Check Out My Rick Rack Now!

The response to my post about my rick rack mess was overwhelming.  I was so impressed how  many of you are so organized.  It is definitely not my strong suit.  Among the many comments and e-mails was one from my DIL, Olivia.  She wanted to come and help me.  Who knew she was passionate about this sort of thing?  How could I not accept her help?

Olivia arrived around noon with an armload full of stuff.  She brought lunch!  Yum. 

Crab cakes,  a salad with almonds, pear and poppy seed dressing 

and a Key Lime tartlet to share for dessert.

And she brought me these adorable earrings. 

I know one thing that I will be wearing for my Book Open House.

Then it was down to work.  Olivia showed me how she organizes her ribbons.

I was blown away.  This notebook was just beautiful.  She had taken a piece of cardboard and covered it with a beautiful piece of paper and so-ordinated her ribbon colors.  The outside of the binder was beautiful too.  I had to be honest with myself and her at this point.  We could spend the day making my ribbons look as beautiful as hers, but I could not keep it so organized. 

Another option she brought was to use cardboard rectangles and one of those photo boxes.  Olivia brought all of the supplies.  She bought the photo box at The Christmas Tree Shoppe for $2.00.  (Just an aside.  Olivia turned me onto this store.  I had never been in to one, because I don't celebrate Christmas.  When we were visiting her at college a few years ago, we went shopping.  They need to rename this store.  It is packed with all kinds of stuff - cheap.  I describe it as a dollar store on steroids.)

I got out my drawer full of tangled rick rack.  Her expressions was priceless as she said "It didn't look like that much ion the photo on your blog". 

We sorted by color and started wrapping.  Of course I had lots of blue rick rack and ribbon. 

It looked so beautiful.

It took us about 4 hours to get all of the trims wrapped.  

And when we were done, that messy drawer full of stuff, all fit into that photo storage box!

I Need Help

I have been chipping away at my studio a little bit at a time. 

Today, I finally finished organizing and folding my cotton fabric. 

I think it looks very nice.  I hope I can keep it that way.

 The next area to tackle is my drawer full of my beloved rick rack and trims.  

It is a huge mumbo jumbo mess.  Help????

Any suggestions for how to deal with this?  I will entertain any and all ideas.  And if I use your idea, maybe I'll share some with you, like  a  finder's fee!

A Great Day

Look what came today!

I am a lucky girl!

Not only did Martingale do a wonderful, fabulous job publishing my book, they sent me flowers too along with my advance copy!  And how did they know how much I love rick-rack?  You will have to check out the inside pages to see what I mean.

Coming in January.  Stay tuned.

The Wonders of Rick Rack

A little while ago, our quilt guild ran a bus trip to NYC. The plan was to go to the garment district and The Americna Folk Art Museum. We used Paula Nadelstern's website, http://www.paulanadelstern.com/, for our shopping plan. We pretty much stuck with her abbreviated 3 hour version and walked our feet off. With side trips to the folk art museum, The City Quilter (http://www.cityquilter.com/), lunch and Magnolia Bakery for cupcakes (http://www.magnoliacupcakes.com/), featured on Sex And The City, our day was packed.

Our favorite stop was Daytona Trims (http://www.daytonatrim.com/) on 39th St. Kelly Meanix, queen of rick rack turned us (Christine Kamon and me) on to this wonderful and fun trim. Daytona had yards and yards and yards of rick rack in teeny tiny widths to giant widths in every single color you could think of. You would tell the store employee which one and how much you wanted and they would measure it right off the spool, cut it and stuff it in a plastic bag and record the price on the outside of the bag. It was intoxicating - 5yds/$1, 3yds/$1, up to $2/yd. We bought an assortment of colrs and sizes. We were giddy with joy! (I know, we need a real life.) Between the 3 of us, we sepnt over $150 on this old - but new to us - embellishment.

Our brains were working a mile a minute. Where could we use our new discovery and did we buy enough? Oh there's always mail order, if we run out! The wonderful thing about this rick rack is that it's cotton. It's got a nice soft feel to it. And it's behavior is bias-like. It curves nicely. Check out the swirls you can make. I can't wait until I can find the time to try it with other circular/wavey applications I have used it in a quilt that I am working on. And guess what? I did run out. And I had to call Daytona Trims to send me more. This is a block of the quilt called "Bubblegum Kisses".

Christine had a ball using many of the colors she bought on a quilt she made. I have posted a cropped image so you can get a feeling for the variety of rick rack she used. The quilt is called "Buttons, Beads and Rick Rack". The rick rack really curves nicely around the circle.

You can buy packaged rick rack at JoAnn's. They do have it in a variety of sizes and colors, but it is polyester and is a little stufffer.