"I Won't Buy Any Fabric Until I Use What I Have" - every quilter, every January

I've often said I'm a cheap quilter. To be honest, I'm pretty much cheap in a lot of areas, but since I've become a scrap quilt maven my cheap-ti-tude in the quilting arena has definitely magnified and become a little more obvious even to the casual observer.

DISCLAIMER: I will say, though, I will never become one of those people who saves selvages, keeps pieces less than 2" in area, or dumpster dives at the retreat or workshop for other people's discards. I have my limits of cheapdom and those are mine right there.

This winter, though, I did raise (lower?) my cheap bar slightly with a project that turned into a pattern I am calling "Yankee Frugal," being that I am a Yankee descended from the Mayflower itself and the quilt was made entirely from scraps and yardage from my stash. I had challenged myself to make a quilt without buying any fabric, and I did it.

Why such a challenge? Because every January you know you all pull out your soapboxes to start your rallying cries of "I resolve not to buy any more fabric until I use up my stash!" and while yes, we in the quilting business laugh heartily at these statements and wait to see who will fall prey to our mischievous ways of plying you with pretty things first, this year I wanted to see if I could actually make something from just my stash.

I've never considered myself much of a pink lover, but fabric stash and scrap bins can bring out some truths about you that you can't deny.

When it overflows, the penchant for pink is undeniable.

My go-to coordinate color for pink is green. Call me a sorority girl, call me a child of the 80s - and well, you'd be right on both counts, so I guess that's my excuse. In any case, into the basket of ready-to-sew scraps went the pinks and the greens, looking like a little sorority rush party. Call Kappa Sig and find someone with a fake ID to get a keg!

One would think the basket would keep stuff from getting all over the floor. One would be wrong.

Foundation piecing the scraps on to strips of ugly fabric was my modus operandi for this quilt. I'd come up with the block a few months prior and had for a limited time given it away as a freebie block thank you for those who are members of my EvaPaige Quilt Designs facebook community, but now it was time to make lots of blocks. So I needed lots of scraps. In good news, I had lots of scraps.

Now that's some scrappy wonderment

The size of this quilt was pretty much determined by how much of the green polka dot background I had to work with and still be able to save enough for a binding, so I stopped at 12 and started playing around with layout possibilities. While the blocks themselves did create kind of an "X's and O's" secondary pattern when put directly next to each other, it also made the look too stripy to me.

I knew I needed sashing, but in my design world, sash is often a four letter word. I just have never been drawn to quilts with a very traditional "block block block with sashing in between" layout so whatever sashing I decided on was going to have to spice it all up. The simplest way ended up being the best, cutting sashing strips into multiple widths. It amazed me how much that made me like the sashing concept for this quilt!

Also at this angle it's almost hard to see what is sashing and what is not. I like that too.

A foundation pieced border of pinks sandwiched between a green fabric was the perfect way to border the entire thing, or so I think. You may think differently. As I always say, if you buy my pattern, you liked something about it, so feel free to change parts of it to suit your tastes; you can do so knowing full well I am not sitting there in the studio with you judging you. But wouldn't that be an amazing experience? Even when I'm judgy, I'm fun.

Even my backing was pieced from whatever I had laying around. It amused me to no end when a recent audience was all a-twitter over the pieced back, which to me looks exactly like someone pulled every big chunk of green or pink fabric they thought would be big enough for a back, sewed them together, determined it wasn't big enough, and kept adding more. Because that's what someone did.

A bit of the back and a cute roll of binding. Clara Barton would be lucky to have me.

Yankee Frugal has entered the morass of pink and green quilts in my current repertoire, and here's hoping audiences don't start walking out when I pull out yet another one. It's available on Craftsy and in my website shop, and soon to be available to the retailers everywhere. From my lips to God's ears, anyway!

In the end, I discovered that yes, one can indeed make an entire quilt, ne an entire pattern without once going to the quilt shop. But is that really the ultimate goal we should be making for ourselves? If I am to pull out my own soapbox, as much as we all want to use what we have, and we should, if we were to be serious about not buying more fabric until we used what we had, or not buy any more patterns, kits, tools, etc the industry would truly suffer. So set those goals of using what you have, but be open at all times to the pretty new stuff that will make your quilts sing!

VAT tax and Craftsy and Me, a Horror Show

If you don't own a business anywhere in the world with an online presence, I find myself very jealous of you this week. You did not have to spend several days attempting to make sense of the ultimately completely senseless new VAT tax regulations, and make some hard decisions as to how they affect you. That's how I've spent my week thusfar, and right now I kind of hate Europe. Which really sucks, as I am about to spend almost three weeks there and I don't want to be annoyed with them.

The long and short of it is this: as of 1/1/15, all businesses anywhere in the world who sell a downloadable good (music, e-book, and yes, craft patterns) to an EU customer will have to pay VAT (Value Added Tax, or as I like to call it Violently Acrimonious Tax) to the country in which the customer lives. If you start doing a little research and familiarize yourself with the complete mess this entire thing is, as I have been doing all week, you will soon be hitting the egg nog and your Christmas spirit will be in the toilet. Trust me.

I drafted and sent this letter to several key parties in the EU today. It explains a little more about why I unfortunately will be shutting my Craftsy store paid patterns down, effective 1/1/15.

