Blog

Finally!  We have snow in Morristown.  I had to snap a quick photo here outside the store downtown while it was coming down.  We usually get tons of snow, but this year has been hot!  We have the prettiest downtown - don't you think?  Not only are all the buildings 100+ years old, but (to the best of my knowledge and based on our historical information here in town) Morristown is the only remaining city in the United States with overhead sidewalks.  Apparently the only other city in the world with overhead sidewalks like ours is Chester, England.




Ok, now that you know about our history, let's talk more about downtown Morristown as it is today.  You can see that although we had our first good snow today our downtown stays really busy now.  There are lots of gorgeous old buildings (ours was built in 1906), most of which have second floor entries to the sidewalks on the second floor.  Our building has three floors - each approximately 4,000 square feet!

We've seen so many beautiful new shops crop up lately - when you visit, plan to spend the day and check out Kathryn's (a clothing store), several antique stores, The Pink Pig (a pottery store), a new art gallery, Rowena's, East Tennessee Diamond, Gigi's, the local bakery, several great restaurants, and a terrific coffee house!  Definitely worth spending a whole day browsing, dining and relaxing - all with the beautiful Smokey Mountains as your backdrop.

Well...I just had to share our first snow day with everyone.  Come visit soon!  Our snow won't last long :-)

Amy

MMIJA

 

Happy New Year to All Our Friends and Family!

The remodel to our store is well underway (look in the window - scary, huh?) and we're working to put as much in place before next Tuesday as possible.  We are re-opening Tuesday, January 3, 2012, but we hope you'll forgive the ongoing mess as we continue renovations.  All of them should be completed by February, but in the meantime you will have to check in every week to see the monumental changes and THOUSANDS of new products!

Things you'll see starting in January, 2012:

We are officially now THE ONLY Blank Quilting Splash Dealer in East Tennessee (we have over 4 times the volume of Splash of any other shop in East Tennessee) and have in stock ALL 99 different colors as you'll soon see both in our store and on the Blank Quilting Website. 

You asked for more solids so ... we are also stocking up now on all 53 of the Classic Cottons solids!  No one else in East Tennessee does this and these solids are SO easy to needle, hold their color extremely well, wash and iron to a crisp!  I do all my Amish reproduction quilts in these fabrics.

We will also have the Hoffman Challenge Quilt fabrics for 2012 by the time our store opens on Tuesday.  The fabrics are just yummy - grab a chance to impress the world with your brilliant quilting creativity and enter the Hoffman Challenge with your quilt or clothing made per the instructions from this fabric!  All our quilters who enter the Hoffman Challenge can also enter our shop challenge with the same quilt or article of clothing and win a gift certificate!

We have gotten in some really great fleece, flannels and cottons you've never seen before and lots of things you won't find in other shops!

We also have THOUSANDS of amazing notions for quilting, purse making, sewing we didn't have a week ago. 

Warm & Natural you asked?  We delivered!  Tons of new Warm & Natural batting has arrived.

Insul-Bright and Frixion you asked?  Yep - they are here!

Quilting kits?  Yep - out the ears!

Wool fat quarters from Weeks Dye Works?  We have every last one of them in stock now!!

How will we ever get it all organized and out on the floor/on the website?  We are taking volunteers! lol

Thank you again and we will see you in 2012!

 

www.MMIJA.com

 

 

Ok - I'm totally hooked!  It's going to take me a while to complete it, but I've started my first Teresa Layman Designs project.  While I'm no where near having it look like the end product, check out how cute this little 4.5" piece will be!  (You can get more information from our website at: The Bunny Run-Around



According to Teresa's information included in the pattern, a finished "rug" (what she calls her pieces) has approximately 1100 knots per square inch when worked in single-strand Colonial knots and 2,000 knots per square inch when worked in single-strand French knots.  When you do the math, that equates to about 3 hours or so per square inch in work time - and it's a blast!  Granted, I have to use my bifocals and an Ott light while working on it.  However, when it's done and framed, it'll be a total show piece!  People are definitely going to think I'm a creative genius when they see it, but it's so incredibly easy!

