Saturday Stash

Got these fabrics yesterday for a requested pink and black quilt. They wanted bright batiks, but I happen to know they love skulls too, so they will be very surprised and happy when they see the finished quilt! I couldn't believe my luck when I saw the skull fabric in the right colors. It's going to be squares and frames, probably queen to king sized. Why do I keep committing to huge quilts when I'm an all-by-hander??? Glutton for punishment I guess! I am also quilting the gnome homes quilt for a Christmas gift, so I'll have that to show soon.

I'm In Fabric Love!

With Valori Wells' new Nest line! Absolute love. How about you?


Photo from Spool Sewing

I Made a Dress!

Emboldened by the success of the pattern-free skirt I made from that lovely free Oliver+S tutorial, I decided to make the leap into clothing patterns, something i've been scared of for a year now. Success again! I graduated to the slightly harder, but still free, Oliver+S tute for the Popover Sundress.



Gigi is still extremely grumpy (note presence of paci outside the crib) so believe it or not, this is the BEST photo I could get of her in it, out of about 20 photos.


I really like it! My favorite Amy Butler Wallflower in pink, and a little flapper fringe from Joann's. I went in to get rick-rack, but all the rick-rack was gigantic for some reason, and I would have only gotten about three ricks across the front. So I went with fringe. Like it!

Enjoy!

A Gorgeous Pile of Designer Fabric

Got your attention? Good! Here's a pile of designer fabric I won from Jona during Stop Staring and Start Sewing's giveaway! She generously gave away this 3 1/2 yard pile of fat quarters from her store, Fabritopia. She's a super sweet crafter and clothes maker who just made her first quilt! Check it out and leave her some comment love to encourage her to get further into our shared addiction.

And now for the fabric porn:

First up we have four fat quarters from Heather Ross, Mendocino! Love it! I didn't have any of the orange/brown colorway. Hmmm....that's a colorway I need to do something with.


Next up are some prints from Anna Maria Horner's new Garden Party collection and one yellow one from Anna Griffin's Fiona collection. Ohhhhh I loved the two on the right so much I had to go and buy a yard of each. Thanks a lot, Jona! I can totally see a dress for G out of those, or even a tablecloth.


Next up, some Momo in the middle and two unidentified fabrics. Is the bottom one Anna Griffin too?


Lastly, more favorites! A half yard of Patty Young Mezzanine (blue) and some more Garden Party. Love how they go together!
Enjoy!

A Little Bit of Everything Crafty

Hello everyone! Since I finished the ginormous squares and frames quilt I've been kind of between quilts. I've been sewing some on my red and aqua gnome homes, just to have something to do. Here are my two latest.

My daughter is newly in love with owls, so she begged for an owl softie. She wanted it to be bigger than the ninja bat I made her last year, so here it is! I used the same tutorial from Juicy Bits that I used to make the owl ornaments last Christmas. I just cut out each piece in Photoshop and blew it up to 250%, then printed it out on its own paper. This pattern is so cute no matter what you do with it! Thank you Juicy Bits!

I've also been slowly adding to my stash of designer fabric, now that i'm a designer fabric snob in the most unflattering and haughty way. Here are the stacks of pink, red, green, blue, purple and neutral/white/multi in my Bergsbo fabric cabinet from IKEA.

And here are the stacks of yellow, orange, brown, black and grey, plus a stack of flannel backings. The solids are not good ones, just stuff I picked up a million years ago. My stash is super lacking in good kona/bella/butler solids, as in, I have none. Oh, except for that dark blue on top, that's Bella.

See anything you like?

Heather Ross News Updates

Heather Ross has announced a new collaboration with Spoonflower to reproduce some of her fabrics in different colors and they are on sale now!!! I looked at them and the colors seem way off to what she was showing on her website (above photo). I'll still probably get some. How about you?




In other HR news, it turns out, the new Far Far Away fabrics are NOT double gauze as I had previously reported when I showed the initial snippets. They are "a lovely linen cotton blend, a bit on the heavier side" which is fine with me, I'm going to use them as feature fabrics anyway, to highlight small things, so the majority of the quilt will be regular weight and no one will notice. I can't wait to make some Heather Ross wonky squares again!

You HAVE to click the photo above to see the fabrics larger!

I am sooooo in love with these fabrics, the photo above shows different pieces than I showed before. All I'm sayin' is do you SEE the owl and the pussycat??? Do you SEE those roses in the upper left??? OMG. How could any collection of fabrics be more perfect for a little girl?

More Flattery - Gnome Homes

More copies of the blocks from Bee Imaginative. Today's blocks are by one of my favorite bloggers in the whole blogosphere, Elizabeth at Oh Fransson. Love them! They are bigger houses than the others.

And here are my attempts at copying them with no directions! I actually think they turned out great! The colors are right.

