Spring Market

I recently returned from Quilt Market in Kansas City! It was a whirlwind, exhausting, and lots of fun. The "Recombobulation Area" in the Milwaukee airport helped a little, but discombobulation still abounds.

There were, of course, tons of new fabric lines and patterns to see. Many of them will be making their way to the shop soon and in the upcoming months. It's so hard when you fall in love with a fabric at Quilt Market, but it doesn't arrive until September or October!

I'll be posting pictures and updates from Quilt Market so check back soon!

-Amy

New Fabric Added to the Shop!

There are LOTS of new fabrics in the shop! We’ve added fabrics from Kona Cottons, Art Gallery, more Marcia Derse, and many more. Check out the New Arrivals page to see all of them.

There are also some new categories to help you find fabric easier. In addition to the already existing Organics section, check out the new sections for Adult Novelty, Basics, Black & White, Children's Fabric, Flannel, Kona Cottons, & Sports.  See all of the new sections here.

 

Denyse Schmidt Hope Valley

I just put some Hope Valley fat quarter bundles in the shop.

There are very limited quantities, so get them while you can!

Lotta Jansdotter’s Echo in the Shop

I finally got my shipment of Echo by Lotta Jansdotter. It seems like everyone else has had theirs forever. I’m SO excited to have this collection. I just love it. It has a beautiful contemporary simplicity with only one color per piece.

I’ve been really racking my brain trying to figure out a quilt setting that I want to put these fabrics in. I want something very simple to feature the fabrics, but that is still dynamic and not just patchwork squares. I still haven’t come up with anything, but you’ll be the first to see it when I do.

Jump on over to the shop to buy some of Lotta’s beautiful fabrics!

 

 

Quilt camp updates

Peeps, it's TOO HARD to blog from an iPhone. The format & pics get all screwy. Tweeting is easier. Check out my twitter page or Facebook (tweets are being posted there also) for quilt camp updates. Links to both are on the right hand side of the blog.

Quilt camp!

The first completed project of quilt camp - a blinged mug rug. I have actually done other things, but this is the first done to completion. Back to the sewing machine (after a layover at the snack table).

Vacation!

I'm heading up to beautiful Door County, Wisconsin for a semi-annual quilt retreat that I've been doing forever. So any new orders placed starting right NOW will be shipped on Monday. Sorry for the inconvenience. I'll try to post pics from the retreat, but don't hold your breath just in case I'm having to much fun or am too sleep deprived to remember.

Pincushion Swap

I made a cute little pincushion for a swap partner on Flickr. I really like the way it turned out. I may need to make another one for myself.

World Domination

Well, not quite yet, but I’m trying.

My husband bought two huge vinyl maps & arrow stickers for me. This way, I can put an arrow sticker on the map for every order & have a cool visual of where my orders are being shipped.

You guys, I’m not kidding when I say they are huge. Each one is 36 inches by 50 inches. They’re like huge wall stickers. There’s only one wall in both my sewing room and fabric room where I had enough space to hang them. I suppose he really wants me to be successful at this & take over the world & need lots and lots of space for the little arrow stickers.

 

You can’t see the arrow stickers in the pics above, but they’re there. I only put one arrow per location even if there has been more than one shipment per location. I’ve sent orders to 33 states, 5 countries, and 4 continents. The most popular state is Wisconsin. That’s where I’m located.

Internationally, I’ve sent a few orders to the UK, and a half dozen to the east coast of Australia.

 

I even had one order go to Sri Lanka.

But Canada has been the most popular international location. And the ONLY place in Canada I’ve sent orders to is Victoria, British Columbia. In fact, Victoria is not only the most popular international location, but the most popular city worldwide with the most individual orders. I’ve sent over a dozen orders to Victoria.

 

Only 17 states, 192 countries, and 3 continents left to go…

FREE Lorax pattern

You can download a free pattern from Robert Kaufman featuring the new Lorax fabrics. Make your quilt just in time for the movie in March! I LOVE churn dash patterns. Download the pattern here, and buy our Lorax fabrics here!

Doh!

FYI, don’t leave an open bag of poly pellets just sitting on a table with curious kitties skulking about. I think I’ll be finding pellets underfoot for months.

Marcia Derse Fabrics Almost Gone!

Almost all of the Marcia Derse fabrics at The Fabricologist are sold out!

I have reconfigured the inventory and created a few more bundles - the most popular way to buy them.

They are extremely limited, so stop by to get them before they are gone! Don't forget that they are all 10% off right now, too.

http://www.fabricologist.com/shop/Fabric-by-Designer/Marcia-Derse/All-Marcia-Derse.htm

  

New items in the shop & a great tutorial!

