Behind the Bolts

Disclaimer: This is not an article. This is a blog post. I had an opportunity to communicate with someone who could help me understand some things about how big box fabric shops work, and I decided to share that information with my readers. If I had written this for a publication, I would have gathered more sources and contacted the company for comment. I did not do this because I trusted my readers to know the difference between what is essentially an opinion piece and real investigative journalism.  However, if you read through the comments (and there's a lot of them), I believe you'll see that while the experience of my interviewee is not universal, it definitely seems common.



We all go there. It’s usually convenient; sometimes it’s the only place nearby to get that certain thing we need to finish (or start) a project. Sometimes the coupon does make the price pretty attractive. So, we go. And then we bitch about it after. Naturally, I’m talking about Jo-Ann Fabrics, the retail chain we all love to hate. There is one just minutes from my house—I could walk there on a nice day—and I have purchased tons of thread and batting and pillow forms and elastic and other things I really wanted to buy without ordering online or traveling many extra miles to my LQS to purchase. And on occasion, when I have made these trips, I have walked in, found what I needed, paid for it and walked out. Other times? Not so much.

 When people discuss Jo-Ann Fabrics, they tend to have two main complaints: you can’t find anyone to help you, and, if you do, they are cranky. Recently, I posted this photo on Instagram with the caption: “Hello? Helloooo! I just wanna buy one thing. It’ll only take a minute, I swear! Hello?”

 It just so happened that one of my Instagram followers was an assistant manager at a Jo-Ann Fabrics store, and she responded, “That’s what happens when they don’t let us have the coverage we need and want cashiers to do more and more further away from the registers. This happens on a default basis in my store, despite desperately trying to prevent it.” I asked her if she’d be willing to talk with me some more about working at Jo-Ann’s and the policies they have in place for employees, in order to get a better sense of what makes our experiences there so universally bad, and just who is responsible. And she agreed.

I worked many years in retail (though almost always for small business owners) and so I know how difficult the work can be, and how company rules can create insurmountable problems for both the shopper and the retail employee. It seemed to me that there is a general assumption that shopping at Jo-Ann’s is so bad because they probably don’t pay well and so can’t keep enough employees on hand or can’t keep good employees very long. What I learned is more complex than that, and truly opened my eyes to some of the realities of big chain business practices and how that affects both consumers and employees.

 For obvious reasons, my interviewee preferred to remain anonymous, so we’ll call her Employee X. Employee X has worked at Jo-Ann’s for 9 months and she is an assistant store manager. She was hired on in this position and works full-time. She is one of five full-time employees (four managers and one full-time worker) and she tells me that most stores have this many full-time employees. Her store also has 18 part-time workers, and part-time means they each work less than 28 hours per week. However, she says, a store might have more if the sales volume for that particular location warrants it. Her store is one of the large ones with custom framing and classes, so it has more employees than a store that doesn’t.

 If Employee X is working the opening shift, she arrives before the store opens and, among other tasks, walks the floor doing what is called a “daily store tour,” where a list is made of all the things that need to be done such as dusting, straightening displays, and cleaning up the stuff customers spill and leave on the floor just before closing the night before. Each of these tasks has to be ranked in importance and then assigned to an employee along with an estimate of how long each task should take. The list “gets added to as the day goes on, and can often span a few pages,” she says. After that, the manager on duty opens the registers, counts money, and does the daily deposit. The beginning of the day is also when any price changes are made, which usually happens twice a week.

 The management team has a LOT to do, and each manager may be a “lead” for a different aspect of running the store. There is the operations lead, who handles “audit(s) and charitable donations/discard, among other things.” The merchandise lead has to make sure all the displays are set up the way the diagrams (called planograms) sent to them from the corporate office dictate. Employee X says that whoever designs the planograms (she imagines his name is Roger) is on crack because there is always something wrong with the diagrams, which might not be evident until you are halfway through and you have to start over. There is also a store lead, and a freight coordinator (who handles unloading the truck, organizing the stock room, and stocking the store) plus another full-time person devoted to stocking. “Some stores have a full-time framing specialist; some have a full-time cashier—it all depends on their need and their volume.” The store lead, Employee X tells me, has, among other tasks, the job of “making sure we make payroll.” “Making payroll” is a phrase that crops up often in my emails with Employee X, and so eventually, I ask her to explain—and this is where things get really interesting.

