Well, the west coast office is in the midst of final preparations for the coming week.  It’s blitz week for the Lizzie B girls! (OH, and Thanksgiving week too….!)   Liz and crew (which consists of her hubby Doug and four kiddos) are enjoying their final day of work and school this week (and cold weather!) and then frantically packing for the trip to Arizona tomorrow.  I hope they are packing their shorts and flip-flops… it’s still warm here, even though they have had snow flurries THERE this week.

(The frantic-packing is JUST a guess, based on the fact that Liz and I live parallel lives, and that is totally what I would be doing at the last minute before the early a.m. flight!)

So, here in AZ, I am cleaning up the studio and finishing up paperwork and other boring tasks that we will NOT want to have to deal with in our time together.   I prepared healthy meals at Dream Dinners the other day, so the freezer is packed with dinners ready-to-go to feed the entire crew (with easy-to-follow instruction labels just in case the MOMS do not emerge from the studio when the rest of ‘em are hungerin’ for food — we will be fine up here with the chocolate stash!)  I’m caught up on the laundry (but really, is it EVER done?) so I wouldn’t have to think about that over the next several days.  I’ve moved appointments around, and just plain ‘ol NON-scheduled my days.  I have the week blocked out to WORK, WORK, WORK!

Good thing the dads get along and like each other (they are brothers, after all!)… they will pretty much be on their own with the kids.  We will have a house-ful… five boys ages 21, 16, 15, 12, 11 (the missing boy, age 19, will be having tortillas in Mexico this Thanksgiving), and two sweet girls ages 15 and 8.  It will be nice to have a little girli-ness in my house for a change.  Doug will be packing his BIKE (as usual when he travels) so he can ride in the famous “Tour de Tucson” on Saturday… It’s a 109-mile ride around the perimeter of Tucson and the surrounding desert areas.  It’s no accident that they hold it every November just before Thanksgiving… our temps are finally WONDERFUL and it should be a nice 75° day!  Liz might regret not bringing her bike too (yep, she does those biggie-rides, too… crazy girl!) but she has to work.

So, what’s in store for Lizzie B this week?  Whew!  When we are together, who KNOWS what will happen!

We pretty much know that we will not get much sleep.  We really just try to ignore the clock, and go with the flow.  We are starting off our week with a bit of fun…. already have tickets to the midnight show of TWILIGHT.  That should get us right on schedule!  Munchies and diet Coke at midnight…  we can keep up that schedule throughout the week, I am sure! Last time we had a cre8ive blitz week, we saw “Mamma Mia”.  The music kept us hoppin’ throughout the rest of the week and it was quite fun.  Even now, when my phone starts playing “Dancing Queen”, I know it is Liz calling!  We’ll let you know how the soundtrack to THIS movie works out.

Then it’s crunch time!  We have some book deadlines looming, so we need to finalize our projects and get them ready for the photo shoot coming up in January (which is JUST around the corner!).  We have some fabric proposals to put the finishing touches on too… we can’t WAIT to get those sent off to our fabric company in the next week or so.  Those are the biggies…. and things that we just really NEED to be together to do.  So, the fabric will be flyin’, the machines hummin’, and the watercolors swirlin’ around.  Fun!

The reinforcements will be arriving JUST in time for Thanksgiving… Mama C (and my dad, too!) will be here for the holiday.  She pretty much knows she will have a turkey to cook and a stack of book-projects to whip up.  We love her!!

(And uh, Dad… my plants need a little TLC while you are here too).

We have a LOT to be thankful for.  Our families, our friendship, our time together.  I love this time of year!

Here she is folks!  The lucky winner of the Brighton quilt…..Carol O’Hara of Lansdale, PA.  She’s posing here with the quilt and manager of the King of Prussia store, DeAnn.  Beth and I just wanted to send out a HUGE thank you to ALL of you who helped raise funds for Breast Cancer in October.  We were just shy of our goal, but managed to make a donation of $825 to Living Beyond Breast Cancer, which we couldn’t have done without you!  I asked Carol if she would share a bit about herself with us and she graciously emailed back with a response:

“Thank you…I LOVE the quilt! Our family has been touched by breast cancer for generations…my paternal grandmother, Aunt on our Father’s side and we lost a sister to breast cancer …she was 45. When our niece was expecting her 5th child, she noticed a lump, she was 34! She recently sent that son off to Berkley and happy to say she’s 19 years out! She’s had several reconstruction surgeries and is doing great. We’re both big Brighton fans and admire the fact that your company has included all the women that face breast cancer in your business. It makes your products very special in our hearts. Please feel free to use whatever you need to promote the fight against breast cancer!!! Thank you again for the beautiful quilt( I never win anything)! I’m sure there’s a special reason why it came to me… Sincerely, Carol O’Hara

P.S. I forgot to mention that I’m a nurse and I’ve always felt a special connection with my breast cancer patients…I’m proud to care for them and their loved ones!