I am super lucky that I get to hang out with several great women every month at the Madison Modern Quilt Guild meetings. One of those women is the amazing Jeni from In Color Order. If you haven’t been reading her blog, head on over there ASAP! She’s a tiny little ball of energy & her blog is great. She’s going to have lots of quilt-alongs, tutorials, and other exciting things coming up this year.

At our last meeting, she gave us preview of a quilt she designed for the Moda Bakeshop. It’s a beautiful chevron quilt made with a new line called A Walk in the Woods designed by Aneela Hoey for Moda. The free pattern tutorial is much easier than it appears. It’s constructed of nine patches & looks like it should go together pretty quickly.

Unfortunately, I do not have the new line from Aneela Hoey in my shop, but I do have pieces from Aneela’s other lines, Sherbet Pips and Little Apples that are newly listed in my shop! This quilt would be just as cute in either one of those lines.  Check them out  and buy them up here…

                  

More new items are going to be listed in the shop early next week. Stayed tuned!

Gumdrop Pillow

I recently finished a gumdrop pillow designed by Amy Butler.  http://www.amybutlerdesign.com/products/patterns_display.php?id=31

I like it, but I’m not completely thrilled with it because I don’t feel like it has enough contrast. I really wish I would have picked fabrics that didn’t match so well. But, it still looks good.

The pattern comes with two sizes. I made the smaller one in the pattern, and I’m glad I did. That big one is huge. The one I made measures approximately 12 inches high & 18-20 inches across.
And holy cow does it use a lot of batting! It was like a bottomless pit. My mom made the large one & I think she said she put 8 pounds of batting in hers. I used a wee bit over 5 pounds for mine.

I love Amy Butler’s designs, but whenever I sew one of her patterns, I seem to think that there has GOT to be an easier way to do something than the way she describes it. I almost always change some of the way I put things together. I sometimes wonder if she actually sews a whole lot because some of her directions seem overly complicated. But maybe that’s just me & my need to change pattern directions.

The boy likes the gumdrop pillow, the cats like it, and it is pretty comfy under the feet. It’s going to get some decent use in my house.

Cord organization

Because I’m tired of crawling around under my desk looking for cords…

 

Modern Mini Challenge

I’m looking forward to the Modern Mini Challenge over at Ellison Lane Quilts.

http://ellisonlane.blogspot.com/2012/01/challenge-and-contest-for-you.html

It’s a 5 week series that will include some blog hopping, inspiration, and a challenge/ contest of mini quilts and mug rugs.

I really need to get into some more mini quilts & smaller projects. I feel like I don’t get as much accomplished as I want to because I’m always working on big quilts.

So I’m hoping to get sewing on some mini quilts, bags, and smaller projects in the future.

Spoonflower printing on Kona Cotton

Did you know that Spoonflower will now be printing their quilting weight fabrics on Kona cotton from Robert Kaufman Fabrics?

I wanted to design some fabric last week that had a bunch of custom Fabricologist labels. But I put it on hold when I saw that they start printing on Kona as of this past Monday! Yay! Off to order my labels...

http://blog.spoonflower.com/2012/01/introducing-kona-cotton-premium-quilting-weight-cotton.html

I Took 623 Pictures This Morning

Or pretty darn close to it. I tried to take pictures all by my lonesome while holding up a quilt top.  I wanted to use the nice overcast sunlight early this morning, so I set my tripod up on the deck, strapped on my boots, trudged out into coldness, and proceeded to take pictures.

But it was windy.

Really windy.

And somewhere around picture #127 the wind died down for 5 seconds and I got one that was almost perfect. But it was too far to the right. So then I moved a smidge to the left and tried again.

Awwwww crap! I needed to move to the right!!

By this time, the 1 degree temperature, coupled with the below zero wind chill was numbing my extremities. It probably wouldn’t have been so terrible if I had a remote control trigger on my camera. But I don’t. So I had to set the 10 second timer on the camera, jump over the snow bank, whip the quilt up, hold my breath, and hope that the wind would hold out for a few more seconds, then trudge back through the snow bank to see if I got a decent picture, and repeat… a million times. That gets really old after the 13th time.

So this one right here? This is as good as it gets.

The reason I wanted to get a picture of this quilt top is because I need ideas for quilting it. I made this back in November, but I’m just getting around to thinking about quilting it.

I’m very fortunate in that my mom owns a Gammill longarm machine & she lives only about an hour and a half north of me. She lets me borrow it when I want to quilt an all-over pattern on my quilts. That’s what I usually do. I’ve never quilted on my small machine. It scares me. I need to take a machine quilting class or something.

But I’d really like to try something other than my usual all-over loops or meanders & I’d like to try something on my own machine. I was thinking of doing several straight lines in the white parts, kind of like echo quilting, and nothing in the colored parts. Is that too weird? Is that not enough support in the colored parts?

Any other ideas for how I should quilt this (keep it simple)?

I’m off to google remote control triggers for my camera.