 Each store has a fiscal week, and those weeks each have budget goals, both daily and weekly. The goals are determined by the corporate office and are a prediction based upon the previous year’s sales and an estimation of the cost to run and staff the store. Each daily goal added together gives the weekly goal, and a portion of the weekly goal goes toward payroll. So if the prediction is that the store will make X amount of money in that week, then a portion of that money is allowed to be used for payroll. “Every morning we do a calculation ((sales this week x scheduled selling hours) / earned hourly wage) to tell us how many staffing hours we have used. The summary tells us how many hours we have used vs. the calculation of how many hours we have earned.”

 So, if you have ever wondered why Jo-Ann’s doesn’t just staff every store with someone always at the register and someone always at the cutting counter and someone always available to help you find stuff (or multiple someones in any or all these places), this is why. Each store is only allotted a certain amount of money that can be spent each week on payroll, but the number of things that have to be done in a given day doesn’t also go down if the payroll budget goes down, nor does the budget for payroll increase if there is more that comes up to be done. On top of this, the payroll budget is somewhat tied to store performance, but is an esoteric calculation that is based on older sales numbers, not recent ones. So a store could have a suddenly busy season, but not get more payroll hours to use.

 Employee X says the corporate office “cares about payroll over everything.” Each store is pressured to come in “under payroll,” which means that they have to try and use fewer staffing hours than they have the budget for. And when I say “pressured,” I mean that they might get “written up” when they fail. Getting “written up” is another phrase that Employee X uses a lot, because apparently it’s a tool that is used a lot. Getting written up is a black mark on your record that can quickly add up to getting fired, so naturally everyone tries to avoid it. But that isn’t always easy at JoAnn’s.

 Because each store has to try to come “under payroll,” and thus keep staffing very lean, and because each staff member has a list of tasks that have to be done each day, it often happens that the staff on duty, and particularly management, has more to do than can reasonably be completed in one day. Jo-Ann’s doesn’t want to keep someone at the register all the time, because she could be doing one of hundreds of other things that need doing when there are no customers. Problem is, she has to get those things done by the end of her shift, or risk getting written up. Work overtime to get them done? No, because then the store would not make payroll. Clock out and do it on your own time? Nope—you can get written up or even fired for that. Employee X tells me she often goes with no breaks or meals for an entire day because of this, signing something called a “meal period exception” to keep corporate butts covered.

So, when you walk into a Jo-Ann’s and there’s no one at the register or at the cutting counter, it’s not because the person assigned to those places is lounging on the fleece bolts and taking a snooze. She has a long list of tasks to get done, and when there is no one at the register, she has to be working on them and they might not be located anywhere near the check-out. If you need help finding some particular item, and the person you ask doesn’t seem interested in guiding you to the correct area and discussing the relative merits of item A and item B with you, her shift may be almost over and she hasn’t been able to finish what she has to do and she’s worried about being written up. It doesn’t take being written up too many times before one is fired, and that’s a specter that hangs over everyone’s heads, even more so recently.

 A few weeks after working on this article with Employee X, she informed me that she had quit. Recently, corporate had started implementing something called “coaching documents,” which, she told me, “are basically mini write-ups to document when you talked with a team member about not using the right procedure to sell the item of the day, or ask for coupons, or sell tote bags (which is our new thing, and they’re awful), and I’m not about that. It goes against basically every study about productivity and behavior change. You don’t get real, genuine change by having your employees feel scared to not do it or get written up; you get change by making them feel empowered to do better and focusing on positives and building them up.” She had already decided to leave, but told her boss she refused to implement these changes for her last two weeks. Her health was suffering from the schedule and from never getting meal breaks, and she’s looking forward to getting her system back in order.

 It is very easy to assume that the way most businesses hope to attract and retain customers is through a policy of superior customer service (combined with competitive prices and selection), and that when the service we think we are owed is not forthcoming it must somehow be the result of employees just not caring enough to do their jobs properly. But that is not always the case, and especially when we are talking about very large, national chain stores. The daily and weekly tasks and goals that each store must meet preclude the employees spending a great deal of time with customers. When employees are skipping meals in order to complete their daily tasks, they simply aren’t allowed the luxury of taking time with customers. It’s not necessarily an issue of someone with a bad attitude who doesn’t “get” customer service. It is an issue of how large retail chains keep costs down in order to also keep prices low, while still maintaining expected profit levels.

