Stop staring and start sewing!

Thursday's Quilt Market Report (are you tired of me yet?)

Alrighty then!  The winner of yesterday's frosty charm pack is Jan Richards (5:00 pm).  Everybody clap for Jan!  Seriously, stop whining about not winning and clap for Jan (besides, the weeks not over and I got some more stuff to hand out)!

Here is a picture of Paula and myself at the fabric 2.0 party. I stole this from her blog but since Joey was the photographer I don't feel too guilty. Check out that sunset.   And be sure to check out her blog because she's got a great market report and lots of pictures.

One of my absolute favorite quilt market people is Kay Whitt, the owner of Serendipity Studio. I started stalking Kay in Portland because she has the most amazing booth. She creates patterns for things you can wear which just thrills me. I wore my favorite skirt on Saturday just to show her my devotion to her patterns (yes, I admit it, I am a major kiss-up and I'm okay with it). And it turns out our husbands work in related fields so they could talk shop while Kay and I did the same.  I bought a bunch of her new designs and they'll be in my store later tonight.

Here are the two of us.  In Kay's defense, I am wearing my tall clogs (although she is a petite gal)!

Here is Kay's beautiful floor quilt (and her totally cool boots).

And I was lurking again when I saw Kay was chatting with Nancy Zieman (the Queen of Sewing)!!!! Oh my gosh!! So I got some pictures of that because really, how often do you get that close to Nancy Zieman?!

Here's another angle (I pretended to take pictures of the dresses).  They were chatting about the book Kay is writing.

Here's some eye candy for you. All vintage. This was a great booth!

Moda had an amazing array of booths but I think the Moda Home booth is my favorite. They have great tablecloths, bedding, kitchen ware, you name it. I got to spend some time chatting with Angela about Moda's online fabric matcher which is really a great service (and lots of fun).

We also had fun chatting with Mary and Barbara of Me and My Sister and it turns out they both live just a few miles from us! They gave us lessons on jellyrolls, layer cakes, turnovers, and sweet rolls (all quilting terms it turns out). By the time we left their booth we were both very hungry for some reason.

And do you remember last spring when Moda came out with that gorgeous line Swell? It flew so fast I didn't have time to get it for my store. Well, I learned my lesson and ordered the follow-up line called Sweet (and it is!). Here's a peek. You're going to love it!  I hope they don't send the Moda Police after me for showing you this picture.

And here is today's give-away (did you even read my post or did you just scroll down to see what it is?)! This gorgeous quilt pattern by Mary and Barbara. Thank you Mary and Barbara for sharing!! They've actually got me seriously considering giving quilting a try!  Oh and yes, I did order a whole bunch of their fabric (cherries!!)  Leave a comment, say hi, whatever....! :)

My final Quilt Market post will be on Saturday and I'm putting together a terrific giveaway (I mean amazing, like knock your socks off type of stuff).  So don't go too far!

Wednesday's Quilt Market re-cap

Okay!  The winner of yesterday's lovely Robyn Pandolph charm pack is Lala!!  Woohoo Lala!!  C'mon down!

One of my goals for this market was to finally meet Pam Kitty Morning in person.  I missed seeing her in Portland and it's been bothering me ever since!  So I wrote Elizabeth's booth number on the palm of my hand (I got it off Pam's blog) and then tried to be careful to not wash that hand real well.  I tracked them down on Sunday and here we are in Elizabeth's darling booth.  She designs beautiful quilts and other wonderful fabricky things!

It's Elizabeth on the left, then me in the middle, then Pam.  Fun!

Here is the booth of Caroline (of J Caroline creative fame) and Jessica Jones (fabric designer and all around nice gal). It was orange creamsicle gorgeous and won the award for best new booth. Here is Caroline with that "If one more person takes my picture...." look.  She is a truly generous person (she's one of the gals behind the fabric 2.0 party) and super nice to boot!

And speaking of celebrity sightings....look! Marie Osmond!!! Seriously! And she is just darling (and a little bit country!) in person. See for yourself!

