Awesome giveaway

Over at the Purl Bee…one fq of EVERY COLOR of Kona Cotton solids!!! I think it’s running for the whole month of March. I hope I win!!!

Hope Valley

I’m sure you mod quilters  and crafters are all over this already, but it’s been a while since I’ve just wandered the internet in search of crafty goodness. Did you know Denyse Schmidt had a new line of fabric coming out? Put me on the waiting list, Free Spirit! This will be worth a trip to the Purl warehouse. Here’s what Denyse has to say about it. I think I’ll need to see it in person…the style is kind of 40s reproduction with a really unique palette. I’m loving the Piney Woods color family – here’s one swatch:

Quilt Show and Baby Shower

Fun time at the Long Beach International Quilt Show today. So much treasure seen, just a little purchased. There were some truly awesome quilts on display, but sadly, I forgot my camera. Well, I didn’t forget so much as I forgot to charge the battery beforehand. Anyway, I did take one blurry picture of my most favorite quilt of the day, Red Owls by Karin Pierce.

And here’s an even blurrier picture of the whole quilt.

I’m not sure where my love of owls comes from. It may stem from my lifelong need for glasses. Or my total acceptance of my own nerdiness. HOO knows :)

I also finished a sweet little baby quilt for some good friends of ours. They had the most kick-ass baby shower this weekend. There must have been 100 people there – and that was only the wife’s family. They’re having another shower with the husband’s family in a few weeks. I can’t imagine that they need ANYTHING else for that baby. I’m so happy for them that they got so much loot.

So here was my contribution. A little quilty, based on these by Ashley over at Filminthefridge.com.

Here’s the back:

I also made a couple “everything” cloths – cloth diapers with cute dino fabric down the middle…

And wrapped it all up in cute drawstring bag.

I was pretty happy with how it all came out. But I always feel wierd giving my cornball homemade gifts. Doesn’t make the making part any less fun, though.

toddler sports and sewing

We’ve been a whirlwind of activity around here. From 3-year old sports classes every day, to a possible impending move, there’s hardly been time to sew! That’s not to say I haven’t been preparing to sew. Which means buying stuff – fabric and books! Here are my newest books…all of which I’m dying to dig into. There are at least 3 projects in all of them that I love.

The third book is a new Aranzi Aronzo book called Cute Stuff for Babies. There are the cutest little appliques in there. My favorite pattern is a bottle holder pouch in the shape of a little quilted bottle. Oh, and the little diaper covers with a bear and bunny face on the baby’s booty. Awesome.

I did finish a couple bow tucks bags. Well, I finished one and one is almost done.

And did I post this already? I’ve just been working on hand sewing all the bit down since I really haven’t had time to sew.

We’ve also been spending time at this lovely place:

some things I want to make

Awesome tutorials from around the web:

Patchwork drawstring bag:
http://ayumills.blogspot.com/2008/09/tutorial-reversible-patchwork-bag.html

Fabric Gift Card envelope
http://www.craftpudding.com/2007/07/fabric-card-holder-tutorial.html

And I haven’t even begun to go through this treasure trove of tutorials listed on Meika’s Little Treasures! Bounty!

Thanksgiving is a little early – I’m very grateful to all these awesome crafters making the holidays more handmade and more full of love!

Owl’s Party!

So there I was, all proud of my own mini quilt, and then I get this in the mail. How lucky am I? I get the super cute chickens in August, and then get this precious Owl having a party for September. I love my mini quilt swap group on Flickr!

She also sent me some fun owly halloween socks!

A special thank you to JMBMommy…the fabulous creator of my quilty. I LOVE it!

my mini quilt swap group

I’m in a swap group on flickr for mini quilts. August was the first month I participated, and I made a pretty traditional pattern. By flickr standards, it was a dud. Only one or two comments. This month, with the theme of mushrooms and/or owls, I endeavored to have a much more successful flickr showing. So I decided to try my hand at an art quilt. I drew a little sketch, enlarged it on my scanner, and then cut out templates for raw edge applique. I have a ton of awesome fabrics that I don’t have a plan for, and I decided to cut into my gorgeous collection of Heather Bailey’s Bijoux and Pop Garden…it was actually kind of hard to cut into those pieces. Especially for little things like the snail’s head or the mushroom’s underbelly…it felt very wasteful. But I’m glad I did it! So here’s the result:

Here’s my sketch and and the back of my quilty – which are both pretty boring:

Next post – the awesome quilty I received!

Recent projects

Here’s a sneak peak of my free-motion quilting practice quilt. It’s going well so far, I’m getting more and more confident.

I got my first mini quilt from my swap group on Flickr. It was also my first mail from Canada! Very exciting :) Look how cute. The challenge was for the project to be all hand-made – no machine stitching. I LOVE my new mini quilt! Jill posted a really nice story about it on her blog, which made me love it even more.

That’s it for the craft update :)

gems on the web

Heather Ross Mendocino from Free Spirit

Exciting things are happening in my craft world. First of all, I just ordered the whole Mendocino line from PurlSoho.com…I CAN’T WAIT for it to arrive. You both (as in, my 2 faithful readers) know that I don’t need any more fabric, but who cares?! Life is short, and Heather Ross fabric disappears and never returns. I’m still searching for a yard or two of that sweet gnome fabric!

So not only is her new Free Spirit fabric available for purchase, but she has a new blog! So here’s a link: http://heatherross.squarespace.com/

I think she is an amazing artist. Her fabrics include her sweet illustrations, they are witty and fun and super creative. Not to detract from other designers, but her lines seem so much more thoughtful than a lot of what’s available. Anyway, I’ve also added her to my blogroll, so you can always find her from there – under Heather Ross.

Also on the way is new fabric from Heather Bailey – purchased directly from her new web shop. Awesome. I took her up on the early bird offer and got some free trash ties. We’ll see how well I do with those :)

You know what? While I was shopping around at Purl, I found Denyse Schmidt’s upholstry weight line, County Fair. Did you know about that? I almost bought it all up, but then I remembered that I have a whole bin of upholstry weight stuff that I haven’t used and have no real plan for, so I held back. Good for me! I’m proud of me. I also saw Amy Butler’s new upholstry weight line, August Fields. Beautiful. But again, let’s be realistic. How many huge-repeating-image fabrics can you use?

Also, I had already spent $200.

What?!! Good thing my husband doesn’t read this :)

I also found these fun sites:

http://www.trueup.net/

http://alabamastudiostyle.blogspot.com/

http://blog.lenacorwin.com/

http://www.melaniefalickbooks.com/

Insipration abounds! Get crafting!

treasure and progress

Look at my bounty! And the quilt top I’ve been working on. It’s a Snake Charmer quilt, from Denyse Schmidt’s book Quilts. I’m using white muslin and the Peas & Carrots fabric by Moda. I think I’m going to use solid red on the back. I think curves are much easier to piece unpinned. This took some trial and error to figure out.