 Add to this a chain-wide system of “write-ups” that document each time you fail to do something you are expected to do. Imagine having so many things to accomplish, and no way to add time or people to get them done, plus being worried that you’ll get written up for not finishing them. Or for forgetting to ask for coupons. Or for not using the right language to sell a tote bag. On an empty stomach.

 The takeaway I hope you get from all this is that Jo-Ann’s simply isn’t set up to be the place you go in order to interact with employees and get tons of advice and hand holding. And that it isn’t necessarily because the people there don’t want to help you, but because the staffing and payroll system prevents them from spending the time to do so. And demanding that they do when you go won’t change anything, but may end up getting someone written up. “Asking us to plan, design, sketch out, or otherwise be involved in your project is well beyond what we get paid to do, and can actually get us in trouble,” says Employee X.

 I believe there is a place in the quilting and sewing world for stores like Jo-Ann’s alongside independently owned shops (and yes, I prefer to shop with independents whenever possible). I have had a lot of quilters tell me that were it not for the cheap fabrics and thread they can get there, they would not be able to quilt at all. Sometimes, there simply isn’t a local independent shop close enough. However, we need to stop thinking of Jo-Ann’s as a place that should function exactly like those independent shops, just on a larger, and cheaper, scale. They don’t. And it isn’t necessarily the fault of the people on the sales floor.

 That’s not to say that I don’t believe places such as Jo-Ann’s can’t or shouldn’t change, only that the people on the sales floor are not the ones who can directly change it. If you think a large, corporately owned chain needs to change, you need to let the higher-ups know, not the workers. Write them. Don’t tie your comments to a particular store or employee, because that could result in unintended consequences for them, but let the big wigs know that the system as is stands makes customers angry and employees miserable.

WRITER'S NOTE: For what it's worth, I do understand that this is not the story for every single employee in every single store. I am happy to hear from anyone who enjoys shopping or working there, and I have approved every single comment I have received that tells the good side of things. I may even contact some of those people to get their side of the story for a follow-up post. If you wish to tell me about how well your store is staffed and run, please do so, but not while insulting the people who have not been as lucky as you or implying that they must be lying. Read through all the comments and you'll see too many corroborating stories for that to be the case.

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Buck up!

Seriously, what is it with all the damn deer?

I like deer. They're pretty and the skittishness makes them seem all mysterious, especially when one slowly steps out of the misty woods and looks at you like it possesses magical secrets. Then again, I'm told they can mess up gardens and I know several people who have had major car damage from hitting one that darted into the road. For all I know they vote against feminist issues and talk loudly in movie theaters. Still—pretty.

So, what is it with all the deer on quilting fabric right now? Was there a memo? Because I have recently learned that I am a Quilt Industry Professional (that's a QUIP in industry jargon that I totally made up—I have a t-shirt and everything!), and I didn't get any damn memo. Did Momo start the memo a couple years ago?

Then Echino's hipster deer print was a thing that was cool for a while.

Joel Dewberry had a whole Deer Valley.

Then Birch Fabrics tried to pretend they were elk.

And Anna Maria Horner tried to slip it in last fall, like we wouldn't notice.

Then at Spring Market this year, it was like OH CRAP, I FORGOT TO MAKE MY DEER FABIC. BETTER GET ON THAT.

Violet Craft's Timber Valley:

Katarina Rocella's Indelible (which I grant you is a very interesting combo of motifs):

And now, my beloved Tula Pink has been taken over by the Quiltuminati, or whoever decides these things and makes everyone fall in line or Angela Walters won't quilt for them EVER AGAIN.

Now, I admit that of all the deer we are currently being subjected to  offered, Tula's are my favorite and yes I will probably buy them in every color and hoard them like I do all my other Tula fabrics. But, Tula, my darling, why? There are so many wonderful creatures on this earth that deserve to be immortalized on quilting cotton. For example:

The majestic platypus:

The star-nosed mole:

Forget hedgehogs. Puffer fish!

