Country Shoppes of Millington

This is one of my favorite shops to get my country and prim goodies! The staff is so nice and I could just LIVE in this store!!!! Bev, the owner, is just so helpful and sweet; please visit soon; you will love it!!!


Country Shoppes of Millington: Located in Downtown Millington, The Country Shoppes features 3 floors of home décor and gift ideas. Housed in a beautiful turn of the century home you’ll find furniture, lighting, folk art and primitives, along with home accessories and garden decorations. Plus antiques can be found in the barn. Come into The Country Shoppes of Millington for beautiful home accents and great gift ideas, plus Free Gift Wrap on your purchases.

Our Goal

Hi everybody! We have a special mission here at Catty Wampus! We had a visitor yesterday who asked with help on a special project. I knew that everyone would want to help this lady out. Her name is Gwen O'Leary. She was raised near Sandusky,MI. She and her sister Katie were placed in a terrible situation when both of their elderly parents became critically ill at the same time and needed on-going care. Their mother suffered from Alzheimer's disease. Gwen kept a journal through all the trials of caring for their parents and has now published it; "When Life hands you Alzheimer's. Make Aprons" She is selling the book and using the funds to help Alzheimer's respite care. We have copies available for sale and we are ordering the aprons from Vanilla House Monday. We are planning to have an apron party and I am hoping that we can help Gwen by selling AT LEAST 100 copies and then some....:) Gwen's blog is located at; http://alzheimerhumor.blogspot.com/

You can call the store at 989-672-0090 to get your copy; they are only $12.00!

My trip to Maumee

What is in Maumee,Ohio??? Well just the best wholesale fabric warehouse! They held their open house (63rd!) this past weekend; Sun.-Mon. I wish I could have attended on Sunday as it was schoolhouse time. The best teachers teaching new skills! And yesterday, demos and shopping!

I got to meet one of my heroes ( list: Mary Kay Ash, Paula Deen, Eleanor Burns, and Sue Hausmann!) of the sewing world; Sue Hausmann of America Sews/Viking! She was so nice and helpful; her hubby Herb took a photo of us; she really looks so much younger in person:)

And Edyta Sitar; what a sweet person; she makes fabulous quilts and is just so down to earth; she autographed a copy of her book Friendship Scraps.. and she is coming to Millington,MI in October I believe:))

Judy Neimeier (sp?) making her BEAUTIFUL paper pieced creations; she uses jelly rolls (2 and a half inch strips precut for you) in mainly batiks from Hoffman Co.

Look at these gorgeous quilts!!!!

Our Checker Rep! Marci, who is prettier than this photo I took!

One of the Swirly Girls showing a story board on how to use the new Creative Grids rulers to cut their quilts!

Ellen Medlock's butterfly quilt:)

Well, that is just a little of the goodies I saw! And I won a door prize; an Ott lite with magnifier!!! I SOOOO need that!

We had our first sewing class today; they made a pillowcase and they came out very cute. So much to work on!!!!!

OH I FORGOT!!!

OH BOY!!! I forgot to tell you that I won the motherload at American Quilt Retailer magazine's blog; I left a comment and won the HUGE prize of FOUR fat quarter collections of MODA fabrics!!!! These haven't even been released yet so how cool; I have to take a picture to share !!!! They are such nice people too!!!!

New Goodies

This beautiful quilt has been loaned to us by its maker Mary Curtis. It is called "Wildflowers" by Smith Street Designs; it was made on an embroidery machine, and uses batik fabrics. I have contacted the company to carry this design in the store. We want to have an embroidery club to help everyone learn to use their machine fully.

This is my sweet Catty Wampus :)))

We have just gotten in some gorgeous fabrics from Jo Morton, RJR (Jinny Beyer); and Marcus Brothers. Lots more is ordered for the next few months as the collections are released from MODA.

Last month I attended the Holmes County fabric show in Berlin, Ohio;

What beautiful views in Berlin; I would love to go there again and spend a whole lot of time there!! I thought I would share these pretty views with you:)

All kinds of good things:)

We are so happy and excited here at CW; our friend Caron over at Michigan Quilts has been sending lots of folks our way. She is just the kindest person to help us get our business moving forward. I can't thank her enough. And I won the contest over at American Quilt Retailers Magazine's blog; fat quarters from Moda!!! We are so excited!!!!!!! We have been getting in more goodies; like Jo Morton's Ravenswood and Jinny Beyer's palette. We have the Rowenta travel irons and Oliso as well.

So many goodies are on their way including new fabrics and notions. I'll have to post some photos for you all.

JULY 2011

Well we have been at it now for over one month. We opened the store on June 3,2011 for the Cars and Crafts weekend here in Caro. Our inventory was limited. Now we have a better inventory, but we still need more! It has been difficult to just get the fabrics in as ordering is done so far in advance, but I think we are getting better at understanding the system.

Mr Catty Wampus himself (Murphy) at his store!

We have had a lot of community support and we are selling things more regularly. Its a process!  These are photos of our store; inside and out. We have added more fabric since these were taken and the long awaited Mettler thread has finally arrived;(yesterday) and we got some of the Moda jelly rolls and layer cakes.We just got in the JANOME sewing,quilting and embroidery machines as well.

Murphy has LOTS of friends; there are people who just come in to SEE HIM! LOL!!!!
We really have very nice customers; many are becoming family! Jim's mom Lila; she is 83!!! She made the quilt above from Bali Pops jelly roll strips and quilted it herself on a normal sewing machine!