Dear Sirs,

I am a quilt designer based in Massachusetts, USA, and I find myself this week wishing to go back 250 years to drink a tankard at the Green Lantern with Paul Revere and Sam Adams. Forgive my drama, but it is hard not to feel like this is taxation without representation and I’m all Don’t Tread on Me-ing over here across the pond.

Having just been apprised of this VAT tax this week, as it is getting no press over here at all, and having to do my own mind-boggling, tedious, and contradictory research, and having to scramble to figure out how to adjust my business to either accommodate receipt and payment of VAT or risk massive penalties for my average of two sales a year of a $9 quilt pattern to an EU quilter has quite ruined my Christmas spirit.

The digital download portion of my business, which I accomplish entirely through the Craftsy website, is not the main moneymaker for me, but it is significant enough that I do not wish to lose it. Have you heard the adage “When you buy from a small mom-and-pop business, you are not helping a CEO buy a third vacation home.

You are helping a little girl get dance lessons, a little boy get his team jersey, a mom or dad put food on the table, a family pay a mortgage, or a student pay for college”? That’s my family exactly. We own one home. We have three children, one of whom gets her dance lessons in part through the online downloads sales portion of my business. If I have a really good month on Craftsy, maybe I take everyone out to dinner too. It’s high living at its best.

In three years of having my patterns on Craftsy, I’ve sold six patterns to the EU. Six. Total sales in three years were hundreds of times higher than that, and were 98% USA customers, with my next two big markets being Australia/New Zealand and Canada. Unfortunately, because I cannot control who is buying from me as Craftsy is the middleman, I now must shut down my loyal 98% of my online download customers and 100% of my sales due to .006 of my overall sales history and the possibility of another .006 this year. USA customers are my lifeline in ALL aspects of my business, and shutting this side down will likely have adverse effects elsewhere, including marketing, production, and overall business visibility.

While I do feel all treaded on, payment of the VAT for me would not be a problem if Craftsy were being at all helpful, but they currently are not. There is no way for me to actually collect VAT on a Craftsy sale, so the tax payments would have to come out of my own pocket. I do not have the resources, as a micro-business, to set up or properly keep up with the records you’d like us to keep for ten years as to any EU sales, and “two non-conflicting pieces of data” to show where these sales came from – I can’t even wrap my head around how I would go about that. To say nothing of the cost of registering for VATMOSS, etc. There is no way I can block EU buyers even if I wanted to. Craftsy could do these things as the third party. They do not appear to be willing to do so at this time, although I keep hoping they will see the light. Therefore I see no choice but to close down my shop as of 1/1/15 until such time as the law is changed to set a reasonable threshold for micro-businesses. One sale of any amount is not remotely a reasonable threshold.

I thank you for your time, and I hope that my story is one of only thousands who are begging you to set a reasonable threshold that will allow microbusinesses to function, prosper, and continue to help grow the world economy.

Please help keep my kid in tutus.

Sincerely,

Beth Helfter

EvaPaige Quilt Designs

www.evapaigequiltdesigns.com

Quilting Hottie Haven blog – www.evapaigequiltdesigns.blogspot.com

www.facebook.com/EvaPaigeQuiltDesigns

So yeah. That's the plan. No more downloads from me after 12/31, until and if Craftsy gets a clue and collects and files VAT when necessary for micro-businesses like me.


I didn't want to just shut down that side of things without warning, so consider yourselves warned. If you like download patterns and have been thinking of buying one, from me or from other designers, you might want to do it now and call it a gift to yourself. While paper patterns are always available and can be purchased via the Pattern Store page of this blog, several of my patterns are download only, including the popular Motley Spool mug rug, and will cease availability on 12/31. I cannot speak for all designers, but I do know many who are in the same boat and have made the same decision. My Craftsy store can be accessed via the link on the left sidebar, or CLICK HERE.

If anything changes, I'll certainly let you all know. I appreciate your business always and hope that I can reinstate the downloads or find another place to host them, but cannot guarantee anything at this time.

No Raincoat Required - Craftsy Flash Sale, June 6-9!

I'm celebrating the fact that it is June and I have not yet gone into a total panic about summer with a Craftsy Shop Flash Sale!

Something you've been wanting to try from the mind and studio of me? 20% off! Something of mine that you have wishlisted - and for the love of all that is holy I can't believe how many of you have done that! - for a rainy day? It's raining! 20% off!

Please note that this is not a sitewide Craftsy-wide sale. This is a temporary lowering of my own Craftsy shop's prices, because it is my shop and I can do that. No coupon codes, no minimums to buy, and most importantly, no waiting! PDF downloads instantly so that you can start rolling around naked in your stash looking for the perfect fabrics immediately. We only ask that if you don't find them, you please find your clothing before heading to the fabric store. This is a Flash Sale, not an invitation to become a flasher.

Be one of the first to nab this brand new pattern, "Mod-ified Trees"!

Get a head start on fall with "Pick Me!"

Go for a scrap clean-out with one of my many scrap-busting patterns! (shown, "Syncopated Ribbons", quilt by Danielle Pelletier)

Or tackle a small but meaningful project. ("Hope for a Cure" mug rug)

Patterns normally ranging from $2.50 to $9.00 will range from $2.00 to $7.80 during the sale. That's math, hotties. Math I have been living all through fifth grade as my daughters learned fractional multiplication. How lovely that I can now prove to them, through this sale, that they will use these skills in life. Really they will. Just don't tell them I used a calculator.

The Flash Sale will end at midnight on Monday, June 9, so make sure you don't miss out!