Wishing you a....

Wishing this Thanksgiving finds you with plenty of reasons to give thanks!

Happy Thanksgiving from Prairie Flower Quilt Co.

Neat Seats....and more!

Things are starting to look like a quilt shop! We put in a 10 hour day today and things really feel like they're taking shape now. We put 20 tall and 2 short shelving units together today, assembly line fashion. We have 8 more short ones to go, but got sidetracked when we started working on a layout for the shelving and never got the rest assembled. Our big open space is shrinking fast as we start moving things in.

We also put some of the chairs back together yesterday. The chairs came with the building but the seats were all ripped up, so we took them all apart and recovered them with 'orphan' blocks. We really think they look neat.

And, best of all, the carpet was installed this week! It makes the building feel soooo much warmer.

Sneak Peek

OK, here's a sneak peek of our new shop. Just a little slice to show you the color scheme (although it's not completely accurate in these photos). We don't want to reveal too much because we want it to be a surprise when we open on January 1st! (Don't forget to mark your calendars and join us then!)

Just imagine these shelves adorned with antique toy sewing machines, jars of old buttons, and other fun notions from days gone by!

As I've mentioned before, our color scheme is a barn or brick red and sage green trimmed in black. Picture lots (or at least a few in the beginning) of beautiful quilts hanging from the black railing that runs around the top of the room.

I hope you have goosebumps just thinking about it - we sure do! We're working hard to make this a warm and inviting 'home away from home' where you'll want to spend lots of time.

We owe a BIG BIG Thank U....

....to Alan for all of his hard work at the quilt shop. He has spent the majority of the last 6-7 weeks doing the remodeling at the shop. We definitely wouldn't be anywhere close to where we are today if he had not committed soooo much time to the project. He's definitely a handy guy to have around!!!

Hi Ho, Hi Ho....

It's off to work we go. Today we're headed to the shop to finish small details (touch up paint, install remainder of trim) and clean up so that the carpet can be installed next week. It'll probably take three days to repair all the cracks in the cement and lay the carpet. The bathroom tile was laid yesterday, but has to dry for 36 hours before it can be grouted, so we plan to do that tomorrow. It's been a much slower process than we originally thought, but we're finally seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.

Another Giveaway!

Did you check out yesterday's giveaway? Well, if you liked that, here's another one! Old Red Barn Co. is giving away not one, not two, but three quilts! Click on their name and enter for a chance to win....but do it before the deadline on Monday! I'm never lucky enough to win anything (well, I take that back, once I won a beautiful quilt made by Laverne that she donated to my son's senior class for a money raiser for Project Graduation), but maybe you will be.

Fun Giveaway!

Since I started this blog, I've found tons of other quilting blogs. And guess what, some have online giveaways, contests, etc. What fun! Camille at Thimble Blossoms is having a great giveaway right now. Visit her blog and post a message telling her which of her patterns you like best, where you're from, etc. and she'll enter you in a random drawing for a free quilt made from your favorite pattern! Tell her Prairie Flower Quilts sent ya!

Finally!

After several weeks of work, we finally installed the last of the beadboard walls! We still have to finish painting the last section and then put up the trim - some of which can't be installed until after the carpet is laid. We also finished rebuilding the kitchen base cabinet that will serve as our coffee corner. It's been painted, but still needs a coat of polyurethane to protect it. Tomorrow, we'll start tiling in the bathroom so that we can install the new sink and toilet. Still trying to figure out what to do with the damaged walls in there (more beadboard?) and need to have the plumbing fixed. I think we're making progress......?

Countdown to Carpet

The carpet will be laid in a week. This week we'll spend finishing up any unfinished projects. There's a few more outlets that need to be wired, one wall needs to be finished now that the plumbing lines are installed, the bathroom needs tiled, painting needs touched up, etc. We're on the homestretch now!

Inventory continues to arrive. This week we received wrought iron quilt racks and fabric that we ordered at market from Benartex. We originally set November 10 as the date to ship inventory, so things will really start rolling in this week.

Quilting Bloggers - Part II

The second day on Quilting Bloggers has garnered lots more international visitors to this site. Today we had visitors from Germany, Sweden, Hungary, Italy, Belgium, Uruguay, Switzerland and the United Kingdom, as well as several from countries we listed yesterday. It's fun to see where our visitors live!

Quilting Bloggers

Last night I registered this blog on the Quilting Bloggers website....and today we had 67 visitors to the site! We had our faithful local viewers but we also had several international visitors as well. They came from Canada, France, Norway, Turkey, Spain, Australia, The Netherlands and Czech Republic. Quilting must be popular in The Netherlands as we had numerous visitors from there today.

It's not pink!

Saturday was paint day at the shop. Deb, Marilyn, Janet and Sharla spent the day painting while Belinda cleaned. Sharla's husband, Alan, continued hanging the bead board and Deb's husband, Vic, began working on the exterior walls to seal them to prevent further water leaks. Our hope is that by the end of the week we'll be at a point that the carpet can be installed.

We are painting the walls a sage green with an accent wall of brick red. We primed the red wall yesterday, but it looked more like pink than red. We all agreed that it was a very pretty color of pink, but not what we wanted for the shop. Can't wait to get the final coat of paint on it. We're painting the trim black which really looks sharp against the sage green!