprised to read. I can assure you that we did not intend for those to be a part of our website. We have a security vulnerability in one of our scripts on the site which was exploited December 29th and then again on February 1st.

We apologize for any inconvience or implications this may have caused. We did not know of the vulnerability. We also want to let you know that all transactions are encrypted on our end, and then pass through Paypal's secure site, so there was no breech in payment securities. We did however lose all customer information that was stored on our database. This information was maliciously deleted and unable to be recovered.

If you are a member, paying or non paying, please re-register on the site. We are striving to take every measure to ensure this will not happen again. If you paid for a service, please send us an e-mail and your confirmation information and we will make sure that you can resume where you left off.

 We appreciate your understanding with this, and value you as our customers and friends.

Cheryl

owner - www.hand-made-hugs.com

About a year and a half ago my family and I move to a new house about 30 miles away from our old house. Even though we increased in square footage, I lost my sewing/quilting room. It was a delight. It was a bright –light Martha Stewart blue, with lights that simulated sunlight. I had two lights, but really only needed and used one because if I used the two it was almost too bright. I had my desktop computer with a dock for my laptop, my printer (stocked with fabric) and my very own flat screen TV complete with a DVD and cable. I had XM radio and stereo speakers hooked up to my ipod, XM and computer and had many “jam sessions” with my rotary cutter as my microphone and my ruler as a guitar. OK, so now you know.

My new house, granted, it’s bigger, nicer, newer, had no sewing room. It’s in the plans, I call phase 10, and will probably come to fruition sometime in 2020, but for now, I had to set up shop in my dinning room. Over the course of the year we host many events at our house, which means with each event, my “office” albeit mobile, has to move elsewhere, primarily my bedroom closet. Once the event is over, I am free to more back.

After a year of this back and fourth my husband and I had enough! I had enough of losing items from the move back and fourth and he had enough of my complaining about losing stuff from moving back and fourth. The Answer? The answer my friend, was blowing in the wind. (I couldn’t resist). This past Saturday I came home from the monthly HUGS Ministry workday to find my husband and kids in our bonus room (nicknamed the theatre since my husband gave up his home theatre for this new house) setting up my new sewing space. Granted, it’s only a corner of the room. The kids still claim the other half with their guitars, keyboard, television and X-box, but I have my own space.

My sewing table was dusted off and brought out of storage. My cutting table polished. My brand new sewing chair I received for my birthday 2 Octobers before was finally taken out of its box and assembled. My husband even bought me a floor light to brighten up the area.

It’s much smaller than my old room, with much less bells and whistles, but it’s mine. I have a place to sit, alone and in quiet or in the roar of my loud music and explore my creativity. I don’t have to pick up every other day, I can leave my creative mess and clean it up at my own pace. I can actually find my sketches and notebooks! I can display a design wall and not have to dismantle it. More importantly, my husband is no longer having to listen to my rants as I go from room to room looking for this or that!

In a couple of years I will have the pleasure of designing my own quilt studio once again, and when I do I will refer to the books Creating your Perfect Quilting Space and Creating Your Perfect Quilting Space Studio Planner by Lois Hallock. Both are excellent resources for redesigning any size sewing space.

Until then, I will enjoy my small corner in the room of the bonus room I now share with my kids and all their toys, electronics and all their other stuff that tend to accumulate up there. I have room to be creative without losing my mind. If you are finding yourself in the same frustrating place I was in last week, try to find a permanent space in your home to set up shop. You may make more than yourself happy!

Happy quilting!

P.S. I'll post a photo of my new quilting corner tomorrow. I'm so proud of my husband and kids. They said it took them 45 minutes to carry my sewing table up 2 flights of stairs! I don't doubt that! For that, I know I have the best husband and kids in the world!

I flew into San Francisco in early November. It had been almost 25 years since the last time I had been in San Fran. I can’t say I remembered a whole about my first several trips there, except for the normal tourist attractions. This time I wasn’t there to be a tourist, I was actually heading South to spend a week with Alex Anderson and Paula Reid at a quilting retreat in Alex’s hometown of Livermore, CA.

The theme of the retreat was scrap quilts. I came prepared with my pre-selected scraps (they all matched!) thinking I was confident with making a scrap quilt… even though I never really made a true scrap quilt. The only scrap quilt I have made was with the HUGS Ministry. I don’t think that really counts on my “experience” list since there were at least 5 other people involved in that quilt. The quilt we made is shown to the left.

In any case, I felt like scrap quilts would be easy… because they are just made up of SCRAPS! You take a bag, fluff it to mix up the pieces, pull out a strip and sew it to another strip and in the end, you get a beautiful scrap quilt!

I’m here to tell you; to admit to you today that I am scrap challenged. I had to come to a sobering realization (in front of my friends and heroes Alex Anderson and Paula Reid)! My name is Cheryl Childers, and I am a scrap challenged quilter! They say that admitting to a problem is one step away from denial and one step closer to recovery. I hope to one day admit to you that I have overcome this difficulty!

I saw an unbelievable amount of quilts that were made by quilters who were obviously not scrap challenged, or have obviously overcome their deficits. Their quilts are shown below this blog post. I am sorry I do not know who to credit these awesome pieces of work to, but they were all at the retreat. They can gently remind me who did what and I will gladly credit them.

My point in all of this is just because you feel confident in an area of quilting doesn’t necessarily mean that you are an expert in that area! There is always room for improvement! One way to test your ground in an area you feel overly confident in is to enter your piece into a judged quilt show. When you receive the judges comment sheet back, we’ll see how confident you are then! When you see the competition… you will be humbled!

Once you realize you are not an “expert” take classes… many classes on a variety of techniques. Look down the list of classes your local quilt shop offers and take the one that is LEAST appealing to you… yes, I said LEAST! It will help you to stretch your abilities and open your creativity. I’m not a fan of crazy quilting, but taking a crazy quilting class will widen my stitching ability, teach me about different piecing methods, introduce me to a different kind of quilter, and help me stretch my mind. I may never take a crazy quilt class again, but I walked away from that experience with knowledge I wouldn’t have gotten in any other class taught by any other teacher. For that, I am grateful!

Back to the quilting retreat; after I admitted to myself and friends that I was scrap challenged, I was encouraged to “do it” anyway. I dove in and created over 30 squares that I made using my “controlled” scraps. They came out “OK”. They are still in block form and have been put in the bottom draw of my works in progress bin. I may finish them one day. The entire realization, however, has inspired me to create 12-15 scrap patterns. We are in the planning stage of this, but one day you will walk into your local quilt shop and find these in book form, for all of you who happen to be scrap challenged as well.

Go find your scraps, start sewing, and see if the anxiety wells up in you. If it does, go take a class. Don’t be discouraged! Keep on keeping on, we’ll be here for you!

Happy Scrapping!

Cheryl

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