Calico Printworks Quilting

Frustration!

I've known many people that have come into the shop (when we were Calico, Canvas and Colors) with a little teeny swatch of fabric in hand, a desperate look on their face and asked if we had any of a certain fabric that they just needed six inches more of.  I always felt so bad telling them that we were out, or we only had four inches or yes, we have it, but it's in that kit.  For some reason, it has never happened to me.  Whether I was uber-organized or just plain lucky, I have always had enough fabric to finish my projects.  Until today, until this quilt . . .

I quilted this quilt yesterday, and as I was quilting it I realized that I didn't have any binding fabric.  This quilt was put together over the course of this last year with my friends from the shop and we used fabrics from our stash of Civil War fabrics.  We had to buy yardage for the background, inner border and binding.  I forgot to buy enough of anything for the binding.  Duh.  So after I got it together I decided I really wanted the inner border fabric for the binding as well.  I scratched and clawed my way through the bits and pieces in my sewing room trash to come up with the tiny remainders of selvages that had writing on them.  Yippee!  I pieced these together as carefully as I would have pieced a jigsaw puzzle and voila! there were my clues!  I was sure the hard part was over, and I triumphantly went upstairs to search the World Wide Web.

The fabric is Windham Fabrics Civil War IV line (they're on Civil War VI now!) by Nancy Gere and the pattern number is 25309, color 52.  I  checked Ebay. I Googled every possible combination of "Windham", "Civil War IV" and "Nancy Gere" that you can think of.  I found a lot of 25309 in tan and I found a lot of Civil War V waiting out there, but alas, no blue Civil War IV.  The best I could do was a different fabric from the same line in the same color.  It's not great, but it's something.

So . . . I want to thank Doris from Lil Country Shoppe in Middletown, Delaware for helping me find my fabric and for only charging me a couple of bucks for postage.  I guess we can feel lucky that we have the amazing gift of the internet at our fingertips to find our elusive fabrics, but for those of you who have gone into any shop, anywhere, clutching your tiny bit of fabric, I feel your pain.

Welcome to Calico Printworks Quilting

Our quilting room and hours are expanding and we hope this webpage will give you all the information you need. Our hope is that you'll use this site to get information about your quilt (maybe you want to know when it will be ready), pick out the quilting pattern for your next quilt (all the patterns will be listed here), get some inspiration (I'll pass along some impressions about a really great quilting book I've seen) or check out the beautiful quilts that our customers are having quilted.

The form for quilting is available on the right hand side bar of this webpage as well as the quilting patterns.  Please read everything carefully!  Our new hours can be found on the Calico Printworks webpage at www.calicoprintworks.com.

This is definitely a work in progress, so if you have ideas about what you'd like to see here, leave me a comment.  But for now, let me introduce you to our quilting staff.

 

 

Carol Uebe has quilted for Calico for many years. She is a retired nurse, but you won't find her at home very often.  She loves to travel, garden and be a wonderful grandma to her 5 grandchildren.  Her secret desire is to raise alpacas!

Lynn Helmke (me!) has quilted at Calico for 12 years.  I took a year away from the shop to be the store manager at the bakery next door, but decided to come back to do the thing I love.  I have two children, Shawn who just graduated from Madison and actually has a job, and Laura who will be a sophomore at Madison this year.

Audree Bach has quilted for many years and also worked at the shop.  She now works full-time for Baxter.  She and her husband, Bob, love to travel and hang out at local Trevor bars where they play cards and stir up trouble.  She is a loving grandma to Oliver.

This picture was taken by our friend Gayle Gottfredsen at her cabin in Tomah.  The four of us are often seen checking out quilt shops on our girlfriend weekends!