I'm sure Kaffe Fassett could do something spectacular with some freaky caterpillars:

This magnificent creature would make EXCELLENT pillows and other bed-related items:

See, fabric designers? There's a whole world out there just waiting for you to exploit it. You don't have to do what the Quilting Overlords command you. Break your chains and draw some stuff that doesn't have antlers on it. It will be ok, I promise. We might even buy some of it.

But no cassowaries. I have dibs on the cassowary.

Sale info

Just FYI, there is another sale going on on my Facebook feed starting tonight, though this one is not run by me. My friend Flaun Cline recently had to make a big move across country and our friend Trish (who also copyedited my book, BTW) helped her sort out sewing stuff to sell. I offered them both the use of my Facebook feed to help sell the stuff. I mean, what's the point of having a reach of a couple thousand people if you can't use it to help your friends sell their books, patterns, fabric, and assorted notions? Amirite?

You can get all the details on my Facebook page, but the sale starts tonight and you will be dealing directly with Trish who has admin access to my page. She will be the one posting, invoicing, and mailing, and the one answering any questions you have.

After my return from Portland, I had to get ready for my dad's visit and then I was felled by a diverticulitis attack, from which I am still recovering. I really hope to be back in good form next week and to thank you for your patience, I'll give away some Portland-purchased penis fabric!

I also want to address some of the questions I've been getting about whether there will be a calendar this year. No, I'm afraid there will not. The calendar doesn't make very much money and Lulu.com has had several issues with accurately reporting the sales I have had. This year has also been a difficult one for me personally, and I am finding myself unmotivated to work on anything at all. I know there are several of you who love the calendar and look forward to it every year, but my heart just isn't in it, especially when there is so little money to be made from it. However, I will be thinking about it over the next several months, and will be researching whether it might be feasible to print and distribute it myself, possibly through a Kickstarter program. This would eliminate some of the problems I have with using the print-on-demand service and might even give me a small advertising budget. Now that I have a distributor for my book, it's possible I could get the calendar distributed through them as well. All things I need to think carefully about. But I need to get past my sickness and past my funk to do it properly.

As always, thank you for your support and your patience with me as I try to get back into my groove.

Thank you, Mr. Williams

When my brother came home from the Navy, newly divorced and still healing from a terrible motorcycle accident that shattered his leg, what he brought home with him—besides his impressive record collection—was his sense of humor. He was naturally funny, and though he was a big guy and could be imposing when he really wanted to, he had a sweet smile and the most infectious laugh. His laugh was always more like a giggle—a high-pitched "hee, hee, hee hee!"— and he was the first person I remember who would pointedly look me in the eye as we laughed over something. It was like he delighted in seeing other people laugh along with him and wanted them to know it.

Jon and I devoured a lot of pop culture together: movies, music, music videos, TV. I can't remember when or how we saw that first Robin Williams stand-up special—whether it was on TV or we rented it on our new Betamax tape player—but it was Robin Williams Live at the Roxy.

I won't go to the trouble of listing every joke and line from that show that became a part of our shared scripts, but I'm sure you know how it goes. You see a comedian and from then on you grab every opportunity that presents itself to repeat a line so you can share that laughter again. Which is why for ages we would crack each other up by quietly singing, "Pop goes the weasel" whenever we used a microwave.

Robin Williams certainly wasn't the only comedian whose work wormed its way into our lives, but he was always the one I loved the most. I don't know if his influence can be felt or seen in my writing, but I guarantee you it's there when I put my kids to bed every night and they beg me to perform our traditional bedtime ritual in as many accents and voices as I can.

To me, the life of Robin Williams is proof that making people laugh is a worthwhile calling. It couldn't save him from a lifetime of depression, but how many people did he save in some small way each time he performed, each time he gave of himself—risking so much by throwing his entire being into every word? I know there are people out there who felt the bleakness of life lift, and maybe only for a moment, because they laughed at and with this fiercely intelligent, brave man.