Those of you who keep up with our blog may have noticed just the slightest lull in our entries…..we’re very sorry about the little dry spell, but it seems that I got home from market and stepped on the “train of life” full speed ahead without a stop in sight!!!  Normally after market, we have a little down time to rest and regroup.  Well okay, truthfully, we’re usually so exhausted we don’t feel like doing a darn thing and do the bare bones minimum just to make it through the day (you know, shower and teeth-brushing quick before the kids get home at 3!)  But this time, at least in the East Coast Office…I didn’t have a chance to schlep around in my jammies for a couple of days (usually this kind of schlepping is very efficient for creativity-juice flow!).

First, I was delayed in Dallas for my flight home and arrived 6 hours later than was planned.  That alone is enough to throw one off-kilter a bit!  When I got home I was thrown into the Halloween mayhem…costumes, parties, a chili and cornbread cookoff (the day after I returned mind you!).  Thank goodness for Walmart, I swear you don’t even have to look in the costume aisle to find a good one!  For myself, I found bright pink legwarmers and a huge off-the-shoulder sweatshirt.  It did not take long to reach the 80’s look… complete with poofy hair, head band, leggings, blue eye shadow, pink lipstick and my authentic Seventeen magazine from 1985 (which my daughter and her friends love to laugh at!)  My sister did the look in electric blue (but she found SHOULDER PADS in the far recesses of her closet!), and we were, like totally, a hit.  Then this is the “treat” (or trick?) I got on Halloween……the boxes from market.  Ugh……the un-pretty side of Lizzie B!

But since I live just outside of Philadelphia, along with Halloween last week we had a little more mayhem to add to the mix.  The World Series!!!!  Actually, the games were taking place the whole time we were at market and I would catch snippets of them at restaurants, as well as updates on my specially downloaded MLB app for my iPhone…..I know, scary.  Possibly more scary than even the 80’s costume!  But when your boys are into baseball and your home team is in the World Series….what’s a mom to do?  She has to become a crazy fan (or Phan, as we say here in Philly!) like the rest of ‘em.  So here’s the story in Philly…..it was said that there was a “curse” placed on all Philly teams because when the town was built there was a law that no building was to be taller than the Penn building that boasts a statue of William Penn.

Well after the Phils won the World Series in 1983, wouldn’t you know it….someone went and built a building that towered over poor William Penn!  And thus the start of the CURSE (ya kinda have to put a little pirate accent on that word to get just the right eerie feel for it….).  And none of our teams have won a world title since then.  Seriously!  The Phils got back to the World Series 10 years later but lost….the Eagles lost the Super Bowl and honestly, 76er’s and the Flyers?  Nothin’.  So THIS year, the Comcast building which is now the tallest building in our skyline, not that they admit to believing the story of the curse, added this to the top of their structure….

There he stands….William Penn, watching out for our city again!  And what do you know?  The Phillies win the World Series!!!!  Which just added to the hoo-haa in Liz’s already crazy life.  The kids wanted to skip school, go to the parade downtown, get World Series t-shirts (which were selling out like hotcakes!)…etc.  And Liz?  Well, she was glad they won but seriously?  She just wanted to sleep!

So here it is, a week after my return from market.  Made it through the delays, the parties, the World Series, Halloween and we now have a new President-Elect to boot.  Still have those boxes to continue unpacking.  Still have LOADS of stories to tell of people we met at market (wait till you hear about the new applique glue!).  Still need to tell you all about the winner of the Brighton quilt and the Power of Pink.  I guess what I’m saying here is, stay tuned!  We’ll get to it all!

And hopefully find creative jammy time inbetween….. ;o)

Hi Lizzie B friends….. I just gotta blog about the REST of the story of our booth at Quilt Market.  It is always fun to share all of the exciting news that we have, but sometimes, like life, you gotta experience the other side.  Not everything is always terrific and peachy-keen with the Lizzie B girls, you just gotta know.  We have our ups and downs and stresses and frustrations too, because it ALL is real life.  So here goes….. our stupid story.

