If you have never been to Iowa, now is the time! Our friends at Helios Stitches N Stuff have a charming quilt shop in Mount Vernon and the Iowa Quilt Museum is now open! We are excited to share with you a little about the … Continue reading Blog Shout Out | Helios Stitches N Stuff
On the heels of last week’s blog, “The More the Merrier” we wanted to share more of our favorite (read: every project is our favorite) projects we hadn’t shared yet. In no particular order, here are a couple more projects that are just SO CUTE! … Continue reading So Cute! Sew it Up!
What does that mean? Check in everyday on our Facebook and Instagram for all things Harmony! Like & Comment to win! Lots of giveaways this week! Every day is another chance… TODAY: Like & Comment on your favorite part of the Harmony Blog to win … Continue reading HARMONY WEEK OF GIVEAWAYS!
Have you ever heard of the African proverb, “It takes a village to raise a child?” Well, the same theory applies to Ink & Arrow Fabrics. It’s not a child, per say, but we feel like it’s our baby and want it to grow up healthy, strong and shine bright!
We work with so many talented people in the industry who support our fabrics and help us create and share great projects and ideas! So, the more the merrier!!!
It’s always amazing to me how we all have different takes on the same thing. Our blog, a couple weeks ago, about the “Whip it Up Challenge” highlighted that very nicely. Six bloggers… one collection… so many different approaches and projects. That is kind of what we do here, right? We supply the fun fabric and let the magic happen! 🙂
Here, we’d like to highlight a few different industry friends who make us stronger and help inspire more people than if we were to do it all by ourselves!!!
First up, our friends at Plum Easy Patterns! We were introduced to Bethany and Deborah from Houston’s quilt market as they won our blog shout out! It was great fun interviewing them and learning about their business. We adore their patterns and thought it would be great to collaborate for this Spring Market and VOILA! One of our favorite quilts came about. The pixies were featured in their “All Ways Arrows” quilt, and I must say, it is totes adorbs… as are Bethany (daughter on the left) and Deborah (mom on the right) We love this geometric arrow quilt!
TUFFETS!!!!!! That’s how we say it in our office…. we have to YELL it out because they are so darn cute!!! These two pixie dot tuffets were made for us by Sharyn Cole of Tuffet Source. Yeah, I know… they are so fabulous! We were so fortunate to make a connection with Sharyn last year around this time and it’s been such a fun adventure since! If you were able to walk Quilt Market this year you probably saw dozens of tuffets throughout the show – they are quite popular… Sharyn’s are our favorite though 😉
How cute is this quilt? It’s our Naughty or Nice collection in a not-so-typical holiday color scheme 🙂 This was created for us by our friend Cheryl Phillips of Phillips Fiber Arts using her Attic Window pattern. Click on the image above to head over to her website 🙂
Happy Quilting sewing blogger, Melissa Corry created this pretty quilt using our pixie dots! The tutorial to make this quilt is on her blog – click on the photo above!
These circle skirts will be featured in an episode of “It’s Sew Easy” on PBS! July 21st Episode 1105 – The Stylish Girl will have instructions on how to create this fashionable skirt with Deb as your teacher! So cool!!! We are thrilled to be a sponsor of this series and we think the City Life and Cat’s Meow collections work just purr-fectly!
We just loved Sassafrass Lane Designs‘ booth at Houston (still remember that orange sofa) and so when we approached them with our fabrics and to see if they were interested in making some fun projects, they were on board! On the top left – the Park Place quilt using assorted Cat’s Meow fabrics is just so retro chic! The red/white/black/turquoise color combination with the placement of patterns and strips are just perfection! Then, we have the Shelby Satchel bag (hanging on the mannequin) which used our Talk to Me collection. Love this messenger style bag with it’s mix & match vibe! And… on the right side we have the Canyon Boulevard quilt using Talk to Me, City Life and The Cat’s Meow, and, of course, the Pixie dots! So fantastic how they mix and mingled the different I&A lines together…
Another friend we’ve made along the way (it’s kind of corny but this year really has been a year of making great friends!!!) is Jessica Stewart of Izzy & Ivy Designs. The dresses Izzy & Ivy make are the stuff that little girls dream of… twirling is a major side effect of wearing these skirts and dresses – I’m so jealous, I want to be 6 again! 🙂
The above skirt is featured on their blog, here. So in love with this!!! Another dress that we showed at market and on our blog is this Emory Dress with Cat’s Meow fabric.
We also sent Izzy & Ivy some of our C’est La Vie fabric… We will save that for a future post… it’s so darn cute! We were thrilled to have a hat and skirt made from that fabric!
The above skirt was a pattern we saw from Serendipity Studio and when we asked for the pattern, she was so gracious to share it with us!!! Zip Zip and we had this gorgeous skirt…
When I was browsing through the different blogs I love, I came across this fantastic “Hashtag” quilt block made by Sew Can She. I fell in love and emailed Caroline to see if she would mind making us a Talk to Me Hashtag pillow for our booth. Talk about excited…
Another talented pattern maker, Jaybird Quilts, has helped us out along the way. The gorgeous quilt below, made by Anne Cowan, uses Jaybird’s Stereo pattern. Made of all pixie dots, this quilt has so much movement and flair. The circular motif quilting on top of the very triangular quilt pieces is such a great contrast!
