Kaffe, Christa and cupcakes

So I’ve had a crazy two weeks. In the last two weeks we’ve had five large events at the brick and mortar Quilt Addicts Anonymous, for which I made 78 cupcakes and one quilt for. And the cat used up one of its nine lives. Here are all the fun details, with pictures.

First up was our beginner reunion class. We wrapped up our first round of beginner quilting classes just before Thanksgiving and we got back together two weeks ago so everyone could show off their finished quilts. I just loved seeing everyone show off their creations with big smiles on their faces.

Many of the students are hooked and are already onto their second quilt, which I love because we’re teaching new skills and created a whole new group of quilt addicts.

I also love how even though everyone made Stripping in Paradise, a Quilt Addicts Anonymous original pattern that you can find by clicking here. Everyone’s color choices made it look completely different.

Just finished four dozen @kaffefassettstudio themed cupcakes for our Artisan Trunk Show event. Recipe is #cupcakejemma vanilla cupcakes and vanilla buttercream. #threepoundsofbutter #sonothealthy #soyummy

A post shared by Stephanie De Pasquale-Soebbing (@quiltaddictsanonymous) on Nov 28, 2017 at 7:44pm PST

So whenever we have any type of evening event at the shop I bake cupcakes. My daughter is OBSESSED with Cupcake Jemma and asks to watch her baking videos all the time on YouTube. She also asks to make cupcakes all the time, and I love making them with her, so I’ve gotten pretty good at decorating them. And Cupcake Jemma recipes always turn out great, so they are a big hit with our shop guests as well.

And since the completion of a first quilt is something to celebrate, I baked up a couple dozen and served them with champaign, because we do it right at Quilt Addicts Anonymous. It was really fun.

Then the very next day we hosted about 40 people for guided tours through the Kaffe Artisan Trunk Show that we had on loan for a week at the shop. I took zero pictures, because when you have 40 people in your shop and you need to remember the details about a dozen or so quilts, you forget to take pictures.

But the quilts were a hit, the fabric was a hit and the Kaffe themed cupcakes you see above were a hit. If you want to read more about the Kaffe trunk show, click here to check it out.

Then the very next day Christa Watson arrived to for a two day trip. She was here to lecture and teach. Christa and I are buds, so it was great to get to spend some time with her. But is was even better to bring her to the Quad Cities so our local quilters could learn from her.

I loved her approach to planning out her quilting designs (more on that later) and everyone really enjoyed testing out about a dozen new free motion quilting designs in class. If you ever have a chance to take a class from Christa, do it. She plans out her class time really well so you are able to learn and practice tons of new quilting designs to add to your arsenal.

I loved popping in the classroom throughout the day to see what everyone was stitching up. And it was great to see the QAA classroom space full. That is what I wanted when I expanded the shop, to see the quilting community come together to learn new skills and be inspired. It was fabulous to see that actually happening.

Just made 30 ???????????? cupcakes for the Christa Watson lecture and workshop this weekend. And for the record, @christaquilts requested rainbow, I named them rainbow unicorn poop. Because unicorns have rainbow poop, obviously. Can you tell it’s been a long day and these make 78 cupcakes made from scratch for this week? But seriously, so excited for Christa Watson to teach at Quilt Addicts Anonymous this weekend! … #christaquilts #modernmarksfabric #quiltaddictsanonymous #cupcakejemma #foodporn

A post shared by Stephanie De Pasquale-Soebbing (@quiltaddictsanonymous) on Nov 30, 2017 at 8:36pm PST

And I made two dozen more cupcakes to celebrate Christa coming to the shop. And since she requested rainbow cupcakes, I delivered.

So after Christa left I had to get ready for the Christmas Walk that my business district hosts each year. So I raided my house for any and all quilts that looked remotely Christmas and decided I just needed to have one new one using All is Bright, one of the holiday lines we’ve had in the shop forever.

This line hasn’t really sold, I think because people see it on the bolt and are not quite sure what to do with it because it doesn’t look like your traditional Santa print. So I paired with with a fabulous ombre print and made my own layer cake to sew up the Five Hour Bed Quilt pattern I designed and now everyone loves this fabric. Which confirms my suspicion that we need more shop samples.

Then my cat decided to use one of her nine lives when she had an asthma attack. The cat is totally OK now, but I was pretty sure we were going to have to put her down. So in between running the cat to our regular vet, then a specialist, and checking on her one last time just in case she didn’t make it through the night, I also sewed, quilted and bound an entire bed sized quilt.

The key is the Five Hour Bed Quilt pattern. You can download it by clicking here. It uses a layer cake, the piecing is super simple and the blocks are huge, so you literally can piece the entire top in five hours.

And if you want this fabric and quilt kit, just click here to order it. If you click on this link months after this is posted and you get a 404 error, that means we’re sold out.

Then I loaded it on the longarm and did some super simple, but dense quilting to go with it and got the quilt hung just in time for the Christmas Walk to start and for the cat to come home after spending a night in an oxygen cage. When I got home for what was supposed to be a brief stop before the event started, I decided to completely skip the Christmas Walk because I was pretty sure the cat wasn’t going to make it. But to everyone’s surprise, about four hours after I thought the cat wasn’t going to make it through the night, she hopped up on my chest, started breathing normally and purring. So she’s got eight lives left.

That was my last two weeks in a nutshell. Hopefully yours wasn’t quite so crazy.