Thank you RCQ "Village People"

In a book, this would be the Acknowledgements section, but in my post it's the "special thank you to all our village people"!!!  I've talked about how it takes a village to make a quilt, but apparently it takes an even bigger village to get us ready for Market and Festival.  And this is my chance to acknowledge and thank all of those wonderful people. 
                      Thank you!!!!

 I'll try to do this by category and location!!!

The Katy, TX people - these are the wonderful ladies that help Paula with all of the kits we plan to sell.  They bring fabric into their homes to cut and assemble or they've been working at our "climate-controlled" warehouse for the past couple of weeks.  Thank you Cindy, Jackie, Cathy, Connie and Ronda.  Connie is also our Festival PR person.  You may have heard her last year if you were in the booth or anywhere in the aisle when she happened to walk by.  She's the one who usually says (in her outside voice) - "Oh look it's the Red Crinoline Quilts girls!!!" or something similar!!  We love her!! Paula also has some "at home" help with pattern stuffing and fat quarter folding - Shirley and Amy.  Shirley is Paula's mom and she folds a perfect fat quarter - no selvedge or threads showing!!! And our other Shirley, who graciously binds and adds rod pockets to many of our quilts.

The Jacksonville, FL people - otherwise known as The Olde Green Cupboard Design team!!  Gloria and Vicky have been binding the quilts that we sent there for quilting and they will also be the "transport" system for getting them to us!!!  They are coming for Market, so they are bringing our quilts with them!!!  The third member of that team is Gloria's daughter Heather and she is a fabulous photographer (takes all the photos for the OGC), so she did the photos on the three new mini's we are introducing.

The St.Petersburg, FL people - these are my BOM pattern people -  Caitlin, Courtney, Nikki, Nikki's mom and Phyllis and Bob.  They joke about how their work is very "seasonal" - just when I need patterns, but they've stuffed 12,300 patterns since August!!  I guess I need to thank the pattern bag people too!!!  We joke that maybe we should all invest in a plastics company - plastic bins for kits, plastic bags for patterns and kits - just a thought!!!

The Professionals - 
      Our quilters - Marcella and Margie from Crooked Creek Quilts in Greenwood, AR; Lynn and Cathy from Longarm Quilting Services in Jacksonville, FL and Sharon Dixon with Katy T-shirt Quilts in Katy, TX.  These ladies go above and beyond for us.  They are all always so willing to "fit us in" when we need a quilt quilted. I guess we need to apologize to the people we bump!!!
      Our photographers - Gregory and Elena of Gregory Case Photography in Pueblo West, CO and Heather Lynn in Jacksonville, FL.
      Our printers - Carol of Florida Printing Solutions in St.Pete (BOM patterns) and Matthew and Mark of Katy Printers in Katy, TX.  They're going to be very busy this week - brochures, order forms and patterns.  On second thought, maybe we should be investing in a paper company!!!

Ok, so with all people helping us you would think we would be done, but alas we have just a couple things left to do!!!  Paula is writing the last of the patterns and we have to proof them and I think she has one kit that she's finishing up.   I have to send out some wholesale and retail emails and then pack.  I leave Monday morning for Houston!!! I sent the last quilt to Sharon for quilting.  Paula picked fabric to do a re-do of our Sophie pattern.  I love this quilt and even better, it only took 2 days to make it - it took longer to get here from TX!!!!
 

Sophie re-do!!

After finishing the last quilt, I found myself with TV shows to watch, but no sewing - definitely an odd moment - so I decided to clean up the sewing room a bit.  Mainly I tackled the overflowing scrap basket on my table.  It is now empty!!!  The fabric has been sorted into appropriate scrap projects or drawers.  I'm sure I'll be filling it up pretty quickly though - Paula mentioned some new quilts she was thinking about!!! YAY!!!

Empty scrap basket!! Desperately seeking scraps!!!

Again, thank you to our village people!!  We couldn't do it without you.

Until next time, happy quilting,
Mary Ellen