Theresa McDermott is a talented seamstress that we have worked with for many years. She created the bunting that we had on the back of our booth – so festive!
Also, she developed two patterns for us out of our Happy Hour fabrics. A Beach tote 😀 and a Wine Tote. Both will be coming soon as a free pattern on our website – so exciting!!!
And… because who doesn’t want to look like a fashionista while toting your beach bag and wine bag…. Theresa made us this fabulous skirt and tank top! So chic!
Last… but not least… are our friends Wives of Whitewood. These gals are just great! We love their fun and care-free patterns. Here are some of the items they made for us…
The above pattern is brand new! Using our Talk to Me Fabrics, Wives of Whitewood created this perfect little bag to keep your charging cord/plug accessories in order – so adorable!
As you can tell, we “get by with a little help from our friends” and we are so thankful for all the collaborative efforts as it made for a FUN and successful Quilt Market! We will share more of these projects on our social media and we are excited to do more and more in the future! Feel free to email us at info@inkandarrowfabrics.com if you are interested in working with us and our fabrics… you can never have too many FRIENDS!
There was so much to see at Quilt Market, here is part 2 to share with you! In order to offer as much variety in design as possible, we partner with several artists/designers to create their own collections for Quilting Treasures. It’s great to be … Continue reading QT Quilt Market – Salt Lake City Part 2
That’s right… 1 year of Ink & Arrow fabrics and soooo much fun! Happy Birthday to us!!! We were thrilled to celebrate and we brought the P-A-R-T-Y to Salt Lake City, Utah where our Spring International Quilt Market was held this past week. What an adventure!
Just a little back story in case you didn’t know… Quilt Market is a major convention we have twice a year – it is for the trade to come and see the latest and greatest in the fabric and sewing industry. You know the awesome quilt shops you buy our fabrics from??? They attend market and get to see all the different company’s sewing tools and threads etc. etc. etc. and we get to WOW them with our newest collections. It’s a lot of preparation, a lot of hard work and a LOT of FUN!!!
Since you can only attend if you are a shop owner or in the industry, we are going to share the booth pictures and some other fun stuff with you? Ready? OK!
Our Sneak Peek – This is a display at the entrance of market so people can get excited about what they are going to see… aka… make plans to stop by our booth 😉
The great image in our sneak peek and shown above as our feature image is an illustration by our very own Alicia Dujets, one of our talented studio artists and designer of a few of the Ink & Arrow groups! She has been with I&A since the first day and we were thrilled when we asked her to create this celebratory poster for us – it’s fun, flirty, whimsical, quirky, and unexpected… it’s soooo Ink & Arrow! My personal fave is the squirrel with the martini – that’s my type of squirrel! 😉
Here’s a panoramic shot of the booth – with our Sales managers prepping for the day. Lots of fun stuff, together with a bunch of fun people = P A R T Y!
A great part of our booth – featuring all of the collections together! This was great for people who hadn’t seen our fabrics yet; they could get an overview of the fun! It’s great to see what you can accomplish in a year’s time – we’re so proud!
See those big boards on the back of the booth? Those are some of our inspiration images we found on Pinterest, Instagram and across the web. Inspiration is everywhere and for Ink & Arrow – sometimes, it’s in the most unexpected place! You just never know…
For example… this photo made us swoon – we just had to make our own version of these for our Ink & Arrow booth chairs…Here’s the link… fabulous!
and… VOILA – here are our pretty chairs inspired by Punk Projects!
Here’s a detail shot of our shelves, lots and lots of pixies and arrows and awesome projects from our friends (more on that to come next week!)
Holy eye candy! The colors and the mixing and matching – it’s just so much fun! We’ll share more about the different projects and our friends we collaborated with next week, for now, let’s just enjoy the vista before us…. aaaahhhh!!!!
Two more great projects – we will leave you in suspense and reveal the talent behind these great quilts next week 🙂 Oh, and you can see our favorite hashtag #NoRulesJustFabric because we want people to be creative and do whatever they want with our fabrics, as long as they enjoy themselves and can share a smile with someone else!
We were lucky enough to have an end booth so we could add more decoration to the back! This allowed us to properly feature this pretty Pixie quilt “King’s Crossing”from our friend at Happy Quilting… we’ll share more with you next week. I know, so much stuff to anticipate! And, thanks to our friend Theresa (one of our talented sewists) who whipped up the Ink & Arrow bunting – we ❤ it so much!!!
Our Quilt Market Crew! Ink & Arrow has so many talented employees working together behind the scenes, here are a bunch who attended market and made it all come together!
So, how cool is that? ONE YEAR – BAM … like a flash.
We can’t wait to share with you more and more Ink & Arrow fabrics in the years to come. Come back next week to see all of our friends in the industry who we teamed up with for our fun and fabulous booth #2541!