When we designed the booth in our heads, we could see it, and we KNEW how it was gonna look!  We just weren’t sure how we were gonna pull it off and make it work, with materials that we could find in Houston.  (Shipping costs kill us!)  So we were very excited when we found the way to make our floor look the way we imagined!  An excursion to Home Depot, and….voila!  We had the beginnings of our “Paris in the Park” look.  We had sooo much to do, we did not think it through.  We just stuck those cobblestone-looking vinyl sticky tiles right on down, and went to town.  They weren’t so sticky when we were laying the floor, in fact…. we even picked up and moved a few that were not “just right”.   We have to admit, though, we did kind of know that it was not going to be super easy to get them up.  We had even bought a flimsy cheapo scraper at Home Depot, thinking that $2.98 might JUST be good insurance in case we needed it.  But whatever.  That was DAYS away, and we had other things to worry about at the moment!    And you know, it DID turn out great!  We got sooo many compliments on our floor.  We thought we were so clever and smart!  (And we thought that maybe our floor had just a little something to do with winning our CREATIVITY award).

It took almost one whole box of tiles…. so this is maybe about 38 square feet of pathway here!

We had lots of traffic in our booth over the 3 days of market.  Who doesn’t want to stroll through a park?  And most people wanted to walk on the path, ya know, because after all, that is what it is FOR.  (I even saw John doing a dance back and forth along that path, but well, hmmm, that would be another story best saved for later…..)  Well.  After 4 days of that adhesive doing what it does best….. adhering….. it was good and ON THERE when it was time to pack up!  The Lizzie B team has got the take-down system under control, I tell you— we are usually packed up and outta there in about an hour.  UH, not this time.   That scraper we bought was like Michaelangelo trying to sculpt a masterpiece with a seam ripper!  Only way, way less creative.  Yeah, we were feeling NOT so creative after all.  In fact, we were thinking of changing our name to Lizzie B Stupid.  Ugh.

By this time, our boxes were packed ready for shipping, our quilts all neatly folded ready for packing into luggage (carry-on, just so ya know), and all that was left to do was the darn floor! We were getting desperate…. And it was looking like we would be into the wee-hours just chippin’ away at that stuff (which was not an option because we only had til 9 pm!) We couldn’t be the first ones in the history of trade shows to try this, right? John buzzed off to ask one of the convention center guys just HOW we might get this nasty job done —we quickly sent him a text message to please to not mention our booth number just quite yet—-but he was told that last time someone did that they tried using a FORKLIFT to get them off, and it ended up damaging the concrete floor, which in the long run probably cost an amount equal to pattern sales into the next generation….

SO. That was depressing. And this whole thing was a dumb move, but we are not THAT stupid, to steal a union-guy’s forklift and run it back and forth in a 10’ x 15’ booth. (HEY… that person should get the first-place stupid award!!)

It was suggested that we needed a heat gun. (John. Please notice that you are getting credit for this, as promised). Man, what did people just DO before Google? Found the nearest place that at this hour would sell heat guns, and we were off, the minivan jammed with the contents of the entire booth (sans flooring), and the four of us (because who wanted to stay behind and look really stupid sitting in THAT booth?! No one).

Turns out that little moments like finding a heat gun actually ON a shelf, for only $19.99 can just sometimes make you weep with joy. Back onto the oh-so-fun Houston freeway, heading back to the convention center. By now, time was tickin’…. and we still had lots to do! Flipped the proverbial coin, and so Mama C and I stayed there with the heat gun, while Liz and John headed back out on the roads to ship all the boxes back to the appropriate east coast AND west coast studios. There was debate about which of us lost out… neither job was fun and really, at that point it was just the spirit of cooperation that was keeping us all sane!

The heat gun did the trick! The smell, though. Hot. Like something was just about ready to burst into flames. Thankfully, nothing did. But the smell did bring out the looky-loos, and I tell ya, Mama C and I felt like animals in the zoo! Several people felt it necessary to just stand there and WATCH! The nerve. And some even commented. We were not in the mood to be nice, I tell ya. Good thing I was just too tired to care (or to fling out any rude replies). Although I did look around at the total MESS in the entire convention center—piles of leftover junkola everywhere, and the deserted booths that just earlier were so colorful and inspiring—well, it looked like a mini-Hurricane Ike had come through there with a vengeance. I did comment to my mom that all the cute people were GONE, it was just us and the clean-up crew. (please, no offense meant to the clean-up crews…. but you know what I am trying to say?!)

As we finally peeled the last tile up off the floor, and finished cleaning up the mess, the shipping department had returned and we were ALL ready to get out of Dodge, smokin’ heat gun in hand. It was gonna take that baby awhile to cool off, and NONE of us ever wanted to see it again. We seriously thought about just tossin’ it in the trash bin, til Liz reminded us that the quilters of the world that were headed to Houston for the upcoming RETAIL quilt show would not be happy campers if the convention center had just burned down… so we nixed that idea. We handed it off to a guy working near the door, who was happy to have it, but a bit confused. Ah well. $20 gone, plus the $2.98 scraper that we also tossed (we never wanted to see that again either)…. a small price to pay. After all, we DO want to be invited back for Spring Market!

