The Aftermath of my month with Becky here

Recently here in the USA, we’ve been hit hard with tornadoes that have leveled the earth in many towns across the nation. It’s awful. I feel so grateful that we have been spared.

However, when I told Becky that I’d write today’s blog post to give her a chance to catch up, I was hit with the fact that my back room always looks like a tornado hit it.

This was my April Tornado.

However, in this instance, I thought I’d show some pictures and let you see the progress of what transpired when Becky was here. It went from Tornado to only a small whirlwind to neat, to stacked to another tornado, all within the space of 30 days!

Becky flew in right at the end of April. She was here for one day and then gone for the next 5. Beginning May 6, until May 28, she was here, right by my side, helping me with QuiltedTwins.com in the store. She took home work each night and had some side projects going on that she decided to tackle on her own for us.

But I’ve jumped ahead of myself. I need to step back a bit

Around mid-April, I was pretty discouraged because my “chop shop’ was such a mess. If you’ve come into the store, then you know that I attempt to keep people out of that Chop Shop, for no other real reason than it brings in lots of negative comments. A lot of people have NO IDEA how much fabric flows through our shop and they consequently have no clue how much we work back there. So, they think that we should be able to keep it neat, like the barn owner with no animals in their barn!

Becky knew how discouraged I was, because I had kept harping on it and she was asking about what was causing the most stress. I sent her pictures of my Chop Shop.

So, she flew over the “pond”, and set to work. She helped me by taking pictures, and we made decision after decision about what to put out, what to pack up, and what to put up on the storage shelves. She took picture after picture and we here at QT put up fabric after fabric on the site. I pulled in extra help to get that done.

I knew we needed to get the place cleaned up before we headed out to Dallas to meet up with reps at MODA headquarters and buy pallet after pallet of fabric!

Well, we flew out on May 9, just four days after she had come back from Lydia’s college graduation (and the real reason she came to the States in the first place). We had worked almost non stop for 3 days.. We couldn’t work during our open hours, but we could work the rest of the time. And we did. Well, we did sleep. At least a little.

She was jet lagged. I was adrenalined up and caffeine driven.

 When we flew out, I knew that when we got back on Saturday, the 11th, that we simply HAD to get our show on the road and get our back room ready for pallets of fabric. At that point, I was guessing that it was 4 pallets of fabric that would be coming in from Moda the following week.

So, we worked hard. Super hard. Photos taken. Fabrics put up on the site; Fat quarters cut; half yard packs made; some just shoved under tables, but by 10:10 p.m. on Thursday night, May 16, we had the room ready. Take a look below!

Yes, there’s a floor

I haven’t seen it for a while!

Well, I wasn’t sure when the shipment would land, but I had gotten a call on Monday with the balance due, so I knew that there was a good possibility that their shipping room would get it out of the warehouse. The receptionist I spoke to said, “The guys in the warehouse are eager to get it out of here.” That spoke volumes to me. After seeing their operation, I knew that they had their act together and that it wouldn’t take long. So, I had spread the word that we were expecting it on Friday. That was my hope anyway.

Well, Friday afternoon around 1 p.m. we got another shipment. “TRUCK IS HERE!” Someone came in excitedly and told me. I was pumped. However, it was “just 3 pallets of backing.” I wasn’t expecting that so quickly, but glad to see it.

We quickly tackled that and were just about finished opening that when around 3:30, someone else came in and said, “Are you expecting another truck today?” I looked out and saw a UPS truck. Only this was a semi.

Four pallets of fabric later, and 2 hours later, this is what sat in our formerly clean room. Well, I enjoyed staring at the empty floor for what? 18 hours… 10 pm one night to 4 pm the next day… sigh.

We kept it in the boxes all the next week while we finished up multiple projects, knowing that we’d be way too distracted to finish those projects if we allowed ourselves to dig into the MODA boxes.

On Monday, Memorial Day, however, Becky and I decided it was “now or never” to get our boxes opened. So, we did! We even did a live Facebook feed for a while, until we could see it was taking far too lo get them opened! (And it’s very tiring to talk through everything, too!!)

Here’s our Monday evening pictures. IF you click on the picture here, you’ll see some closeups of the fabrics!

And then we were open on Tuesday; after which I took Becky to the airport.

And then I started making our “opened box” mess into a horrific mess!

So, this is the tornado aftermath of my OWN doing!

It’s organized chaos and confusion! I was going back to work on it later when I remembered that I had to meet up with a rep!

So, you’ll be seeing these beautiful MODA fabrics popping up in packs and on our site over the next few days and weeks! I can’t leave them out too long, as we have MORE fabrics hot on this shipment’s heels!

I was told that I was allowed to take the day off and sleep the day away by both Sarah and Jessica, but that wasn’t going to happen!

This job is just way too much fun! Imaging getting to come to work every day and create packs from beauty!

Well, be sure to check out the new things we have…

Maybe it’ll fly out of here on the USPS truck soon!

Be sure to check out what we have for you in the store!

---

---