Observations From The #ScottSentMe2019 Winner (Part 1 of 3)

Happy Monday to all. I am so excited about the blog posts for the next three weeks. The best part is that I didn’t have to write them which works great for lazy me. The other great thing is that they are so insightful and interesting to hear especially from someone who isn’t a supplier or a shop owner. This is just raw observation from an ordinary consumer with a lot of motivation to see a lot of quilt shops and no pre-existing opinions.

With that, over the next 3 weeks, I am going to share with you a blog post from Catherine Brown who won the #ScottSentMe2019 Challenge after visiting 213 different quilt shops in 3 months. Wow! Just unbelievable and amazing! The blog is too long to post in one shot so I am breaking it up into bite-sized pieces that are still actually pretty large. Here goes:

Did you ever have one of those lazy mornings where you get up, pour yourself a coffee, start scrolling through Facebook, have some random thing capture your attention and lose complete track of time? Most often when that happens it is a complete waste of time; September 1 it was worth every lost minute! 

 

I started quilting just over a year ago.  While on a drive to Florida, we stopped for a day in Lancaster, PA and it was there that I fell in love with fabric!   I knew nothing about fabric or quilting, but the fabric was so beautiful and how hard could it be to buy a couple of yards, cut it into pieces and sew the pieces together?  HA!  Live and learn!  The cutting and piecing turned out to be easier than limiting my fabric consumption to a few yards!  Anyone reading this understands. As a new quilter, I knew nothing about fabric companies or brands or designers… stumbling upon the #ScottSentMe2019 challenge changed that!

In mid-August, I visited Quilts by the Bay, a lovely quilt shop in Digby, Nova Scotia.  The store is about 150 miles from my home, but someone suggested it so why not take a day trip if you can?  As a result of the visit, I started following them on FB and in early September I watched Debra’s Jaftex Facebook Live Video Challenge submission.

My first thoughts were:  Wow… this is great!  What is Jaftex?  Who is Scott?  One search led to another and another and another… and by the end of the day I knew all about the Jaftex Facebook Live Video Challenge and I had watched an amazing number of store videos!  We were planning to spend a few weeks in Florida in November and I had somehow managed to convince Best-Hubby-Ever (BHE) to detour through Missouri.  Yup …. quite the detour!   When I started watching those videos, I knew I could use them to plan store stops along our route.  You really can’t judge a shop by their website or FB page, so seeing inside so many shops was fabulous.  I found 20 stores that I wanted to visit on our trip. 

Somehow, hours later, I ended up reading Scott’s blog: Challenge Excuses are Lame.   I had to agree with him, what a wasted opportunity for stores if they didn’t participate.  For the first time ever, I commented on a posting.   I doubted that the President of Jaftex would even read my comment, but I appreciated those videos enough that I had to say thank you and let him know that consumers were benefitting from them too as they were a great tool for route planning.  Then an odd thing happened… he commented back and mentioned that I should check out the #ScottSentMe2019 challenge for consumers that was just starting!

I had already read Scott’s blog with the #ScottSentMe2019 announcement and the prizes sounded great, but it wasn’t something I would ever consider doing.  I would never visit enough stores to win and there was no way in heck that I was having my picture taken and posted on social media.  I don’t do pictures……ever.  Later that day, Scott eliminated my first lame excuse when he announced there would be 5 random winners!  Interesting… I would have to give this some serious thought…. my picture in exchange for a chance to win $100 worth of fabric…hmmm…. that might just be worth it.  I wouldn’t do it for a guaranteed $100 cash… but the chance for fabric was a different story altogether!

I set up an IG account and started following the challenge.   I saw that last year’s winner was first to post and I read a comment that she had visited 46 stores to win the challenge in 2018.  46 stores in 3 months!  No offense Diane, but I thought that was outrageous!   How could one person possibly visit 46 stores?   Of course I had mentioned the challenge to hubby and when I told him the winner had visited 46 stores, I was expecting a completely different response than, “Well, when you think about it, that really isn’t that many over a 3 month span.  You could easily get to that many on our drive, but it doesn’t matter because you won’t do the pictures.”   Interesting… did I just hear him agree to visit 46 stores?   Yes, yes he did… on the condition that he could build in a few ‘pity days’!  And so it began… my #ScottSentMe2019 journey!!

To be continued………..

---

P.S. If you order my blog book and anything else on Amazon from using the link below, I will get a commission from Amazon and that money too will go towards my sewing machine giveaway. Stated the proper way, “As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. “