The last time I saw my brother, he was bedridden and was staying in a rehab facility, where they were making a last-ditch effort to help him regain some use of the left side of his body after his stroke and second brain surgery. I hadn't seen him since before the stroke, and so, when I walked in his room, I was gutted by the sight of him. He was unable to walk on his own, and was propped in bed watching TV. His left hand was being held open by a special strap to keep the skin of his palm from getting sores. He had lost much of his facial and vocal expressions, so at first he seemed distant and monotone. He had developed a large skin cancer on one side of his face that was not being removed because, well, there was no point. My sister and I sat with him for a while and chatted, and then decided to give him a rest while we went to get some lunch, promising to come back after and bring him a burger.

When we got outside to my sister's car, everything that I had held in since we entered his room burst out, and I sobbed and sobbed until I thought there would be nothing left of me. He was really dying, and for the first time, I could see it. It wasn't just a dent in his skull, or a propensity to nap or to be cold. The physical, immutable reality that he would soon no longer exist and that it would not be an easy departure hit me so hard I buckled. My sister sat with me, talked and cried with me, and eventually I pulled it together enough to go eat.

I worried about going back for the afternoon, uncertain if I could handle it, but the rest and the food (and the cry) was good for all of us, and we all seemed looser and more comfortable. We started talking more like we always had, about anything and everything, and we started to laugh again. As we talked, Jon would occasionally change the channel on the television. He liked to have it on, even when he had visitors, and at one point he turned it to a golf game. I had recently been farting around on the internet and had come across a Robin Williams performance where he imagined the crazy Scot who invented golf—who obviously did it just to fuck with people. I asked Jon if he had ever seen it, and he hadn't. So, I did it for him. As much as I could remember and in my best Scottish accent. By this time, the three of us were laughing like loons, and the next day, when his son came by while we were there, Jon told him to look it up on You Tube, and the two of them watched it together and there was that beautiful giggle again. It should have become one of our refrains: "Fuck, no! Eighteen fuckin' times!" The laughter we got from that opened us all up to more and more, and though we moved on to other topics, we giggled and laughed more easily thereafter. Or at least it seemed so to me. His wife later told me that she called him after we left, and he was practically giddy—lighter in spirit than he had been in months. Because that's what laughter can do.

I was making arrangements to go and visit him again a few months later when he passed away.

Robin Williams will never know that one day in a rehab center in Tennessee, two sisters and a brother spent two last days together, and that a part of those days were spent holding our sides over one of his many, many performances. And that's okay, because I trust he knew how much joy he brought to the world, even as his depression stole his own joy from him. And I know that my brief moments of sorrow over his passing are nothing compared to the overwhelming grief those who truly knew and loved him are feeling now. I'm all too aware of what that grief feels like. Still, I would have liked to have told him what he did that day.

Anyway. Thank you, Mr. Williams. I wish you well on the next leg of your journey. Say hi to my mom and brother if you see them, okay?

For what it's worth, this is the bit:

The Great Bitchy Sewing Room Sale, Part Deux

Do you ever just look around your house and think, "How the hell did I get all this stuff?" We are acquisitive little beasts, are we not? Quite frankly, my sewing room has gotten to the point where I don't even want to start a new project, because that would mean figuring out where to move all the stuff that lives on my cutting table, not to mention all the stuff that lives on my sewing table. And all the other tables. And the floor. Basically, if there's a flat surface anywhere, it's covered in junk.

When I start to look longingly at my tables and wish I could use them, that means it's time to get rid of stuff. Do you remember the last Facebook sale? We had a grand old time, and I believe the time has come to do it again. So that I can fill your sewing rooms with stuff to cover every available surface. It's the Circle of Life!

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the semi-annual Great Bitchy Facebook Sale, it goes like this: Starting on Saturday, July 27, I will be posting pictures of stuff on my Facebook page. Each photo will have a description of the item being sold and the price. The first person to comment with the desire to purchase said item gets it. That person must then communicate to me, either in a comment or via direct message, their Paypal email address and their zip code. I will invoice everyone after the sale is over, and it will probably take a few days to get through everything.

Included in the sale are: fabric, scrap bags, books, notions, and maybe a couple handmade items. Almost everything will be sold for well below retail, except for the newest fabrics, which I will still try to keep below full retail, just not as far below.

And afterwards, there will be a BONUS SALE! My friend Flaun recently made a big move from Minnesota to Tennessee and my friend Trish not only helped her clean out her sewing room, but took home her extra stuff to help her sell it off. I offered the use of my Facebook page for the sale, so once my stuff has been picked over, Trish will take over and start posting Flaun's stuff. At that point, if you purchase anything from Flaun, you will need to re-post your Paypal address and zip code, and you will receive a separate invoice for those things.