So, behind-the-scenes of being a quilt designer not all that pretty, after all. Turns out there IS no award for Stupidity. But Liz is convinced that if there is, it would look like a “vinyl pathway stuck permanently to a concrete floor”. I agree.

Oh, and a side note…. I recently learned how easy it is to subscribe to blogs out there in internet-land! I may be the last to know, but I thought I would pass it on anyway. See that little orange square “RSS” button up there at the top next to the web address of this page? If you just click on it (but not on THIS picture of one here on the left), and follow the instructions that pop up (I use the “subscribe using RSS 2.0″, and then Google Reader option, and it is great), you can automatically get a notice every time we have posted a new blog for you to read! You know, in case you want to hear about other stupid moments in the lives of Lizzie B…..

The Lizzie B team is just buzzing with excitement tonight after day 2 at market because…..WE WON AN AWARD!  How cool is that? At every market awards are given out for best booths by size (1st and 2nd place for single booths, double booths, multiple booths…etc.), then a couple of awards that we totally didn’t even know about are also given.  We didn’t even think we’d be in the running for an award this year because we have a booth and a half, which I don’t think they actually give awards too (not sure why this is, but whatever…).  So when elegantly dressed Karey Bresenhan, the founder and President of Quilts, Inc. was heading straight toward our booth this afternoon we got a little worried.

We thought, oh no….she found out the little walkway we made in our booth might just be a permanent addition to the convention center concrete floor!  Meanwhile, Gina Halladay of Quilter’s Buzz (among many other hats..) whose booth is right next to ours was thinking, oh no, she was coming to tell HER to lower her 9ft walls to the 8ft requirement or she was going to get the boot!  Then we looked around and saw that whatever was going on, people wanted to see it because when Karey Bresenhan makes an appearance, it’s for something big.

She asked for the Lizzie B Cre8ive girls (luckily we were both in the booth at the time, wearing the same dorky shirts mind you!) and we introduced ourselves to her.  She proceeded to tell us that she only interrupts people’s business for one reason and one reason only.  To award the “MOST COVETED AWARD AT MARKET”! (Okay, she didn’t scream this, but I thought it deserved to be in all caps anyway….)  The award is called the Creativity Award and well, since we didn’t even know it existed, we never actually GOT to covet it!  But how apt is that?  For Lizzie B CRE8IVE to win the Creativity award? (even though they spelled it withOUT the 8…) I’m telling you, it was like winning the Miss America Pageant!  We had to fan our eyes to keep the tears of joy from overflowing down our happy faces and felt like crying out for “world peace” while holding our awards and posing for pictures.

What a fantastic end to day 2 at market!  All the award winners were announced over the loudspeaker, ours being the last as it was the most prestigious one (I say in all humility) and there was great whooping and hollering in congratulations from everyone around us.

Beth and I are still in a state of shock.  Especially because they have NO idea what’s in my head for the spring market booth!  Hmmm, I wonder if you can win this award more than once?  Great.  NOW we’re going to covet…..

We’ve gone around taking LOTS of photos and talking to LOTS of fun people at market to share with you all, but had to share our fabulous news first.  So stay tuned for more market madness and meanwhile…..GO PHILLIES!!!!  (have to put a plug in for my team ya know….)

Whew!  We are pooped tonight.  Market begins tomorrow, bright and early.  We started our day a little leisurely this morning…. we got so much done yesterday, we knew we could give the alarm clocks at least ONE morning off duty!   And even though we gave up our room at the not-so-lovely bed (but great breakfast) B&B that Liz wrote about yesterday… we still got some wonderful wake-up food here at the Marriott!  And did you know, that in Houston at least, the Marriott breakfasts include waffles that are not only light and fluffy, but also Texas-shaped!

So we not only started out today with a little extra sleep in a comfy hotel room,  but also with enough carbs and sugar to get us through most of the day…

Our booth design this time is a “Paris in the Park” kind of theme.   We’ve landscaped with some grass, fresh flowers,  and a cobblestone path (after a trip to Home Depot), a few Paris-themed display pieces, an artist’s easel and watercolor by Liz (complete with an authentically messy artist’s palette and brushes!), and a few other French touches that just say “ooh La La”…!

All the perfect accents to our new quilt designs!