One of the cutest companies in the fabric world is the Kokka/Seven Islands group. Their fabric is so sweet and soft. I love the linen-y fabrics and the people are really nice. They have all sorts of fun extras like buttons, lunch boxes, and ribbons.

And look at their felted food!! I had my grubby hand halfway to that fruit tart before my eyes saw the sign. Darn!

And hold onto your uterus because if you don't have a baby already you're going to want one when you see this display!

And here's some quilting (it's quilt market, remember). This jacket is simply exquisite and I can't imagine the hours of work that went into it. And I love the idea of quilting you can wear out and about instead of draping it over your couch (not that there's anything wrong with that!).

And......here's today's give-away! Another beautiful charm pack (with 50 squares!). This is from the Fairy Frost line from Michael Miller. The colors are gorgeous and they actually glisten in the light like a frosty window. So pretty! Leave a comment, etc, etc....! :)

More Quilt Market Fabulousness

The winner of yesterday's Sugar Snap fat quarters is Kara (at 10:16 am).  Yippy Kara!!

My favorite part of Quilt Market is getting together with all of my online friends (and getting to meet some of them in person for the first time!).  Sandi Henderson (who I've known for a few years but met "officially"in the spring) had another fabulous booth and it was so nice to touch base with her.  Joey spent some time chatting with Sandi's husband Dustin (I'm so grateful for the gals that brought their hubbies!) and I ordered some of her gorgeous patterns for the store. Sandi looked so cute and had gorgeous curls.

Here's the other corner.  I know she's working on some great stuff for spring so keep an eye on her blog!

I've known Patty Young for a few years because we both sold boutique clothes on ebay (as did Sandi) so it was an absolute thrill (I mean tingles up the spine and tears in my eyes kind of thrill) to see her debut her stunning new fabric line Andalucia (with Michael Miller). It's really, really gorgeous. Here's Patty sitting in one of her "little" chairs (she and Paula have shown the world that you don't have to be an Amazon woman to create great fabric!).  ;)  Her booth was beautiful and hard to stay away from.

Patty brought her husband Jon (totally nice guy!) which made Joey happy. Myrinda made a super cute kimono for Patty's little doll (see the blonde one on the shelf?).

Look at these darling bibs and dresses (the one on the left has a cute hoodie too)!

I met Paula Prass at Spring Market and it was so much fun to be at this market for her fabric debut. Flights of Fancy (Michael Miller) is so darn cute and I had the privilege of playing with it a couple of weeks ago. Imagine my delight when I opened up Paula's brochure and saw my dress right there! Thank you Paula!

Here are Paula and her daughter Jennifer. They are so nice and so much fun to hang with! We did a lot of chatting at the fabric 2.0 party and if they lived in Arizona they would be my BFFs I'm sure (and yes, they are seriously that cute in person)! See my dress again (tired of it yet?)?!

Look at this darling table display!  Fortune cookies with the selvages used for the fortune "paper"!!  Those are the brilliant work of Traci (as well as those wallets)!  Oh and Paula's darling jacket is the work of Mary, who is so much fun and does beautiful work! 

Here's my token quilt for the day (they don't call it Quilt Market for nothin'). Cute and useful (you can stretch your brain by finding the matching pairs of bears)!

Here is another give-away! This gorgeous charm pack of Robyn Pandolph's new line called Sumptuous Living. It has 36 squares and this fabric is so soft! Just leave a comment, yada yada....! More tomorrow!

I'll be here all week folks!

We are back from Quilt Market and will be in recovery mode all week long.  While we were gone the kids taught Skate all about monsters so we spent about an hour last night peeking out the window, yelling "Monster!  Run!" and then running around in circles.  And his big brother taught him how to say "fart" while we were gone.  Nice.

But, what a whirlwind market was!  Old friends, new friends and fabric, fabric, fabric!  Joey and I got off the plane and checked in with the shuttle service.  When we turned to find some seats, there was Melissa Averinos sitting there waiting for her shuttle!  I knew her fabric was going to show up at my house while I was there so I was thrilled to chat with her before she was surrounded by a mob.  Here she is at her Schoolhouse debut talking about her fabric.