Because we are civilized folk and we do not want to descend into chaos, there are rules and guidelines.

1. Be nice.
2. I have to run the sale when it is convenient for me. I realize the times I choose to post may not be convenient for you, but I can't help that. You can write me snarly emails about how unfair it is that I posted the one thing you wanted while you were at TaeBo class, but I will ignore them.
3. There are times when two people claim things very close together. Also, Facebook in a browser is all funky with the way comments appear, so it may look like one comment was first when another really was. Fortunately, my phone app shows the comments in chronological order, so that is how I will decide who gets the item.
4. It will take me time to create the invoices after the sale (spreadsheets are involved), so please be patient. I will announce on Facebook when I have emailed the invoices. If I have made this announcement, and you do not receive an invoice, please let me know. It usually means I made a typing error with your email address.
5. Shipping is not included in the prices and will be added on at invoice time. Rest assured I will cram everything into the smallest box/envelope possible.

I think that covers it, but if I have forgotten some detail, you can excoriate me for it in the comments and I will address it.

I am going to try to start at 10 am EST on Saturday, but that can change depending on my kids and what we decide to do over the weekend. I may schedule a bunch of posts, and get back to them later if we need to go out.

Have fun and thank you!!

Quilting With the Big Dogs

This week, I am handing things over to a special guest. This little lady has only been quilting for a couple years, but she's already making a big splash in the quilting world. She's been featured in several major quilt magazines, and her book, Drool-Worthy Quilts, will be released by Perro Press in October. Please welcome Roxie!

Hi, everyone—and thank you so much, Megan, for inviting me to share some of my thoughts with your readers today. I should warn you, though, I'm definitely not as funny as Megan! Well, except when I'm playing fetch and suddenly drop the stick and hike up my leg to lick my lady bits. Apparently that's HILARIOUS.

So, first let's address the one question everybody asks me—do you get free treats from fabric manufacturers? I'm afraid the answer is HELL YES I DO! Usually, all I have to do is a blog post or something, and they just throw the bacon right at me. Sometimes they also want to give me a tummy rub, and that does make me feel a little bit cheap and easy, but you try resisting the sweet, sweet sensation of warm hands on your little pot belly. So what if I have to design a quilt around the latest collection featuring insanely large prints and seizure-inducing color combos in return? BACON AND TUMMY RUBS. I'm only canine, after all.

There's a lot that I've had to overcome in my career as a four-legged quilter. Having four legs for one thing. And no hands. But I haven't let that stop me! I think my biggest obstacle has to be my damn human. She keeps trying to banish me from the sewing room, and I know she's just jealous of my success. I can't help it if I'm completely awesome and everyone loves me. Look at my tummy! It's so round and squishy! Who wouldn't give a book deal to a cute little pudge-monkey like me, huh? No, one, that's who! I'M SO GREAT YAY YAY LET'S CHEW THE CORNERS OFF ALL THE ACRYLIC RULERS WHO'S WITH ME YAY!

But no, my human keeps claiming that I don't belong in the sewing room just because I am a superior being who needs to fart next to her and then scramble into her lap for comfort because the sound of my own flatulence scares me. Or because I have eclectic tastes and like to eat my own poop and then lick her face. She doesn't understand that I was educated at Miss Prissy's Fancy Dog Academy and I learned all of those things from a very wise and worldly schnauzer named Rocko. Rocko also humped me incessantly, but that was a small price to pay for his tutelage. If you haven't been to dog academy, you couldn't possibly understand. SIT! STAY! HIKE YOUR LEG UP AND LICK YOUR BITS! See? You don't get it.

So, yeah, some days I just want to give it all up and go into the back yard and bark at nothing until the neighbors start yelling. But then I remember why I got into this business in the first place: the adulation of total strangers. That's why you all do it, right? Well, okay, not all of you. I realize not everybody can be famous like me—I mean, do you have a fuzzy tummy? There's a very simple equation at work here, but let me lay it out for you: Fuzzy tummy + tummy rubs  x "Who's a good girl? Who's a good girl? You are!" = UNDENIABLE QUILTING TALENT. Can't argue with that logic, can you?