We wanted to do something fun overhead (last time, in our French countryside at spring market in Portland, we had a blue sky!)… and this time we thought some overhanging treetops  would be nice.  We purchased some small (pocket-sized!) pruning shears at Home Depot while we were there, and started eyeing our surroundings.   Because, you know, we thought FRESH would be better than fake-looking silk treetops!  And after all, we are in Houston, right?

They are still cleaning up a bit here and there from Hurricane Ike, and we thought we would do our part community-service-wise, too!   It was not too hard to find some trees in a parking lot that REALLY needed to be trimmed a bit (just the little branches)…. and we found a vacant lot right behind the convention center that really needed some TLC too.  Not sure what the free-flowing vines that were growing are called, but they look great overhead in our booth.  We just hope they are not poison ivy…….

The dangly patio lights look a little bright in the photo, but they do add some fun ambiance to our outdoor look.  Now if we can just keep the branches from wilting too much, and the fire marshall from inspecting our booth too closely…..

Our booth came together in time for us to escape for awhile, and actually enjoy a sit-down-be-waited-on meal.  Ahhhh, heaven!  Big diet cokes, yummy food, and the perfect ending to a good meal…an order of “New Orleans Beignets” to share.  Now if you haven’t had these babies, you can try them at the Grand Lux Cafe.  (There aren’t too many of these restaurants around, but for my Tucson friends, I just looked it up and there is one in Scottsdale!  Worth a drive up there for the dessert, let me tell you!  Oh, and there are a few on the east coast, and in FLorida too….)  It’s a SISTER restaurant to The Cheesecake Factory… need I say more?  The beignets are little donut balls, rolled and rolled and rolled again in powdered sugar, and served HOT with several dipping sauces.  Definitely decadent.  And French.  So we just had to have them, to get in the Ooh La La mood.  The sacrifices one has to make for the sake of business, ya know?

So back to the convention center to get ready for Sample Spree!  It’s just plain crazy.  A quick set-up on a table in another area of the convention center, and it’s countdown time to a 2-hour buying frenzy.  It’s from 8 pm til 10 pm, so the vendors are tired from a long day of getting ready for opening day tomorrow, and the shop owners and other quilt market attendees are exhausted from a long day of either travelling or attending classes.  It’s fun to see familiar faces and the excitement of “what’s new” brewing in the air (the WARM air, I might add.  I don’t think the convention center turns on the A/C til the “real” deal tomorrow morning!)   We have videos and pics of sample spree, but to be honest… it’s after midnight here now and that is just too much techi-ness to deal with at this point in time!  We will get them posted, though…. promise!  Here is just one quick photo of Lizzie B team member John (and his middle name is Pierre, honest truth!) getting ready for Sample Spree.

(The beret?  From Ross, across the street from our hotel…. only $5.99.  We thought that just had to be serendipity— to find a black wool beret here in Houston!)

Sample Spree was exhausting, and it was almost 11 pm when we got out of there.  The rest of the team is already tucked into bed now and snoozing away.  l’ll bet they are already dreaming about those Texas waffles, and ya know… I am off to join them!

Til tomorrow…

Well I have to say, it feels like we were JUST here!  The Lizzie B team is back in Houston and gearing up for another market.  So far the biggest struggle was the hotel!  We like to stay in the same type of hotel every time, mostly so we can rack up those points and get freebie nights, but when we went to book the hotel this time we couldn’t find one within a 50 mile radius of downtown Houston!  It was right after the hurricane had hit and people were staying in hotels all over the city, so making a reservation was near impossible and hotels were saying they had no idea if they’d have room or not.

So we went SEARCHING like crazy all over the internet and found a quaint little B&B which, we’ll admit, sold us with the pictures online of a cute wrap around porch, a private parking garage, free wifi and promises of comfy feather beds.  Being in panic mode, we went ahead and made our reservation (against our better judgemet) thinking we had to have SOMETHING!  So when the troops all arrived and we plugged Jack (the nav system….) into the rental car….we were just a tad bit surprised when Jack annouced we had “arrived at the “bed and breakfa” (for some reason, it never finished the word, which only added to the humorous situation we found ourselves in!)  The room was over the private garage…so tiny it’s a good thing Beth knows how to thread the eye of a needle ‘cuz that’s what it was like to park in the garage.  To get to the room we had to go up some musty kitty-liter smelling stairs in order to get a peek at our “quaint” room.  Filled with, well, you know the kind of furniture you see outside on the porch of, say, a frat house?  Yep, that was it.  Covers thrown over them so you didn’t really know WHAT they looked like, but considering the droopiness of the cushions, one could imagine.  The walls were BRIGHT yellow, the center of the roll-away was touching the floor, my bed made my allergies kick into overdrive with massive wheezing and sneezing goin’ on and the bathroom was the size of a coat closet with a peeling tub and a broken jagged porcelain toilet paper holder you had to try real hard not to slash your leg open on!