Here is her beautiful display in the Westminster wing of the exhibition hall.

Tina Givens had a beautiful booth (again!) and I'll be getting her cute patterns in the store soon. She is really a fun and sweet (and helpful!) lady and we really enjoyed chatting with her. Here she is chatting with Joey (that's my bag he's holding, not his, in case you were wondering).

More of her booth.

Her flying pig.  I love this pig.

Tina and Melissa. Cute!

Friday night was the fabric 2.0 gathering and it was a blast (thank you Kathy and Caroline!!).  For some reason I thought we had tons of pictures of that night because I kept seeing Joey taking pictures.  It turns out he was taking pictures for everybody else with their cameras!  Ugh!  So I will be stealing pics and posting links (some good ones here at Angela's blog) when all those bloggers start posting (some of them are still in Houston).  Here is a picture of me with the Houston skyline.  I'm terribly afraid of heights so I was a little bit of a wreck but once the sun went down I could pretend I was at ground level (and the Big Gulp sized glass of wine helped too).

And what would Quilt Market be without....quilts? I love this one (not crazy about the lighting in the hall though).

Here's a sparkly close-up.

Like last time there were lots of freebies so I'm sharing! Here's today's treat...a great little stack of 2 Sugar Snap fat quarters (from the designer herself!).  Just leave a comment (you know the routine)!

I'll have more all week long so don't change that channel!

Off to Houston!

We are leaving in the morning for International Fall Quilt Market 2008!!  I've been trying to get my laundry done and I even cleaned my bathroom so my mom won't be grossed out (she's staying here with the kids).  I had some great intentions and attempted to make a blouse out of the new House fabric I just got.  It turned out awful (looks like the top of a hospital gown) but I will try to redeem it when I get back and if I can't I'll take a picture anyway (for a "what not to do" post).

But I'll show you this cute cup Olivia got at a garage sale for 10 cents on Saturday.

So anyway, after that failure I needed some cheering so I got my hair done (no more greys, for now anyway!) and then ran over to the new Anthropology store (yes! can you believe it?!) that just opened nearby. So now I have a cute top, my market passes and itinerary and I'm a little closer to being ready.

I wanted to make something fun today (since the blouse was such a downer) so I played with some new fabric and came out with a cute little outfit. I'll stick it in the store next week but you can peek at this fabric and the coordinating prints here.

We'll be back Sunday night and I will start posting my week long market re-cap on Monday.  I'll have lots and lots of picture and I hope I'll get to meet some of the great bloggers I missed out on last time.   Check back because I will be giving away those wonderful freebies all week long! Have a great weekend!

Oh, and here's where I'll be Friday night (lucky me, I know!).  It looks like somebody from Mary Engelbreit's Home Companion will be there too so I will do some begging on behalf of all of us worried fans (I'll let you know what I find out!).

House is in the house (and look at my house!)

I've been doing some fall crafting and I'm so happy with the results!  Look at my living room.  It's so festive now!

I've always wanted to make a garland and I joined the Ga-ga for Garlands flickr group a long time ago. I finally have something to share with the group.  Here it is and it was fun!  I even got to use my Dollar Tree beads.  Look at little Mr. Droopy Drawers in the mirror!

I was so taken with Laurie's pretty table runner that I had to make one for myself. 

And I was so happy today when my sweet UPS guy showed up with 3 big boxes filled with Annette Tatum's new fabric line called House! It's so pretty and some of the prints will be great for boys clothes (those ones are handsome, not pretty).  Here are some of them. Sweet.

And now we're off to IKEA because I have to get another fabric shelf for my store (and some yummy Swedish meatballs with cream sauce!). I'm running out of room so all the Flirt fabric and Pop Garden and Bijoux fabrics are on sale. Super fun!  Have a great weekend!

