Dear World,
It is finally time to share my next fabric collection with you. World, meet Story!
What is your story? What is essential to you? Your native tongue? Your family–community–country–tribe–village? What is your color story? Your personal mythology? The legacy of generations?
Hi!
Hope your 2015 is off to a lovely start. I’m streamlining some of the visual and content aspects of my quirky, offbeat brand in 2015. I want to thank you so much for following along with me for the past few years in this meandering journey as we explore such things as: renegade sewing, inspiration, craft & meaning, making art, prayer flags, living a passionate life, textile design, LEGOs, cosmic/existential musings, gratitude, mindfulness, awe-at-this-beautiful-existence, creativity, art school recovery, color theory, banishing the inner-critic, quilting, inner-kid care, the importance of play, momfulness and general Divine Feminine wisdom. It is a random assortment, to be sure. But it is always authentic and honest. I’m grateful to you.
I’m excited to be a part of the blog party today for my friend Sam Hunter‘s fun new book, Quilt Talk (Stash Books). I met Sam years ago at the Long Beach Quilt Festival and we connected through our art school pasts. Sam designs patterns for her company Hunter’s Design Studio. We swapped stories and ideas. I always enjoy speaking with her–she has a cool and calm spirit.
Time for a blog party to celebrate my new DVD with Interweave, Art Techniques for Quilt Design! woot woot! No matter what we do as creative people, we all need some reminders, tips and techniques to help us enhance our work and design process whether for quilting, sewing or any other form of art expression. My DVD is full of wonderful things I learned in art school and over the course of my life as an artist and painter. These little things can make a big difference in your designs.
The twelve of you who actually read my blog definitely know that I LOVE COLOR. I am excited to be teaching two classes at the first-ever all-day online sewing conference on November 8th called The Sewing Party! See the event here and be one of thousands to sign up for lots of classes. A whole day of learning costs just $40 (and you have access to the classes for quite a while afterwards). One of my classes is about understanding color and the other is a walk through my upcoming book, The Little Spark–30 Ways to Ignite Your Creativity (which you can preorder now and there is even a LOOK INSIDE peek over on Amazon here). Read about both of my classes here and sign up
I do believe you guys like words and text and letters just as much as I do, and boy do I have a fun book for you. Every once in a while I have a cool opportunity from a publisher to review a book and/or do a giveaway. You know–feed the buzzmill. Sometimes the books are absolutely awesome like this one: The Art of Whimsical Lettering by Joanne Sharpe. I liked it so much when I saw it that I asked for an additional copy to give away to my readers.
My cool friend, Jake Finch of Generation Q Magazine, called and asked me to be a part of her book about swaps. To be honest, I had never been part of a swap (that’s when a sewing guild hosts an event for people to exchange sewn gifts). So I just made what I was into in that moment: EYE PILLOWS! I embroidered “i am enough” right onto one and voila! Instant awesomeness–a calming and grounding lavender eye pillow that also reminds us of the truth: that we are enough just as we are.
Sometimes the world is just so strangely tiny. In February, Vivika De Negre, editor at Interweave/Quilting Arts, and I were working on the details of filming my DVD for them and concurrently, I was asking a bunch of strangers via social media to sew some prayer flags for me with my new fabric collection, PAINT, for Windham Fabrics. These two events are seemingly completely unrelated. I googled prayer flags so that I could send people a link to see examples of handmade prayer flags. And what popped up was Vivika’s Prayer Flag Project blog! We had more in common than we even knew. Both of us love prayer flags. Vivika has been blogging about artful, handmade prayer flags since 2011 here. I am happy to be a part of her blog hop today and so excited to share the prayer flags made by my tribe:
The PAINT party is in full swing. Today, I am happy to share one of my dear friends, Shea Henderson. She created this eye-catching bold and graphic quilt using a soon-to-be released Empty Bobbin Sewing Studio pattern, called Parallels. Parallels will be printed as a pattern book, full of six different quilt designs (each in sizes baby to king!) based on parallelograms. It was designed by Elizabeth Ancell.
Yay! So excited to finally share my next fabric collection, PAINT, for Windham Fabrics with you. As a designer apparently you just learn to sit on your hands and endure the waiting. I designed this line in September and sent it to Windham. We had some back and forth and it was done by October. And ever since I have waited as we go through the process of strike-off’s and color correcting and then ultimately they send me fabric.
