November – How the days and months fly by! This month and Dec. are loaded with hunting seasons, Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Christmas and all of this starts in the next week or two! Only 7 weeks to Christmas…hope you are starting all those cute projects you plan to give to people. See us for ideas and fabrics.
S. I Care…….Our Last Community Service Project for 2016 went beyond our goal!! Our quilters came through in flying colors! We have a total of 164 placemats with at least 10 more coming in on Tuesday. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for all those beautiful placemats that you gave for this project. There will be a lot of happy people on Nov. 15th when they receive their meal and a placemat. I will bring the placemats to the head of “Meals on Wheels” on Wed. and they will go through them and match their seniors with the placemats. Some of us from the shop will also be riding along giving out the placemats to these great people. Thank you on behalf of all the seniors who will receive one and we will also have some extra that will be given to new people who sign up for the program and they get to start their meals with a new placemat. Quilters make me so proud of our little community!!
OUR BIG ANNOUNCEMENT: MARSHA IS RETIRING!!! THE COUNTRY SCHOOLHOUSE QUILT SHOP IS COMING TO AN END AFTER MORE THAN 13 YEARS!!!
I am retiring from my 2nd career just before Christmas 2016. As most of you know, I have been trying to sell my shop for several years and nothing has worked out. It is still for sale for the price of most of the inventory and the rest is included which are the display items, bolt racks, my customer list, etc. If you know of anyone who wants to buy it and just walk in and take over, they need to get in touch with me quickly. Tim is holding the shop in case someone comes in at the last minute- they can just take over where I leave off.
I am sure most of you can understand that my plate is overflowing with time I want to spend with my 95 year old mother, my 4 grandsons who are growing up much too fast, and my husband who has been my rock through all these years as I had told him at the time that I only intended to have the shop for 5 years and would sell it after that. I need the time I have left to enjoy my time together with all of them while I am healthy and active.
This was a difficult decision for me to make as I think of all of you as “My Quilt Family” and I will miss you so much and miss hearing about your families, etc. We have had a great time together and I am being left with great memories and a great respect for all of you. Your generosity for all the projects we sponsored were always met or surpassed! Many, many people have received so much love from all of you as you did Christmas socks for kids, quilts, pillow cases, bags, placemats, more quilts, etc. You participated in at least 15 projects that we sponsored!! Love you all for that!!
I will still be in the class room as I will be doing kits and putting them online. I will also sell the kits I am doing from my classroom for those who live in the area. I will also be helping any of you who bought your Baby Lock machines from me with any questions or problems you may have. If we can’t help you, I have a backup who will be able to. I am still here for you! I will tell you more about that in Dec. newsletter.
We will be having sales on some of the fabrics, most of the patterns, some of the books and some of the notions. As you can tell from this there will be quite a bit that won’t be on sale as I will be taking it with me for my personal use and my kits. This is a working outline I am looking at doing:
Customer Reward Cards – I will be going through all of them during this week and putting on what they are worth as far as using them to buy regular priced items. The following week of Nov. 8th all things in our shop will be the same price they have been all fall so you can use on most items. You can also use your full cards this week as usual.
Sales Info – After Nov 15th I will start to reduce some prices on various products starting with the patterns and will go on from there. I will send out e-mails to you notifying which items and when they will be reduced. I still have to figure all of that out. I plan to be all done with the shop by about the 2nd week in Dec. Then I plan on having a Sample Sale for about 4 days after that.
Gift Certificates – we will not sell any gift certificates unless someone understands that they will only by good until we close and not after that. Those of you who have gift certificates now, need to use them up as they will expire when the shop closes.
My Employees are at the heart of our Quilt Shop:
I cannot close this newsletter without giving credit to those employees who have worked here during those 13+ years. They have been at the heart of this shop and have helped me and you with many tasks. Each of our employees have had their special talents and have readily helped you in any way they could or directed you to someone or someplace else to get the information that was needed. Our present employees are Dee Rogers – entire time; Maureen (Mo) Mahle – entire time; Mary Meierotto – almost the entire time; Lynn Sather – ever since she retired from education; and Nicole(Nikki)Stamper – 2 years ( she’s our baby!). What a great group and so much fun to work with!! Previous employees were Jeanette Betermann, “Rocky” Odberg, and Carol Amorde.
Also keep tuned in to us as their might be something happening in the shop area in 2017 with some of our staff and other people creating a whole new venue. As they say “When one door closes, another opens.” Keep watch and see what might happen….
Make good use of our shop as we count down the days….No kits will ever be on sale except for those we already put on sale and none of the newer fabrics will be on sale. We also have a new kit we are putting together for our latest line called “At the Cabin.” It is so darn cute and lists the cabin rules like “enjoy the sunset”, “put up your feet”, “eat roasted marshmallows”. We have backings cut for the kits too as they are wall hangings and only need the 1 1/2yd for a backing. As soon as we get our sample back we will have it up with the kits.