Twelve by twelve

I was so excited to be invited by Beki to join a group of twelve bloggers making twelve quilt blocks (size 12x12) over a twelve month period (did you get that?).  We even have a blog!  Now I'm not much of a quilter so I hope I can keep up but I figured I can do one block a month without causing too much trouble.

Beki went first and she sent me (and the other 11 gals) this beautiful Amy Butler fabric (out of print, so I tried to be very careful!) and asked for "stripes". 

She said I could add my own fabric and since I'm on a turquoise kick I added this pretty teal Farmer's Market print and a sweet stripe from the Ava Rose collection. I was a little bored with it so I decided to add this little bird from my precious scrap of the Summer in the City fabric (why does Moda only print one run of these great fabrics? Sniff.).  I hope she likes it!

I saw these great beads and felt cutouts on Beki's blog and I finally ran down to Dollar Tree and grabbed some. I'll probably use them for Christmas crafts but they're fun just to look at for now.

They also had a great selection of fun buttons so I grabbed a bunch (funny how those "it's just a dollar"s start adding up!).  The brown ones are really nice.  They're made from some sort of wood or nut shell or something like that.  The green and yellow ones are fun and sparkly.

And I have Mary Engelbreit's Recipe for Friendship in the store. It's so pretty and I wish I had time to play with it but I've been kind of busy (one week to Quilt Market!). I did put together an Edith Twirl Skirt kit with some of my favorite fabrics from the line. I really love these chubby paisleys! They're 4 inches long so you can see the details without it being too big. Super cute!

I keep checking for any updates on the Home Companion's quest for a new publisher. I dropped them a love note here so hopefully they will be moved to find someone fast!  Have a great rest of the week!

Mary, say it ain't so!

I phoned the nice folks at Mary Engelbreit Home Companion today to ask about their advertising rates for my store.  The sweet lady at the other end of the line sadly told me that the magazine has just decided to cease publication and a majority of the staff was laid off last Friday with no previous notice.  The publisher decided that the economy was too bad and they should shut it down.  The lady in the advertising department was perplexed because she has had unprecedented inquiries from people wanting to advertise.

I don't know if I can express just how sad this makes me.  Mary's magazine is the best publication for showcasing creativity and ingenuity that I've ever read.  I would pinch pennies and skip many meals before I would stop buying it.  This also means that there are many disappointed artists who have put an amazing amount of work into preparing something for the magazine only to find out they will not have the opportunity to be published (they shoot the article a year in advance).

I know the economy is not great right now but I think that's all the more reason to have beautiful, inexpensive (cheaper than a book and just as rich) magazines to show us how to create things on our own.  We've had to tighten our already tight belts here at our place but I still want to be inspired, encouraged, and impressed by the creativity of others (maybe even more so now!) who are willing to show us how it's done.  I'm going to be calling Mr. Pagliaro (and emailing and anything else I can do to get his attention) to ask him to re-think this decision.  What a sad thing this is for the creative community.

Thank you Mary for the endless hours I have spent enthralled, inspired and delighted by your beautiful magazine.

I just received a comment from a reader (thank you Sherri!) with a link to this press release. Apparently they are (as of today) looking for a new publisher. All hope is not lost!

Sneak peek and "meep, meep"!

Today I had the great delight of making a sample dress for Paula Prass out of some of the fabric from her new line which is aptly named Flights of Fancy.  She asked me to make it out of my scalloped dress pattern (which will hopefully be ready in time for Quilt Market in spring) and I think it turned out so darn cute!  I love the fat stripes and the scallops together, it has a sort of "big top circus" feel.

Paula is debuting her line at Quilt Market (2 weeks to go!) and all her plans were going along swimmingly until she stepped off of a curb in New York City (while visiting those wonderful Michael Miller folks) and ended up on the ground with what turned out to be a severely broken arm. It's her left arm and as fate would have it, she's left handed. And to make matters worse she just found out that not only did she break her arm but her shoulder too. So her arm has been strapped to her body and I'm thinking that makes it pretty hard to get things done.

