5" Square Sets! All new!

Over the past weekend, Chris and I have been working to coordinate new sets for squares. It's kind of fun to match fabrics, especially when the end result is something pretty like this:



Chris had the brilliant idea of matching that turquoise batik with the fuschia and deeper purple batiks. We think it goes pretty nicely with this jelly roll set, Canasta (also in the store):



The second set we made is along the same color scheme as the first, except this one has a deeper blue batik instead of the turquoise:



It's a pretty nice match to Chris' Sonoma Jelly Roll:



The last set we've listed on our Ebay is a five-print set:

"Vintage" Fabrics

We recently received a shipment of some really great Timeless Treasures prints and are in the process of listing them in our eBay store, Twin Orchards Textiles.

A few of them caught my eye, though. There were several vintage reproduction / retro fabrics in the mix.  It’s not everyday that we receive nice vintage style fabrics! We have two fabrics of ladies in vintage style dresses, a print with coffeemaking novelties, and some vintage “cowboy” fabric.  It’s just a shame that quantity of these fabrics are limited – we only have about 3 yards of each of them.

 

 

 

All Aboard! Twin Orchards Textiles customer shares her quilt top

The best thing about having a fabric shop is imagining all of the things that people can make with just a few yards--and seeing the crafts that people create when they're finished!

We were thrilled when we heard back from D., who poses with her cat and her “Thomas the Tank Engine” quilt in the photograph below.  Twin Orchards Textiles is proud to have sold her the Thomas the Tank Engine fabric (from Cranston VIP) that appears in the quilt.

 

Thomas the Tank Engine quilt, including fabric from Cranston VIP.

We love how the interweaving windmill border on the quilt top matches so nicely with the Tank Engine fabric, but most of all we love that this quilt was made for a young survivor of cancer.  It must be so comforting to have a special gift to keep warm with for years to come :). 

Thank you so much, D., for sharing your truly wonderful gift with us!

Are you a customer of Twin Orchards Textiles with a story and a craft to share?  Please e-mail Chris at chris@twinorchardstextiles.com with a photo and a story of your inspiration.

The Jungle at Night

So far it's been a beautiful Saturday in Pittsburgh. Chris and I have been relaxing indoors, out of the heat and humidity that has just culminated into a rainstorm. Summer weather is so beautiful!

This jelly roll was shipped out earlier today, and all the sunlight coming in through the curtains gave just the right light for a photo. Chris put together and named this set, and I couldn't agree more--all the deep purples and blues and greens make it look like a night in the jungle.

Actually, it kind of reminds us of the movie Avatar (which we rented not too long ago, actually...maybe this is where Chris got his inspiration), especially those neat scenes when the planet was dark and everything just glowed...


(image from hacknmod.com, which has a really cool tutorial about how to make your lawn glow upon touch !)

Prices, Prices

 

I think it was yesterday that Chris and I were at Jo Ann’s—just looking around to see if they had anything really nice in stock.

But we were pretty disappointed, especially with their batiks.  It’s kind of infuriating to see them advertise their “Legacy Studio” batiks as quilter’s premium, when in fact they don’t feel quite so nice, and the price is really out the roof.  Apparently, Jo Ann’s thinks that its customers will pay $12.99 per yard for these so-so batiks. 

(Click here for the Twin Orchards Textiles eBay shop or www.TwinOrchardsTextiles.com.)

We offer a great selection of batiks from manufacturers like Timeless Treasures, Princess Mirah, Hoffman, Robert Kaufman, and more – manufacturers of the highest quality batiks you can buy for quilting. We have them all, and we sell them for around $8.99 per yard.

We even have a listing on eBay where you can design your own custom batik set, at just $3.99 per half yard!  Check out some of the half yard sets we’ve made for customers:

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Let’s say you purchase 5 yards of fabric for your next quilt.  Look at how much you could be saving without losing a bit of quality.  If the choice is between making a quilt using the same fabrics every Jo Ann’s has, or making a truly unique quilt with our selection of batiks, isn’t the choice clear?

	Buying from your local Jo Ann’s	Buying from Twin Orchards Textiles
5 yards of coordinated fabrics	$12.99 x 5 yards = $64.95	$8.99 x 5 yards = $44.95
Shipping	$0.00	$5.25
TOTAL	$64.95	$50.20
SAVINGS	0% – eww.	23% :D

(In the interest of a fair fight, we didn’t mention other costs you’d have to factor in for your Jo Ann’s purchase like gas, time on the road, etc.  We also used our most expensive batiks at $8.99/yd.)

Weekend!

Originally uploaded by acycakes

This week has been super busy, what with fabric orders and searching for wedding gifts for relatives. It's been nice, though, especially because the weather has been light and sunny :)

Anyway, this is just a quick photo before we head to bed. The batik was just laying like this on top of a stack, begging to be photographed. There's rarely a batik I don't like, but this one is super pretty with its deep blue and purple tones, and then the swirled sky-blue dots on top. It's really too bad we have only a small bit left...

Lately the weather has been beautiful, so yesterday Chris and I grabbed some of bread and headed up to a nearby little pond with lots of ducks. Even though they always seem pretty well-fed by all the visitors, it's still so much fun to watch them waddle around and nibble on things. Most of them were sleeping on logs or just swimming about in the water, but these fellows were a little more lively:



When we got back home, we looked around at our fabric and had the idea to make a jelly roll for the ducks and the pond. After a bit of searching for the right greens of the trees and the blues in some of the ducks' wings, this is what we came up with!



I'm so happy that we had a matching print with birds on it. They may not be ducks (perhaps flamingoes? I'm not sure what kind they are!), but this one print alone makes the set a great memory of our day :).

The name may seem kind of strange, but it's from this show that we love, "Keeping Up Appearances." The main character, Hyacinth Bucket (a wildly funny woman obsessed with prim and proper niceties), has a candlelight supper along a river and describes it as "riparian entertainment"--before she ends up falling into the water and making a spectacle of herself. The episode is absolutely hilarious. Here is the first part from YouTube:



While we didn't fall into the water at the pond (or do anything besides relax on a bench, really), we figured Hyacinth's description was still appropriate for how we enjoyed the nice summer day.

Here is one last picture of a duck before we've got to go!