Hola! Como estas? Day 14 of the SocialMediaFreakOut for my new fabric line, COLLAGE, brings us to the über plugged-in Rachael Gander of Imagine Gnats. Rachael is a sassy & stylie sewinista who sews like a bat out of hell. Seriously? How do people sew so much stuff?!
Day 13 of the COLLAGE blog party…how are you holding up? Exhausted? Fatigued? Elated? Well, go drink some electrolytes and let’s party on! Only two days left people. Today we check in with wonderful Sam Hunter of Hunter’s Design Studio. I met Sam at the Long Beach quilt festival in 2011. We bonded immediately over our art school trauma 😉 and we have stayed in touch. Since then, Sam began her own pattern company and she has made quite a splash. I especially love her alphabet CD, Blanket Statement–if you haven’t seen it go look here. She gives you a complete (paper-pieced) alphabet in this pattern. Very cool.
Well, you know I met many of the friends I have featured during this blog party via social media. But I met Jenny Kelly at the mothership of all social media–BlogHer 2011, San Diego. 3,000 blogging women descended on the waterfront to soak up info about the blogosphere. There were crafty women, and mom-bloggers, & business bloggers. Large companies sent spies to investigate what we were up to. It was all very fun. I blogged it here.
Day 11 of the COLLAGE party. I just love the number eleven. Today brings us the incredible Anna Graham of Noodlehead! I couldn’t be more excited that she is joining us. I’m sure you have hung out on her cool blog before and bought her patterns. She’s blog-famous. We just met. She said something nice about my fabric or something and I said, “hey, you want some?” And she said yes. So here we are. Go check out her absolutely fabulous new tote pattern here. It is seriously droolworthy! I love it and will certainly make one of my own when her pattern comes out. (Leave a comment on her site to enter the COLLAGE giveaway.) Thank you, Anna.
The COLLAGE party is rolling along at quite a clip. I can hardly catch my breath between the swells of love & joy being shared. The designers have posted gorgeous pictures and words about their experience of sewing with my new fabric line for Windham Fabrics, COLLAGE. I am blown away, not just by what they have created, but by the kindness they have shared. We are knee-deep in connection and community here. I am in awe and full of gratitude. Today brings us to Shea…
Angela Walters needs no introduction from me because if there is such a thing as a quilting rock star, she is it. You have probably taken her quilting classes on Craftsy already, or maybe you have seen her numerous quilts in shows and in the modern quiltosphere. She truly possesses a gift.
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).
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.
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.
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.)
