June 2022 V14 I 6

June makes me a bit sad when I realize it is when the Collective Stitch would have started. If you are not familiar with it, I started the event after an Alaskan cruise in 2016. It is inspired by the quilt event where you visit quilt shops and are given a free quilt block pattern from different shops. Each year has a theme and the shops create a block to represent them. I do very little quilting, but I visited all the shops I could and not only got the free pattern, but purchased the block kit from each, also. I thought this would be a great way to get a Summer shop hop type event going for cross stitch shops. I sent out a mailing, emails and calls to cross stitch shops and the first year we had 19 shops. The shop numbers grew, but it was a struggle to get them to participate. The shops were encouraged to have the designer of their chart be featured in the shop during the event. To fund my part of the project, I created a book with all of the designs each year which would be available through the participating shops. I had the design size set so that it would fit on a particular size of band fabric and had the wholesale source available to the shops for it, as well. Hey - it was a great idea and I failed in the translation of it to the shops somehow. I still have a few shops who really liked the event and if there were only more, it is still a great idea.