Orange Night!

So all you blog followers, we can safely establish that I am a crappy blogger!! I know this will come as a complete and utter shock to lots of you (especially those who know me well....) but I just had nothing to say. I know, I know.....shocking.

So Orange Night. First of all, as you know (or not so I'm going to tell you!) Jeanne and I have our fingers in a lot of pies! (I love pie......) We own and operate The Quilt Patch. We write books for Martingale and Co. We design and publish our own line of patterns under the Quilt Patch Pattern Co. label. We have a wholesale division for our pattern company. We create a new collection of quilts and patterns each spring and each fall. We do a TON of shows, both retail and wholesale. And we design fabric. Oh ya....and we try to maintain a normal life while doing all this.

Soooooo.....what's the real secret behind our juggling ability.....are you ready for this big secret??

OUR STAFF!!

Yep. That's it. That's our secret weapon. That's how we can accomplish as much as we do. And so while we pay like crap, (but we're a lot of fun!) we do try to make sure we throw in a few perks for them along the way! Cause well, we know that to keep them with us, they must be happy!!

Which brings me to Orange Night.

And I don't mean Orange, like the fruit. I mean......

Orange....like the fabric.....

Jeanne bought and scrounged and saved and stashed a HUGE amount of Orange fabrics during the spring show season! Enough to make 8 quilts!!! Thats 8 quilts x 15 fat quarters per quilt!!

AND.....she took the time to precut all this fabric for our staff!! (I want you to know that I ordered the pizza, and that was incredibly hard work!!!) 

So we picked a night and our staff brought their sewing machines in, we ordered pizza for dinner, drank orange drinks (the adult kind!) and had a sew in!

Jeanne, Edna (Jeanne's Mom!) Jo and Yvonne

Flo - teacher extrordinare!

Jo - our office manager and resident 'know what's going on' girl!

Yvonne - second in command to Jo!

Everyone was pretty darn thrilled! We opened our packages and got down to business! Most of us completed a quilt top that evening. Some of us... (me and Yvonne) just didn't make it all the way!

Young Jeri! We'll be sorry to see her head off the University!

Jeri's ironing

Colleen - she headed up the Outdoor Quilt Festival!!

Jeanne had saved up sooooo incredibly many oranges - everything from bright orange to cheddar to pale yellowy orange and everything in between! Everyone left with an orange but different and unique quilt top!

It was a great evening! A little thank you to our hard working staff! 

I wish I had a picture of the finished quilts - but the ones that did complete theirs, whipped them away to be long arm quilted! I guess they were scared we'd change our minds......

But this is the quilt we all made:

Oversized Hopscotch

But Orange!

So the next time you are in the store, or call the store, or pick up a beautifully packaged kit....take a moment to thank our staff for doing an amazing job...they would really appreciate that. And so would we, cause we know we couldn't keep doing what we do without them!!