Monthly Archives: December 2010

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All of us at Erica’s wish you safe and happy holidays.
With our 36th year of business drawing to a close, we want to thank you for being part of it, and wish for all of us peace in our own countries and around the world.
Our Annual Footbowl Widows’ Sale is January 1st, both online and in the store.  Store hours are from noon to 3pm.  We hope you’ll join us.

What a difference a stitch makes!

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Cathy is all excited about this new yarn, so she asked me to share this with you.

You can magically transform yarn while you knit. “Opale” is a new yarn here at Erica’s that looks interesting in the skein, but appears even more amazing once it’s knit!

On the right is the way it looks before you knit it, and on the left is what it looks like when you knit it up.  It’s amazing!

This bulky weight yarn, which we have in 3 rich colors, works up quickly with size 15 needles.
The look is wonderfully loopy and textured with just the basic knit stitch. Each skein has 41 yards so you would need 2-3 skeins for a scarf, depending on how wide and long you’d like to make it. This yarn would also make great cuffs on a sweater or trim for a hat or gloves/mittens. What fun! Give it a try!

You can see what’s new at Erica’s almost every day! Any page of our website has a column on the left that tells you where to find things, and all you have to do is look for “What’s New” in purple, and click to find out.

Odds and Ends

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I was working on my Star Crossed Love (59697) model for the store, and doing a lot of chain piecing. 
I had my pieces spread out on the cabinet the way I wanted them, and there really wasn’t a convenient spot for my Gypsy Cutting Gizmo (47319). And my Cutting Gizmo is to chain piecing what cheese is to pizza:  I can hardly do without it!  So I took a look at the lid of my Ruby and discovered that if I slipped it off the pins, I could slide two rubber bands on, and they would hold the Cutting Gizmo perfectly. Now it’s so handy for cutting the threads between pieces!  By the way, don’t you love the poster I have behind my Ruby?  (You can click on it to see it larger.)  “What matters most is how you see yourself,”  I think it’s a great philosophy.
One of the other projects I’m working on is for a class designed by Golden Threads called “Quilt as Desired.” Those words throw fear into the hearts of quilters new and old. This will be a class on deciding how to quilt the top when you’ve finished, how to audition quilting designs, and how to transfer them to your top. I’m really excited about it. I need to make an Ohio Star quilt top to use with the presentation.

It’s an odd size, and I couldn’t find a pattern. So I used Electric Quilt to design it and figure out sizes. Then I went to my Triangulations (A11333) and printed out the quarter-square triangles on Carol Doak’s Foundation Paper. (25518) 

Here I have my fabrics layered as directed, and I sewed on the dotted lines.
After I sewed the page, I cut the pieces apart on the solid lines.

I sewed the block pieces together the way I showed you in an earlier post, February 25, 2010. (You can still get the instruction sheet if you go to that post.)

Here’s the finished block.  (OK.  So you clicked on it to enlarge it, since I told you about clicking on the poster, and you saw where that one point doesn’t quite meet!  I am not a perfectionist!   Life is too short.  And when I get that quilt done, there will probably be more than just this one little imperfection.  I believe that “done” is better than “perfect” and in the whole scheme of things those places won’t be noticed.  And if you’re a perfectionist, I (the imperfectionist) will get more quilts done than you will!  LOL!)
Triangulations has both half-square and quarter-square triangle sheets in any size you need. The instructions are great, for both the printing and the sewing. Carol’s Foundation Paper is really easy to pull off after stitching, so they’re a great duo!
(To find an item or event on our web page after clicking on the teal words, hold down the “Ctrl” key and touch F. Enter the item number in the box, and you’ll be taken to that item.)
You can see what’s new at Erica’s almost every day! Any page of our website has a column on the left that tells you where to find things, and all you have to do is look for “New Items” in purple, and click to find out.
You can also “like” us on Facebook.  over 1500 people like us now. Cheryl is doing a fantastic job of keeping us updated on Facebook. Check it out. Hopefully you’ll “like” us, too!  Click here.