Be sure to visit Teresa's website to check out all the designs.  We currently have in stock The Bunny Run-Around and The Merry Makers (see photo below or click here for more information from our website), but we're anxious to hear which other patterns you would like to see us carry!




I will be sure to post photos when I finish my first project ~ I'd love to see your photos of your projects as well!

~Amy

Our new store is well underway with construction, organization, and more as we work toward the February 15th deadline we have imposed on ourselves and we're just flittering with excitement!  I have to share with you what we have discovered as we undergo all these wonderful preparations (is it Christmas again?):

I am mesmerized by anything old.  I'm obsessed with antiques - they have a story to tell and something inside me believes I have to help antiques tell their story - my husband will tell you it is a sick fascination.  I just bought an old Singer Featherweight sewing machine and I'm itching to get it out and try it.   However, Janet and I are busy moving to the new store location while managing the orders coming in, so my passions will have to wait a while - but thinking about my precious antiques really drove home the meaning behind a quote I read today on Ebay (yes, I was looking at antiques).  It really encapsulated how our society has gone bonkers rushing through life and I had to share it with you:

"We're open weekdays, 9-6 Eastern, except for closed holidays, tornadoes and giant lizard attacks. We have families and enjoy natural light, the internet may run 24/7 but we do not."

Doesn't that just say it all?

Our wonderful customers come from all over the world and we get emails and orders around the clock (trust me - we LOVE that part of the internet! lol)  However, we've all grown so accustomed to having everything at our fingertips 24 hours a day, 7 days a week we've really lost touch with reality.  How often do we make a phone call to a business and hang up in frustration when no one answers the telephone - without realizing it's 3 AM their time or maybe they are helping another customer?

Ahhhhh.....and here we are again back at my passion for antiques.  You see, a huge part of the value of opening this new store location is going to be actually getting to meet our customers, hug them, and welcome them into this building full of treasures we call "home" - just like my great-grandfather did 100 years ago in his General Store in East Tennessee!  No more dwelling like moles inside our warehouse wishing we could just show our customers how the finished product looks or feels or show them how gorgeous a new fabric is when it arrives.  We'll actually get to show our friends in person!

While we are thrilled to get to meet everyone, the very best part of our new building is the SPACE!  It's so much larger than our old location and we can actually spread out all our wares and get organized.  We do have to send out an apology to anyone who has waited a few extra days for their orders since we got caught in a crazy loop of snow storms, moving between buildings, and finding ourselves upside down for a few days with half our merchandise in one location and half in another!  You are all the best customers for being so patient with us and now that we're in the new location, all we have to worry about is "holidays, tornadoes and giant lizard attacks"!

Many hugs ~ Amy
Visit us starting February 15th at:
MMIJA
1009 Highway 11E
Jefferson City, Tennessee 37760

We are back and so motivated!  Houston Quilt Market is a massive gathering of all the new and established vendors in this industry and it gives us a chance to meet all of them under one roof.  Boy did we find some INCREDIBLE new designers and vendors.  We are hard at work loading all the new patterns and products - plus we've got more on the way shortly, so be sure to register with us - we will let you know when we get these great new products loaded to the site.

Poor Janet has been struggling with some stomach bug the last few days and I'm lost at the shop without her.  She's the organized person in the shop, so the longer she's away the messier everything gets - eek!  I've already got a pile of new patterns around my desk - they are like my children - I keep them there so I can admire them all day! 

Check out these fabulous new embroidered Christmas ornament patterns from Sara Hardwig at Blueberry Backroads: Blueberry Backroads Christmas Ornament Patterns  If you do a search on our site for "Blueberry" all her patterns will pop up.  WAY cute in person - we just oooed and ahhhhd over them at the show.

We also found some INCREDIBLE new wool applique designers and their patterns will start coming in shortly - we'll post a lot more about them when they get here.

The best news of all is that Friday we're supposed to get SNOW here at the base of the Foothills in East Tennessee!  They keep telling us that and I keep holding out for it to actually happen :-)  Poor Janet hates cold weather so she'll be bundled up in the corner when it does finally arrive :-)  Please keep her in your prayers so she'll be better soon - I'm missing her more every day...and the shop shows it!