Well, that’s a wrap! Everyone has returned from our Spring Quilt Market convention… so much to share with you all!!! This is an industry-only event where fabric manufacturers, designers, sewing supply companies, and pattern makers (among lots of others) come together and show their latest designs, products and ideas! This spring, market was in Salt Lake City, UT!
We are excited to share some photos and projects with you from market, since this is an event for the trade… we didn’t want to leave you out!
As you can see – there are a lot of attendees and a lot of color and creativity – it’s total eye candy for sewing/fabric enthusiasts. ❤ We get our geek-on walking the aisles!
Speaking of color, we will show you more of this particular line – Harmony – next week in part 2 of our blog… 🙂
We are so excited to offer the Secret Life of Pets fabric! This fabric will be in shops in June!
We just HAD to show the trailer in the booth – I mean, since we saw it, we cannot wait for the movie to debut! Click on the photo above to watch the trailer – I’ve watched it about 40 times already 😉
The above quilts/projects are from our Sun-kissed from Studio 8 (in shops July) and Pretty as a Peacock by Kate Follows collections (in shops September) I know, I know… patience 🙂
These beautiful nature-themed quilts are from our newest collections: Sundance by Lane Kendrick (in shops October) Deer Mountain from the Hautman Brothers (in shops September) and Into the Woods by Liz Goodrick-Dillon (in shops June) The quilt projects really bring these fabrics to life!
Our booth had a lot of great visitors – reviewing our lines with our sales team and learning more about the QT Family of Brands. It’s great to connect with quilt shops and show that we are partners in this fabric adventure!
Next week, we’ll show you more of the insiders view of the Quilting Treasures market experience! We hope you enjoyed this overview – there is more to come!!!
One of the benefits of working at Ink & Arrow is our ability to share our fun fabrics with industry talent! By sharing fabric through special projects and opportunities, we are able to spark a wonderful chain reaction. We design and produce the fabric, the maker/crafter/sewist takes the fabric and creates something … Continue reading Whip It Up Challenge with Sew Mama Sew
On the heels of last week’s patriotic themed blog and as a nod to the upcoming Memorial Day remembrance, we are proud to share with you the Quilts of Valor Challenge of 2016! We were thrilled when HQMS approached us to sponsor this wonderful opportunity. … Continue reading QT Quilts of Valor Challenge 2016!
Have you ever been to Hawaii? Try as I might to persuade our General Manager to book tickets to Hawaii as a reference and research experience, it just didn’t fly. 🙂
Instead of heading there physically, let’s take a virtual trip to this beautiful island getaway and learn about our friends of Ink & Arrow Fabrics and their shop,
Terri, the owner of Kuni Island Fabrics, was in contact with us earlier this year. After working at ‘Kuni Dry Goods’ as a buyer for many years, the shop closed 20 years ago. Terri opened her own store on the property and kept the ‘Kuni’ part as the business was established for almost 50 years! Many of the employees from Kuni Dry Goods remained and have been there ever since.
We were excited to hear from Terri when she reached out looking for sponsors for their upcoming contest. Kuni Island Fabrics has a contest at their store once a year. They choose fabric, set the rules and inspire their customers to participate! This year, as a way to encourage shopping local, to contribute to collections for the Food bank and to provide some variety into their daily businesses, Terri reached out to other stores in the area. The Calico Cat, Kaimuki Dry Goods and Hidden Yardage also participated in this contest. In fact, Carol at Calico Cat had just been shown the I&A collections by our Sales Manager Jesus, and everyone agreed to feature the main print from City Life as the contest feature! We were thrilled and proudly donated the main prize. This, along with contributions from other vendors and the stores provided three gift certificates and Terri created Prize baskets. We loved the contest idea so much, we wanted to also give a fat quarter and pen to every participant as a thank you for supporting the stores and our fabrics!
The challenge: Use the City Life Rooftop Gardens print and create original projects in the following categories: Tote Bag, Quilt and Gift. Another fun requirement was the project had to include an arrow, as a nod to Ink & Arrow. How fun!?!? I must say, every time we got project pictures from Terri it was like Christmas morning!!!!
We will be adding these beautiful projects to the Your Ink & Arrow section of our website in the coming weeks. Feel free to send us an email at info@inkandarrowfabrics if you were one of the participants and want to include your name with the project on the ‘Your Ink & Arrow’ part of our website… you’ll be famous!!!
Patti (one of our Sales Managers) and Nui Mona (shop owner) were tasked with picking the winners! They definitely had their work cut out for them – wowza! Here are the winners – so exciting!!!
GRAND PRIZE WINNER: BROOKE WITSBERGER
QUILT CATEGORY WINNERS:
TOTE BAG CATEGORY WINNERS:
GIFT CATEGORY WINNERS:
I am INSPIRED! I’m sure you are too. Big round of applause to all the participants, we are truly impressed and cannot wait to see what else people make with Ink & Arrow!
What a wonderful way to engage the customers and it just happened that Terri said it helped bring in a new group of customers and their families. It helped to build her business, not to mention the entries made a stunning store display!
We are so thankful for the shops we work with, we hope you enjoyed learning a little more about Kuni Island Fabrics and look forward to sharing more stories from the industry!
On the QT 