Here's another Bee Imaginative block from my other favorite blogger in the world, Alissa from Handmade by Alissa. She reports that the gnome is bringing mushrooms back to the deer and bird.

And here's my copy below. I like how it looks like the gnome put a flower on top for a chimney!

More gnome homes tomorrow!

Insight into Heather Ross' Creative Process

Featuring the Owl and the Pussycat now coming out in her new line!

She posted it last year but I just found it. Read the whole post and see her original sketches here.

Breaking News! Heather Ross Announces New Line

I'm beside myself! I never did get any of the Far Far Away double gauze that I wanted, but to tell the truth, I like the new line better! The new line is also double gauze and also Far Far Away but with a different cast of characters. Heather just announced it this morning!

This plum colorway below is lovely.



But I also like this meadow colorway.


But the blue colorway above is my favorite!
I love the sleeping princesses and roses! Oh, and moons!

Do you like this one or the original FFA better?

Amazing Fabric Sale Today!

Great deals on Park Slope and Bijou today in the Twiddletails Store! Here's what I bought.




I got half yards for $2.78 each! Come on!

Scrap Love and a Pay It Forward

I'm sure all of you know the modern quilting blog Handmade by Alissa? She is not only in the top five of my favorite blogs (out of the hundred or so that I browse), she also cast the new season of Project Runway that debuted last week! She always has the best projects and the best fabrics. When she gave away some scraps recently, I asked if I could buy some and she just sent me some for free! Don't be jealous yet, you'll be more jealous in a minute...


When I show you the Flea Market Fancy!


Oh, and did I mention the Lush? A fat quarter of the paint dots!


And a quarter of this awesome retro! Check out the funny dog on Saturn! Wow, Alissa was just wayyyy too generous. For free, people!

I also wanted to tell you, I joined Cancer is Sew Done.

Visit Cancer is Sew Done

Basically, you join for a year and make 1-4 blocks each month in the pattern they choose, then you send them in and they make them into quilts to comfort people with cancer. I chose this group because my 30 year old friend, Sarah, is going through chemo this week for the second time in five years. I got crafty Sarah herself to join the pink lemonade group in there, as well as my mom and my sister. So the effort over here is going strong. Won't you join us in pink lemonade? Check it out, it's easy and they even send you some of the fabric you need for your blocks!

Today I am Loving...

Some new fabrics! Have you seen these yet?

Bye Bye Blackbird by Kokka Japan.

Retro Mod by Michael Miller. I would totally use these two together!

These two are not so new but I still want them! Andalucia and Nicey Jane.

New from Etsuko Furuya

Jessica Levitt from the Timber collection. Love this one.

I'm in Fabric Heaven!

I'm in fabric heaven!  I went to the mailbox last night and retrieved 10 small squishy packages.  Ten!  It was Christmas in Ju..well ok, Christmas right before Christmas!  First I unwrapped that small bag I won in the SMS giveaways from adelaidelemonade.  Don't forget to hop on over to her site to get the tutorial for the bag so you can make one too!  The bag was sooooo much cuter in person. And even more gorgeous when I stuffed it with fabric.

See that pink and red yard of Folksy flannel from Anna Maria Horner sticking up out of the bag above?  You should get some, the pattern is so subtle and the colors are wonderful. I want to get a ton of it and make this baby quilt, from Anna Maria's website - soooo soft and pretty.

Next I opened a bunch of fabric from a quilt I'm being commissioned to make.  What's not to love about a quilt commission???  You get a bunch of gorgeous fabric sent to you for free, you get to play with it until you're sick of it, you get to keep the scraps, and then you give it away.  Sounds like normal to me.  Except you get free fabric to play with, free scraps and money to boot!  What's not to love?  And all I have to do is put in about 100 hours of hand sewing labor.  Big deal, i'd be doing that anyway.  And having said that, let me also say I love all the trust there is in the quilting world.  She trusts me to send me the fabric, then I trust her to pay at the end.  I love our quilting community, don't you?

Lovely Amber sent these fabrics to coordinate into a copy of Finn's quilt.  She chose some Kokka Japan as her focus fabric:

Then she pulled all the colors out of the focus fabric with these:

So cute!  The organic cloud fabric she sent even came with two tiny swatches to intice you to buy the whole collection, and guess what, it worked.  Now I want the mushrooms and orange dots too.

Enjoy!

Sashay Shantay

Here is my grumpy little dress model showing off her winnings!  Thanks again to brownpaperpackages for the gorgeous dress!  She saw me open it and demanded to put it on right away. After which, she immediately got grumpy.  Almost two year olds are always frustrated about one thing or another!

Maybe petting a kitty will cheer her up!  Nah, probably not.

I also got fabric in the mail!  Yay!  My first batch of Red Letter Day, plus birds.  Annie got it for me as a thank you for fixing her resume.  I do that on the side if you need me to look at yours too.

Have a great day!