Oh…but there were a couple of framed anitque squares of Sun Bonnet Sue on the book shelf (if ya like that sort of thing!) and a decent breakfast….

We tried real hard to look on the bright side of things (ie, the breakfast!) but the thought of spending the next 6 nights in our QUAINT room was just too depressing to fathom.  SO.  Tonight we’re at the Marriott.  Thank the heavens they had a room open for us!  The beds are comfy, the couches non-droopy, the garbage cans aren’t lined with Wal-Mart bags and not a thing is makin’ me sneeze.  We hate sounding like hotel snobs, but ya know?  After a loooong day at market, you just want jammies and a nice bed to go home to!

Speaking of comfy beds….mine is just callin’ my name this very moment.  Above you’ll get a sneak peek of how our booth is coming together so far.  Either we’re getting really good at this, or we are seriously forgetting something!  Because we just about finished setting up the first day.  I always do a sketch of how I see the booth in my little head.  It’s sometimes scary not knowing how it’s going to translate from that sketch to the booth itself!  This time I wanted a park along the river in Paris look, where sellers go and set up their wares.  I wanted a meandering walkway through our “park” so it would draw people into the booth.  The picture shows how we used some astroturf and vinyl “cobblestone” tiles to make that a reality!  Now we just need to find our park bench.  Can’t seem to find one anywhere since most shops are already displaying stuff for Christmas!  Yikes!  Christmas??? Anyway.  We noticed a cute park bench outside the new hotel and wondered if they’d notice one missing for a coupla days.  Ya think?

Stay tuned for the latest updates at market.  We’re hoping to bring you some news on all our favorite designers and new lines of fabric, plus some podcasts with our favorite quilty celebrities!

The West Coast Sweatshop has been HUMMIN’….!  Always right before Quilt Market, we kick it into gear so we can have samples for “Sample Spree”.  Now, if you don’t know what Sample Spree is…. it’s a night-before-market event where quilt shop owners can buy whatever the vendors have to offer:  new fabric bundles, new patterns, books, notions, kits, and best of all…. ready-made samples that can go back home and into the shops to inspire their customers to quilt, sew, create.

Well, although we mainly design quilts… there is NO WAY we could do samples of those!  But we also have a few handbag patterns, and those are a little more do-able.  The first time we EVER went to Market, we found out about Sample Spree, and thought— why not?  So we put together about 35 or so of our “Anything Goes” bags, popped a dozen or so patterns into each one, and sold them…ready to go home into quilt shops across the country.  Sample Spree was crazy!  Shop owners line up for literally HOURS to get in the doors, and when those doors finally open, watch out!  Two hours of running, grabbing, laughing, buying…. we were warned that it would get crazy but really, ya had to see it to believe it!  (Think the day-after-Thanksgiving sales….!)   We sold out of our bags after the first hour and we were thrilled!

So, it’s become a Lizzie B tradition.  Each time, we’ve done our newest handbag pattern, and it’s been great!   It’s a LOTTA work though!  And I must say… I personally have managed to avoid the sweatshop scene each time.  Liz, and particularly Mama C (we call her the California Sweatshop!), bear the brunt of the work.  Well, THIS time around, I thought the West Coast office could turn into the workroom… and whew!!  What was I thinking??

Well, here is part of what I was thinking.  My oldest son Chris, who is 21, is living at home this semester.  He has spent the last 2 years in South Africa, and while he was gone… Lizzie B was born!  The humongous “boy-room”, complete with TV, xbox, etc…. is now a quilting studio/office.  Before he left on his adventure on the other side of the world,  he made money on the side by SEWING.  Yep, sewing.  Now, he has always been familiar with his MOM sewing, but I have to say— I did not really teach him anything.  But all of a sudden, he was dragging out the old, old Singer and sewing away.  Not on cute quilty-type stuff.  Nope, I am talking GEAR.  Backpacks, duffles, tactical vests, gear pouches, etc.  Fabrics like Cordura, rip-stop nylon, foam, and webbing, velcro, hardware, zippers.  ZIPPERS!  I have no idea how he learned to do zippers.  I surely did not teach him THAT!

So, for the past 2 years, as the sweatshops here in Lizzie B- land have been humming, we have ALL been saying, “Where’s Chris?  HE should be doing this!”.  So we kind of had a plan.  He is going to school, looking for extra money, and waiting to attend the Police Academy in January.  So he agreed to help out.  For money, of course.  And so my macho son, who normally sews only very-macho kind of gear, has been whippin’ out OOH LA LA bags!  (And it’s a good thing that his buddies most likely do not read quilty blogs… or he would take some ribbing, I am sure…..)

