Wednesday, April 25, 2012
Google has screwed up the blogger software and rendered it slow as molassas, so, unless there is some sudden miracle fix, I will not be posting here anymore except to direct readers to whatever new blog I set up. For now, I still post at my old blog, mostly writing, but temporarily on other issues to make up for the loss of my blogger blogs. It is at http://home.earthlink.net/~wyverns/
Tuesday, April 3, 2012
Shop hop fun
I participated in a shop hop for quilt shops this weekend. It was fun for different reasons than we expected. We were expecting more sales, easier-to-enter drawings, and more shopping time. What we got was a multi-level hide-and-seek. The first seek was for the stores--they obviously participate in the shop hop as a means of encouraging potential customers to find their well-hidden, inadequately signed, tucked-in-odd corners of the malls shops.
The second seek was for the baskets for the drawing: one ticket, three or four potential prizes, and one basket for each hidden around each store. The hide-and-seek gave us quite the chance to see the area--well over a hundred miles of driving even not counting missing the stores for a pass or two and having to wind our way back through horrible street layouts and interchanges--and the hunts around the stores gave us a good chance to see what kind of selection the stores had. Some weren't different enough to notice, but we made notes about a few, one that specialized in batiks, one that had a better selection than most of multi-colored fabric (as opposed to color-on-same-color patterns and visual textures).
A couple wouldn't sell less than a yard off the bolt, which definitely got on our don't-go-back list, since the prices were too high to make bulk purchases worthwhile, AND they didn't have pre-cut half yards for any of the fabrics we were interested in, nor fat quarters at all. For base fabrics, we go for cheap fabrics, seeing not enough difference in most of the color-on-color patterns with rare exception to be worth the extra price (and the exceptions aren't always expensive), though we will buy small pieces of a specialty fabrics, multi-colors, picture-fabrics, or special themes (water, leaves, space) as accent fabrics and for fussy-cutting. The Batik one now... we're willing to buy a little specialty fabric and so are most quilters we know, so I expect they get enough business even if it's a quarter yard at a time. Thy just need a few more multi-color batiks to fill out the selection.
Anyway, if you spot an opportunity to participate in a shop hop, don the buny ears and go. Its an educational experience. Can't find one in your area? Create your own: find the stores that have something to do with your favorite hobby, map them out, grab some money and a note pad, and learn something new about your town.
The second seek was for the baskets for the drawing: one ticket, three or four potential prizes, and one basket for each hidden around each store. The hide-and-seek gave us quite the chance to see the area--well over a hundred miles of driving even not counting missing the stores for a pass or two and having to wind our way back through horrible street layouts and interchanges--and the hunts around the stores gave us a good chance to see what kind of selection the stores had. Some weren't different enough to notice, but we made notes about a few, one that specialized in batiks, one that had a better selection than most of multi-colored fabric (as opposed to color-on-same-color patterns and visual textures).
A couple wouldn't sell less than a yard off the bolt, which definitely got on our don't-go-back list, since the prices were too high to make bulk purchases worthwhile, AND they didn't have pre-cut half yards for any of the fabrics we were interested in, nor fat quarters at all. For base fabrics, we go for cheap fabrics, seeing not enough difference in most of the color-on-color patterns with rare exception to be worth the extra price (and the exceptions aren't always expensive), though we will buy small pieces of a specialty fabrics, multi-colors, picture-fabrics, or special themes (water, leaves, space) as accent fabrics and for fussy-cutting. The Batik one now... we're willing to buy a little specialty fabric and so are most quilters we know, so I expect they get enough business even if it's a quarter yard at a time. Thy just need a few more multi-color batiks to fill out the selection.
Anyway, if you spot an opportunity to participate in a shop hop, don the buny ears and go. Its an educational experience. Can't find one in your area? Create your own: find the stores that have something to do with your favorite hobby, map them out, grab some money and a note pad, and learn something new about your town.
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