Day 8 :: Sally Keller
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Day 8 :: Sally Keller

In the midst of getting stuff ready for any deadline, it can sometimes be a mild panic/freak-out/rush. Sally might attest to that. Wonderful Laura Jaquinto (my new BFF) over at Windham Fabrics has held my hand through the whole process of developing my first fabric line. She has begun to intuit my urges and instincts, rather like observing a wild animal in its habitat. She knew I was freezing-up (due to being overwhelmed) when it came time to produce all the quilts and samples with my fabric, so she rounded up Sally Keller to help test a mostly-written pattern for me: the Watercolor Quilt. This quilt depicts a huge watercolor tray laid out on newspaper and in the upper right corner is a sheet of paper containing a child’s watercolor painting and signature (the art is all raw edge appliqué but the tray and background and paper are all pieced). read more

April 15, 2013
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Day 7 :: Ramona Burke
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Day 7 :: Ramona Burke

Oh, Ramona…Ramona, Ramona, Ramona. How much do you love that name? I met the whip-smart Yale grad and old-school, homeschoolin’ mom at Long Beach with the aforementioned LAMQG posse and loved her right away. She is an awesome force. Firstly, if she could be a prairie woman or raise her kids in the woods with no media (but still electricity for her many sewing machines…and Instagram) and just bows & arrows, and fur pelts, and crayons wittled from branches–filled with hand-dyed wax, she would. I, and most of the hippie-bourgeoisie mamas I know, would also like to do that and parent like that, but few of us would exchange our organic carrot ginger juice, Downton Abbey, and Nordstom for the chance. I do believe Ramona would. read more

April 14, 2013
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Collage part day 6 :: Shelly Figueroa
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Collage part day 6 :: Shelly Figueroa

Shelly‘s was my first Twitter-born friendship. Almost as soon as we connected, we were emailing and I expressed a wee problem to her as an aside: it was the first week of last summer–one day before summer camp was to start for my kiddos, I found out that due to an error I made, neither of my kids was actually going to be able to attend camp the next day … or for the next month … in the desert …… in 110 degree heat ……….. for a month ………. with nothing to do. And I had to work. That is called deep doodoo for a mama. And I was rather upset. And so I expressed that to Shelly and said that I wished I could just drive my kids up the west coast and camp in tree houses and yurts and end up in Oregon. It was sheer escapist fantasy, but my new Twitter-born friend immediately took action. She put it out on her social media that a friend of hers needed to housesit and she started making stuff happen. It was the nicest thing she could have possibly done. read more

April 13, 2013
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Day 5 :: Tia Curtis!
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Day 5 :: Tia Curtis!

So, last year at Market a pretty blonde woman walked into my booth. She had peaceful, grounded energy. She was all smiles. She liked my stuff. And she lingered. We chatted and chatted and liked each other. Eventually, she pulled out her card. It said Camp Follower Bags & Quilts. I looked at it and looked back at her: “you’re Camp Follower Bags?…(tears squeezing from my eyes)… I love you!” Then it became a whole lovefest in the booth as I showered her with compliments. The sewing/crafty/blogging world is pretty small and so of course I had seen her work before. For Camp Follower, she cuts up “your hero’s military uniform” to create custom bags and quilts. It is special, honorific, sacred work she does. It is big-picture sewing. It comes from her heart and the stories of each piece are so touching. Now she is working under her other blog monniker, Tia Curtis Quilts, and doing amazing custom work and quilting. (Tia is an incredible and fast custom quilter if you need anything quilted.) read more

April 12, 2013
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COLLAGE Party Day 3 :: Ayumi Takahashi
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COLLAGE Party Day 3 :: Ayumi Takahashi

from Pink Penguin here

Social media has its own lexicon of cute superlatives to express all sorts of emotions, good and bad. Favorites include: Swoon. Ack! *Faints.* Le sigh. Arrgh. Woohoo! *squeal*. And my favorite–Woot! But some occasions are so gigantic that you may need an eff bomb. As in: no effing way did that just actually happen! But I am a lady, and a southern belle by birth, and so would never utter those words, and certainly not on my blog. But hold on to your testicles because this is big: Ayumi. Ayumi Takahashi of Pink Penguin (whom you may remember from my post two days ago here about her being one of my original inspirations and reasons for getting into this whole blogging/sewing thang–yes that Ayumi). Anyway, she wrote to me a few weeks ago congratulating me on the line because we have become friends through blogging, and I have posted about her several times here. I have her book, Patchwork, Please!, sitting next to me as I type because I pre-ordered it months ago when I saw that it would be available. Ayumi is modern sewing. She is the breath in the lungs of modern sewing. She is a prescriber, no, the decider (I would say she shares this pole position with awesome Rashida Coleman-Hale) of zakka goodness and all things fabulous… lovely, quirky, & fun piecing–and fresh, use of funky text fabric. She has impeccable taste and skills. She is a total inspiration. And she is nesting! Pregnant with her first baby she really wanted to sew something with Bird Dot in the Paper colorway. So I sent her a huge stack of fabric. (My crafty superhero asked me to send one print, do ya think I’m just gonna send one print?) read more

April 10, 2013
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Woohoo! COLLAGE Party time!
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Woohoo! COLLAGE Party time!

Now is the time, the time is now! Finally, after waiting nine months I can show you my new fabric line, COLLAGE, for Windham Fabrics.

OK, so I did make one or two novelties like these cups and pomegranates…

Why Collage? I could have easily painted this collection, as painting is what I do and have always done. I see the world better sometimes with brush in hand. But I couldn’t paint this. I needed to bypass my normal mode to create this first line. Another of my loves, collage, jumped up and I couldn’t ignore it. So I created this line by cutting and pasting. read more

April 7, 2013
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