~Amy

Can you believe it?  The weather folks are calling for SNOW here in East Tennessee on Monday - YIPPEE!!  Janet and I are so excited....ok, I'm really excited - Janet not so much.  She's not a cold weather person like I am :-)

The last time we had snow this time of year was when I was in high school....trust me - that was a LONG time ago!  (about 30 years)

I've been hard at work on our MMIJA Zanzibar Christmas Quilt pattern made with those gorgeous P & B Textiles Zanzibar fabrics so we can release it as the holiday season rolls in and boy is it spectacular!  These fabrics are just beautiful and I've taken a Dresden Fan centerpiece and surrounded it with some traditional pieced blocks and some awesome coordinating honeysuckle applique borders.  It's all done in black, deep reds, creams and dark greens....the quintessential Christmas quilt! 

We're planning to release it shortly as both a pattern alone - or you can purchase the whole kit (including the pattern, all fabrics for the quilt top, borders, binding and backing and some "dreamy" Quilters Dream batting!)

Stay tuned....the excitement is right around the corner!

~Amy

I always salivate over clothing this time of year, but since we've started getting in these GORGEOUS little girls patterns and handbag patterns my sewing machine has been staring at me from across the street from our shop where my sewing room is.  I can feel it calling to me to make some things for my children and myself!! 

Joy Ann (my two year old) really needs a "Gracie" skirt with some tights and a long sleeved shirt with a "Little Chic Sisters Apron" for a pinafore!!!  I'm going to splurge and use some of the Robyn Pandolph Flirt Collection fabrics.  YUMMY!

We also got in some new GORGEOUS cotton velvets from Moda last week I am TOTALLY going to use to make a jacket in the Lila Tueller Santa Monica pattern with an Amy Butler Kimberly Bag in the coordinating velvet to match!!  Can't you just see that with a nice pair of jeans and some fuzzy winter boots with a soft turtleneck sweater?  Gorgeous!

Ok, I have to get back to adding more new product, but I've got my eye on that sewing machine glaring at me across the street....just a few more hours and I'll be burning the midnight oil with my favorite new projects~!

Amy

FINALLY our hideous 95+ degree weather is starting to tame and the first chills are blowing into the mountains here in East Tennessee.  For us at the shop, that means it's time to start preparing for the holidays!  We've so many new patterns coming in every day it's almost impossible to keep up with them!  Halloween, Thanksgiving, Fall harvest, and of course, our favorite - Christmas!

We're working diligently to get all the patterns loaded here to our site, but boy what an undertaking!  Poor Janet doesn't get up from her computer all day as she is solely responsible for the punch needle patterns right now...and we've got thousands and thousands of them!    New ones daily from our friends Brenda Gervais (Country Stitches), Rachels of Greenfield,  Shaun Williams at Threads that Bind, and more!

We haven't even had time to load all our beautiful new Valdani threads yet - and you'll love the newest additions.  There's about 230 (!!) 3-strand threads and we're just salivating over experiementing with them in our punch needle patterns.  We're planning to rework some of the Rachel's of Greenfield patterns since they are gorgeous and sooo easy with the Valdani threads - so stay tuned for some great new kits coming soon!

We have gotten in our Weeks Dye Works weavers cloth (YUMMY!) and we're expecting some awesome new primitive frames soon from Donnie Francis for all those gorgeous little pieces you're making!

Once we've reworked the Rachels patterns with Valdani we'll also add the fabric "matting" to the kit so you have all you need and you can just add one of Mr. Francis' frames to wrap up a stunning project.

Have we mentioned we LOVE the holiday season!!

Call and come see us soon!  We love all of you and can't wait to see photos of your completed projects!

Ya'll come back, ya' hear?

~Amy

Ok, we just purchased about 25,000 new punch needle patterns and kits and we're loading them as quickly as possible to the website.  My goodness - what a blast!  I've been whipping out about one a day in the evenings and they are so much fun!!  People come into my home and just gush over them!

If you haven't tried one yet, you have to!

Off to the shop to get packages out to all my favorite people today - you!

Amy

As we continue to grow and progress it's imperative to move products out so we can bring new ones in.  We are having our first and only Michael Miller sale now, so don't miss your chance to pick up some great bargains before they are all gone!