Paula thinks I'm so sweet for offering to do this but I'll be honest here....I just wanted to play with her fabric before everybody else did!  And I'm not the only one because look over here at the incredible outfits that Jenn did!  Oh my gosh, I think my heart skipped a beat when I saw these (and isn't her daughter a doll?)!  I can't wait to take pictures of Paula's booth to share with everyone, it's going to be a feast for the eyes.

One more picture (side view) and this baby's going in an envelope and heading back to Paula.

For a few weeks now, Liz over at Sweet Funky Vintage has been leaving comments about my turquoise dresser set (she has a serious crush on it!), and I'm glad to see she finally took it upon herself to paint a mirror for herself (now mine is safe, whew!). Isn't it great? And I love her comment about the camera adding 10 pounds of dirt to the mirror, snort!  What fun!

And look at all the new lines Free Spirit is releasing! Gaga! I'm tickled to say I've ordered all of House by Annette Tatum. Her blog is here and I hope she's at Quilt Market (did I mention it's in 2 weeks?!) because I don't know anything about her and that drives me nuts (I'm very nosy that way I guess.  I hope I don't scare her off.).

But I have met Melissa Averinos and she is fabulous for sure! Her debut line Sugar Snap (free quilt pattern at the Free Spirit blog) just hit the "released" page on the Free Spirit site (which means it's shipping out) and I'm getting all of that one too! Melissa is a real hoot and I saved some of her emails from the spring because she had some terrific (and some just plain interesting) ideas for the title of a smocking book she thought I should write (no plans for that anytime soon, actually ever). Here are some of them: Smock it to Me, Smock Around the Clock, Smock and Awe (my fave), Smock this Way, and Smock Therapy. She had a severe cold at the time so I think the Nyquil might have had an inspiring effect. The only idea I had was Smock me Amadeus (which is not bad but still falls short compared to hers).

We've had some interesting creatures visit our house lately.  Lots of praying manti (is that the plural of mantis?), the leaf bug in my previous post (which is actually called a katydid, thank you Pam!) and now this...A roadrunner (in the road of all places!).  Sorry about the bad picture, it was taken through the screen before I went out the door and tried to chase him down  with my Acme camera (I was trying to be wily, get it?).  He got away too fast though (meep, meep!). 

Oh, and Mary Engelbreit's (you know I adore her!) latest line called Recipe for Friendship (oh my gosh it's cute!) just shipped out and since it's coming from Dallas I'm betting it will be here Monday.  Yip yip!  All sorts of good stuff going on!  The economy may be iffy but The Sew Must Go On (I just made that up!)!

Ahoy for the boys (and a terrific discount!)

My niece has 3 boys and they are a serious crack up.  You can get tired just watching them.  My sister and brother-in-law (their grandparents) made an amazing pirate room for them including a triple bunk bed.  I'm always late getting their birthday presents out but I finally put something together today.

I made these 3 pillowcases in about an hour!  This particular pirate fabric wasn't my first choice but JoAnn's was out of the one I wanted so this was a cute second choice.

I used my machine to embroider their names on them so there will be no fights over who's pillow is who's.  This is for Sam (who's middle name is Francisco, really it is!).

The kids discovered a really amazing bug outside of our door yesterday. Look, it looks like a leaf. Isn't that amazing?

Please run over to Tanya Whelan's blog and look at the things she's made with her new line, Darla. It's so pretty it makes my stomach do flip-flops! I'm ordering the whole line for my store and I can't wait. I'm also privileged to sew up a sample dress for Paula Prass who has a new line  coming out for Michael Miller.  It's such a treat to get to play with her fabric.  It's got dots, butterflies, and birds, oh my!

I need to make more room in my store so if you want to grab some great stuff I'm giving all my blog readers an extra 10% off if you use the coupon code STOPSTARING when you check out.  I already have Ava Rose, Garden Party and all the Sis Boom fabrics marked down to 7.50 yd through this weekend so you can really get these amazing fabrics at great prices!

Thanks for shopping! This discount is over but I m sure I'll have another one before too long!

Have a wonderful week!!!