Waechter's Blog

Friday, June 08, 2007

New Fashion Closures

We have received tons of new high fashion closures in the last few weeks. These are showing up all over Europe and are made to be seen. There are giant snaps and giant hooks. They come in antique bronze and antique pewter. They can be used on your latest bag project or down the front of a jacket or dress. We can't wait to see what all that creative juice out there in sewing land will do with them. Send us a picture if you use them. The link above goes to the button page where they all exist for your perusal.

Our Creative Needle features are getting a lot of attention. The dresses are oh so cute and we have sold several kits based on our feature in the magazine. Check out the pages on oour website. http://www.fabricsandbuttons.com/PDF/creativeNeedleJune07.pdf The dresses are in the store window so if you live nearby you can drive by any time of the day and see them. All the quilters who come into the store can't believe we used Kaffe Fassett cottons for something other than a quilt. Just goes to show you what happens when you get out of the box.

I recently was given a birthday gift of a "Kreative Kitty." They are a small figurine that is designed to help inspire your creative juices and help you "think outside of the Catbox.". I really try to do all my creating outside the catbox. Hope you enjoy the sentiment, as it made me smile.

Happy sewing! Joyce

Saturday, June 02, 2007

Virtual Swatches Feature New Items

Thanks for your response about seeing new items that come into the store. That is a great opportunity for me to remind everyone to sign up for your preferential areas of interest. Your personal account on our website has several special interest topics. You can add or delete at any time. We are sending out virtual swatches or announcements for new items as they come in. Once you have chosen your areas of interest you will start to receive the virtual swatches that pertain to your area. This could include buttons, patterns, or fabrics in both adult and children's categories. Jennifer is here photographing and installing new items every week. Bless her in your prayers as she has another full time job. So she works many nights and every weekend to keep up with all the new merchandise that we get each week. Once she gets multiple new items in a category installed she sends out a virtual swatch broadcast e-mail to everyone who has included that area of interest on their personal account. This is the best way to be the first group of customers to see real pictures of new items as they arrive in our store.

I am happy to talk about them in my blog, but I know I will not get pictures installed to post on the blog. For some crazy reason, I don't ever get my list of things to do any where near done. I must confess ---so adding pictures to the blog is not likely to happen.

Our classes are available for you to view on the web. Just click onto the classes and workshops link and you will go right to the list of things available for the quarter. However, just to let you know we have a smocking class on June 6 from 10-1 with Betsy. We have a fitting class on June 7. Bring something to get help fitting. We have a children's sundress called Babs on the eighth and on Saturday June 9 we have a Pants class---Fit My Tush. This is one of our most popular classes and once you complete this class you will have a pattern that fits. I can make pants in about two hours. It's not a problem to make three or four pair in a day if you plot out our production. Early next week we have a one day Needle Techniques with Betsy. It has been shortened as we felt we could get the techniques done in one day. Elizabeth will be teaching her Flower Class on June 15. We have another fitting class on June 16.

It's time again for me to start working on the next quarter of classes. Let me know if you have requests. You can e-mail your ideas to info@waechters.com.

This week we got tons of reorder fabric in. We have several new bolts of a variety of colors of brussels washer. We also have a ton of new silk noil in reorder colors. We have been selling and reordering multiple bolts of our white silk seersucker. I added black and it came in with the noils. This lovely sheer silk is perfect for blouses or dressy garments.

Japanese cottons arrived this week. There are four new ones. One is more exciting than the next. It just depends which one I am looking at as to which I love the most. These are great for skirts, jackets or even home dec. The Japanese cottons always have interesting textures mixed under the printed patterns for extra added eye appeal.

Our Creative Needle dresses in the May issue have been selling tons of kits. My best friend is volunteering to come help cut the kits. Don't I have nice friends? They are labor intensive and fortunately, we have lots of orders. We were thrilled with the layout. You can see the actual garments in our window. We made both dresses with Kaffe Fassett fabric. The quilters are shocked at our use of fabric. Of course, they think cotton only goes into a quilt. Well, we fooled them didn't we?

There are probably more things that happened this week, but it is time to go out on the floor and assist a customer. I love being on the floor on Saturdays.

Happy Sewing,
Joyce