So, not only should I be allowed in my human's sewing room, I should totally have my own room with my own machine, and I'm sure my good friends at Janome or Bernina or Pfaff or one of those will be happy to sponsor a complete sewing room set-up for me. I will happily take lots of pictures of myself next to the machine with captions like THANKS, HUSKERDUVARNA which will surely result in millions of sales for them! I am SO good at business stuff. And my butt smells nice too.

Being a dog in the quilting industry has definitely been a good thing, even if SOME people (ahem, human) are totes jelly and want to deprive me of my right to pee on fat quarter bundles. I would say, if you can be a quilting dog, definitely be a quilting dog, but if you can't, don't be a quilting cat. Cats are assholes.

And I'm certainly not the only dog out there! I'm proud to belong to a pooch-only guild full of really nice pups. Allow me to introduce you to my friends:

This is our program coordinator, Heidi. I wanted that job but Heidi was all, "I can do it! I can do it! Let me! Let me! Let me!" And then she ran around in circles until she fell over and I said, "Fine. You do it." If she schedules you for a workshop with us and your contract has drool and teeth marks all over it, just know they were put there with a lot of enthusiasm.

This is Jack. He's new, so he hasn't figured out yet that licking the machine, while certainly a really fun thing to do almost anytime, doesn't actually produce any quilting. That's ok; he'll get there. We have treats.

This is JoJo. She's an old-fashioned girl who loves to sew on her antique slant-needle Singer and also refuses to let a guy sniff her butt on the first date. Or the fifth. She's truly an inspiration to us all. 

Cocoa is in charge of Hospitality, which, yes, is a thing in our guild. We want our guests to be super comfy, so Cocoa will artfully create a lovely impromptu doggie bed out of any and all available materials. So, keep an eye on your stuff. If you also express a desire to have your face licked until you cry—you do this by existing, of course—Cocoa will hook you up.

Zeus! Zeus was named for the god of thunder and we'll just let you guess why. Despite his, um, frequent thunderclaps, Zeus always brings a festive vibe to guild meetings by dressing up as some damn thing that has no relation to any current holiday or event. This was taken at our June 11th meeting. 

This is Scarlett. If you should come visit our guild someday, a little scratch behind the ears and a few "good girls" would not be unwelcome. Despite her accomplishments—just look at that Circle of Geese!—poor Miss Scarlett suffers from a certain doggie ennui. "What does it all mean?" she asks. "Why do we bother? Are we all not just playthings, meant only for the amusement of humans?" Seriously, a tummy rub would do her so much good. And maybe some bacon.

Um, we don't actually know her name. She just shows up with that crown on and peers at all of us over her glasses, sipping her giant Coca-Cola. We've take to calling her The Dowager Empress.

And this is Baxter. He was recently elected guild president based solely on being a snuggly widdle cuddle-bean, but it turns out he's not exactly leadership material. Seriously, I thought I was a nap champion, but Baxter is the Snooze King. And nobody has the heart to wake him up when we need him for something, because his little paws twitch when he sleeps, like he's running after foxes and squirrels, and he makes this tiny "woof" sound that just melts your insides to butter. Also, when you wake him suddenly, he pees everywhere.

We hope you'll visit our guild someday and bring us lots of Bonz and Beggin Strips and maybe some actual bacon. And remember: just because we're dogs doesn't mean we're all thinking about humping your leg. That's only the males.

Big thanks to (in order) Joanie Dorsey, Lisa Pitts Stanley, Brandy Yeager, Theresa Pino, Regina Smith, Nancy Sharr, Laura Lochore, Tammy Khan, and Katie Kohl Welch for taking such great pictures of their dogs and allowing me to use them in this post. Bacon and tummy rubs to you all!

Update from the plague ward

I've been pretty absent lately and part of that is because a plague descended upon my household and I haven't wanted to move or think or breathe for DAYS. The kids had it first, and whenever they get sick the question I always ask is: Will this be one of those viruses that is mild in kids and worse in adults? And this time the answer was oh, hell yes.