Thought I’d pop in this pic of Chris (he’s the one on top) and Ben, our 19 yr old.  These are the kind of boys they are…. manly, adventurous, daring, (and can the mom in me just say “stupid?!” … they are hanging off of Half-Dome for heaven’s sake!!)  Anyway, just wanted to illustrate that making Ooh La La bags was just NOT what Chris was thinking when I asked him to make “bags” and he agreed to help out…..

Well, we decided to make about 30 of them for Sample Spree.  Now, this is a pretty easy bag to put together.  Very cute, very girlie.  Kind of fun.  But really, I DON’T recommend that you make 30 at a time.  That’s a lot of straps for handles, and hardware, and well, just a LOT of machine humming!

Here is a  pic of the fabulous WOOL that I ordered for the ruffly edges.

I ordered it on the phone from Beth (yep, it is surely a name thing around here!) from A Plaid Wool company…. you can see her great website here www.aplaidwool.com. She helped me pick color combos over the phone and I think she did a wonderful job!  Her wool is all hand-dyed, and it just feels soooo wonderful!  I really hated to tear it into strips for the bags, so I waited until the very last minute.  It was kind of fun to just look at the stack for a few days.

Another thing about this bag…. it has a tricky little way of coming together!  Liz has been making handbags for a long, long time, and she does this weird little thing with the bottom, and the lining, and when it’s done…. it’s amazing how it all works and looks so great!   So we wrote the pattern that way, and it’s just a little hard to explain into words.  We tried though!  And although the words and diagrams do make sense, we thought it would be great to have a little video tutorial on that step…. ‘cuz like I said, it is a little tricky.  So we will have that up on our website sometime soon so if you buy the pattern, don’t fret!  We personally will step you through it!

Here’s one last pic of the finished bags…. along with Monique, modeling our sample cover bag.  Isn’t she cute?  We decided she MUST go to Houston with us!  The Ooh La La bag just looks fabulous on her shoulder, and so she will be getting boxed up sometime today for her trip to Quilt Market!

Look for our new pattern in your local shops!  If they don’t have it, please tell them about it!  You can also find it on our Amazon site at www.shoplizzieb.com.  (All of our new patterns will be up on the website in the next week or so).

Now that the sample bags are done…. we are checkin’ off the big fat To-Do list for Market.  It’s quite long at this point, but we are crossin’ things off one by one.  It’s stressful getting everything we need shipped or packed for Houston, but once we all arrive…. it’s a blast!   We’ll keep ya posted!

Big sigh….as promised, I made my first ever mammogram appointment today.  And the appointment is TOMORROW!  Yikes!  Send out some good quilter vibes for me….

UPDATE: 10/11/08 - 8:30 in the AM (on a Saturday morning mind you!) I drove myself to my local hostpital where they have a very nice “Breast Center” and had my FIRST ever mammogram.  Now I don’t know if we’ve come along way in the process of mammograms but can I just say….what was all the dang fuss about???  So the little ladies get smashed up a bit, but seriously, I have been poked, prodded and mushed much more than that in my life time! (I breast fed 4 babies after all!)  It’s now almost noon and I’m happy to report there is no lasting achiness, thank goodness.

Now let’s hope the results are just as happy!  Apparently if I need another scan they call me on Monday or Tuesday.  If I don’t get a call, I’ll get my results in the mail.  Here’s hopin’ that phone does NOT ring in the next day or two!  Keep your fingers crossed….

Meanwhile….NOW IT’S YOUR TURN!  If you haven’t had a baseline mammogram and you’re between the ages of 35 and 40 I urge you to do it now!  I have a friend who was in that age range when she was diagnosed with stage 4 breast cancer.  She had NO idea and would not have even had her first mammogram until the age of 40.  By that time, her beautiful children would have been motherless.  SO. Don’t wait like I did.  It really is no big deal!  And if you’re 40+….guess what?  EVERY YEAR ladies!  Right along with that dreaded PAP.  I’ve decided that since October is Breast Cancer Awareness month, that THIS will be the month that I make my yearly appointment.  Easy enough to remember, right?  So go make your appointments and do it now!  It’s a 15 minute process.  Fifteen minutes that could save your life.

Do a search online for local breast clinics or hospitals in your area.  Throughout the month, most of them are offering free mammograms.  In my area here in PA, the Mainline Heath Centers are doing free exams on October 25th.  If you live in my area, go here for more information:

http://www.mainlinehealth.org/wtn/Page.asp?PageID=WTN000631

Oh dear…..I have a dirty little secret to share.  It’s going to be difficult to admit it, but here goes….