Before the ague of death took hold, I had started mucking about with all my fabric, trying to weed out the stuff I'm clearly never going to use, and getting the bits I had tucked away in drawers out where I can see them. I haven't been sewing much in the last year or so, and I feel so stuck creatively (in quilting anyway), that I thought maybe if I had things better organized and in my line of sight, I might get inspired to actually use some of it.

I have been collecting fat quarter, fat eighth, and half-yard bundles over the last 6–8 months, but I've been keeping them in drawers, where I never see them, unless I go over and pay them a visit, which always makes me feel a bit foolish. ("Hello, my lovelies—mommy just wants to stroke you for a bit before she is forced to play Mario Kart with her children again.") We have been cleaning out the girls' room and they had a bookshelf that was mainly being used for stuffed animals they no longer play with, so I made the executive decision to carry that bastard from their basement room up two flights to my room all by myself. Even the girls were like, "Damn, woman. What's gotten into you?"

But now I can see all my pretties, even if I can't quite get to them without a bit of awkward contortioning. There's a table right in front of the shelves, but I've determined that it will hold my weight for short periods, so, you know, no big.

The only thing I have managed to sew is this lovely Kitchen Aid mixer from this pattern by Sew Ichigo.

I doubled the size of the pattern  to make the block 12 inches, and it went together very smoothly. I even dipped into my precious Tula Pink stash to make it.

I also made this little froggie wall hanging back in May and June for a birthday swap group I am part of. My assigned recipient loves and collects frogs, so I had to find a paper pieced frog pattern. There are some insanely small pieces to this pattern, and there were many times I thought I'd have to chuck the whole thing and just send her some frog fabric.

I used fabric from a FQ bundle of Valori Wells Blueprint Basics I scored at Market. I still have a layer cake and a charm pack of these and I really love them. I just wish I had picked a better color combo than the red and pink at the end—the contrast in the others was way better, but I had already rejected one panel I made in grey and green for the same reason and I didn't have time to try again.

In the course of cleaning and rearranging, I have also discovered a lot of forgotten stuff. Embroidery projects I designed and started but never finished. And fabric! I love Lizzy House with the same fervor as I love Tula Pink, and I discovered I had a secret little stash of Castle Peeps! This might have been her first collection, if I'm not mistaken, and it's very hard to find anybody willing to part with it. I had purchased a kit from a vendor at the Annapolis Quilt Show the first year I went (and that vendor has never been back, dammit—hers was the only shop that had anything other than civil war repro and nautical prints), and had no intention of actually making the quilt in the kit. I cut a bunch of it into rectangles, for some reason, and then put it away and never did anything else with it.

That made me quite happy and I placed it lovingly next to my Constellations and 1001 Peeps yardage

Then I pulled out my dilemma fabric. My "can't live with it, can't live without it" fabric. When my mom foisted a lot of her unused fabric on me, I discovered this collection amongst all the other flotsam and jetsam. The selvedge says it's called Blooming Glory designed by the Woodrow Studio, London, England. You can still find some of these on Etsy and eBay, but I don't know much more about it.

These are VERY large-scale florals in amazingly rich colors. Do I like them? Can I use them? Will I use them? And if I do, exactly how will I use them? I can't figure out what they want to be, or what they want to be that fits within the kind of stuff I tend to like. So, every few months, I pull them out and stare at them, until I finally give up and put them back on the shelf. If you have any ideas, I'd love to hear them.

If the fabric gods are smiling on me, more fun stuff should hit my doorstep today. I've been hitting online sales and Instagram destash sales, and have fallen in love with Quilter's Square in Lexington, Kentucky. They recently started carrying my book (only the third shop to do so - COME ON, SHOPS) and they have some great fabrics. Kela, who owns the store with her mom, participates a lot on Instagram, and I find out about their sales and promotions that way, as well as the fact that Kela will cut a custom jelly roll for you out of Kona solids and Bella solids if you tell her what colors you want. So, yeah, I've got a box coming from them that BETTER BE HERE TODAY. Sometimes I think the post office toys with me just because they can. But really, follow them on IG if you can: @quilterssquare. John Q. Adams is doing a QAL of a Tula Pink pattern with Indelible fabrics, and Quilter's Square is selling kits, and all the deets are on IG. (And if you don't follow me there already, I'm @meganzdougherty.)

And seriously, please help me with those damn mongo flowers, y'all.