I’VE NEVER HAD A MAMMOGRAM!

I KNOW!  Bad, huh?  Every year I raise money for cancer research, to find a cure…etc.  I’ve raised money and done 70 mile bike rides for Livestrong for years.  All the time knowing FULL WELL that a cure all depends on early detection and the ONLY way for early detection of breast cancer is, well, the dreaded mammogram.  But I’ve heard the horror stories.  You know, the ones that describe how it feels like being run over by a Mac truck in reverse AND THEN straight on again.  I mean, I’ve seen mac trucks…I have a vivid imagination….I can already feel the pain just thinkin’ about it!

I even remember when Beth told me about her first mammogram.  She said that she was aching all afternoon and was a bit cranky with her dear hubby when he didn’t quite understand what the problem was.  So she tried to describe it for the “man-brain”.  At the time he was standing in front of the refrigerator with the side-by-side freezer/fridge doors.  Both doors open, mind you because you just can’t find something to eat unless ALL your options are in front of you, right?  So…..Beth says, okay, imagine you’re standing a bit TOO close to those doors and your “manly treasures” are arranged just so and someone comes along and SLAMS both doors at the SAME time with an UNBELIEVEABLE FORCE and they get SMASHED!  Well, she said, his faced turned a few shades of green and he limped away with some sympathy pains for her after all just thinking about this scenerio.

Alas, you can see why I’ve been a bit reluctant to make my appointment!  My doctor has been writing me scripts for an appointment since I turned 35 and said it was time for a baseline mammogram.  She said once I hit 40 I’d be doin’ the real thing on a regular basis.  Yippee.  Now 40 is a mere year away.  Dang it, time is running out!  Every year I think SURELY they’re going to find another way to do a mammogram???  I mean, what do we have lasers for?  If they can cure eyesight and drill holes in teeth, seriously, can’t they find lumps in breasts?  Can’t ya just “beam us Scotty”???  This getting poked, prodded and smashed to death sounds like torture from another era altogether.

So here it is, Breast Cancer Awareness month and I just had my yearly GYN.  And yes, I got the lecture AGAIN.  And another script.  It’s looming at me every time I enter the kitchen….”here I am,” it says “call, make an appointment,” and “early detection, early detection!”  Ugh, I KNOW!  Okay, so I’ve decided.  I am going to do it.  I’ll take the plunge!  I will call TOMORROW and make my appointment. (I AM a good procrastinator, but honestly, it’s 8:30pm here, so the call will have to wait till tomorrow!)

If I make my appointment for my FIRST ever mammogram, can you all promise a small donation on our site to raise money for breast cancer awareness????  This would be a FABULOUS motivator for me!

We’re really trying hard to do a good thing here.  We have received a few donations so far, but would surely welcome a lot more!  To date we’ve barely hit the $50 mark.  We’d really like to get to $500 before the month is out.  We know these are difficult times for everyone and it’s hard to make donations when we’re nickeled and dimed everywhere!  We all have to pick and choose when and where we donate….but honestly EVERY DOLLAR COUNTS!  Surely we can squeeze an extra dollar out of a day that we can donate to a good cause?  For example, I could buy ONE less Diet Coke and donate a couple extra dollars!  Maybe you could order a small coffee instead of a big one and donate the saved dollar?  Just whatever you can think of where you can maybe cut back on ONE thing for one day and donate the money you saved.  I recently read that Americans are the most generous people in the world.  And I know for a fact that quilter’s add highly to that statistic!  So far we’ve enlisted our dear friend Annie Smith to do a podcast for breast cancer (coming soon!), and our book publisher Kansas City Star did a write-up on their blog The Pickle Dish (Thanks Diane!).  Yay quilter friends!

Today I learned that Brighton has already raised $100,000 for Breast Cancer this month.  Let’s keep that number growing with our own efforts.  And help Liz make that dang call tomorrow to get her first mammogram!  I shall keep you all posted.

I also received an extremely nice letter from the owner of Brighton last week thanking Lizzie B for our efforts.  Here it is….

Dear LIZ

I want to personally thank you for supporting Brighton’s breast cancer charity effort this week. My brother died of cancer and so many of my friends and customers have been affected by breast cancer and other forms of cancer, so you can imagine how much it means to me and my family that you have joined with us in giving hope and help to the many thousands of women and their families who are challenged by breast cancer. On behalf of my family and everyone at Brighton, I thank you from the bottom of our hearts for your caring and sharing the message that breast cancer must be cured.