Delighted is Here!

Guess what came in the mail yesterday?   My package of Delighted by the sweet Amanda Herring of The Quilted Fish.  Riley Blake fabrics is the distributor of Delighted.   I just have to say that Amanda and Riley Blake are the most super amazing people ever!   Really!

She sent the whole collection in Fat Quarters!  You don't have to tell me how lucky I am, I know.   And our design team is cooking up some real sweet stuff in the very near future.

The last picture is banner fabric!   You know how banners are all the rage these days.   How easy is this, buy a panel and throw some batting behind it, back it or not, use some pinking shears or a wavy rotary cutter and you are done.  And it looks like you spent hours on it.   I'll get mine made up very soon to show you.  

In the meantime, I am working on an art quilt that I hope to enter into a juried show.   I had a breakthrough this morning and can't wait to show you.   

Don't forget to enter my giveaway.   It closes this Friday.

What else is new?  I am coming up to my 500th post and I am definitely having a giveaway to celebrate that!   

Fat Quarter Bundle Giveaway

Hi everyone!   My friend Jana on the design team is hosting a superb fat quarter giveaway.   We have a fabulous team, but I can tell you Jana is by far the funniest one on it, and it comes through on her blog.  

This fantastic fabric is from Julie's shop.   The same one I had the giveaway from last week, so you know it is amazing fabric.  And a little tip, she is having a super sale again in her etsy store this week.

Hop on over and try and win this beautiful fat quarter bundle by Promenade in blue!

Delighted

Look at this new line of fabric that Amanda of The Quilted Fish has designed.  It is called 'Delighted' and should be in stores September.

You only have a day left to enter Julie's giveaway that I am hosting for her.   Click here to leave a comment on this post.

Hostess' Half Dozen Giveaway from The Intrepid Thread

How lucky am I that I can call Julie from The Intrepid Thread a friend?  She has asked me to be her hostess in her giveaway this week.

This woman is multi talented.   Look what lovely piece of artwork I received in the mail yesterday from her.

I absolutely adore it!

Julie is part of our design team and recently has opened up an etsy store.   

She literally has the newest fabric coming in around the clock.   Her prices are exceptionally good, and she always has a sale on something.   You must go and check it out.

I follow her blog and it is there I get to see the newest lines, the cool tutorials in her newsletter and all the fun projects she has going.   Plus her weekly giveaways!

As her giveaway hostess,  I picked out 6 FQ's from the new collection Taza by Dena Fishbein for Free Spirit.
One lucky person will win them all!

How to win:

1.   If you are not a follower of The Intrepid Thread, sign up to be one and come back and leave me a comment on this post telling me you did.

2.   If you are not a follower of mine, sign up to be one and leave a comment telling me so.

3.   Post about it on your blog and leave a comment stating you did.

4.   If you already follow both of us, let me know.

I will draw a winner on August 26th.   Good Luck!

Summer Camp Glamps and Giveaway!

Today is the big day!  The end of Glamp Summer Camp.   The design team, along with 9 other followers of The Quilted Fish blog have submitted photos of their Glamps.   I have had a few sneak peeks and from what I have seen, they are simply stunning.

The team is not competing, but do go over and you will see that several of us have participated and have giveaways.

I also have a giveaway.  In the rare case you didn't know which one was mine.... here it is.   Of course, it has circles and 3D flowers!

Now onto the giveaway.   Amanda of The Quilted Fish, is generously letting me give away some of her fabric she designed.  You will see 3 FQ bundles.   I will pick 2 winners and they will get a surprise of a bundle mailed to them.  

What do you have to do to win?   Well, go over and vote on The Quilted Fish blog.  Come back and tell me you did.   That is 1 entry.   On a purely selfish note, I want to get to 300 followers.   So if you blog about it, you get 2 votes=)

Now go and enter the giveaway on my fellow team members blogs too:

Stephanie

Sally

Brooke

Julie


Candice

Summer Camp Glamp is Done

I was up at the crack of dawn, literally.   I had two projects that were due by the end of the week, and I always stress that leaving it to the last minute may not work out.   So I got them both done today.  

One of them was the Glamp.     Here are Amanda's Glamps, and you can get the pattern and the hardware in a handy little kit here.

Now for Summer Camp the design team was sent kits, and asked to make a Glamp.   We could do whatever we wanted.  ( I may have went slightly overboard on this part).  Amanda also has 20 followers from her blog doing the same thing.   So that is alot of Glamps for Summer Camp to be shown.   I believe that the unveiling takes place this Thursday.   

Now I am pretty sure you are going to know which one is mine.   I can't reveal until our fearless leader gives the go ahead, but I can tell you there will be a giveaway involved!   

To bait you, here is a tiny peek of my Glamp.

  Are you loving it?  Or fearful that I went over the edge?   

Friday Tutorial with Laminates

It is that time again.   The design team has another Friday tutorial up on our fearless leader's site, fabric designer extraordinaire Amanda who designed this funky laminate.

Sally, who is totally brave created this super fab art smock.  She has no fear of using her laminates and shows us how easy it is to do.

Laminates are the new thing in fabric these days.   They are so much different from the 'olden days' laminate.  These ones are soft and supple like butter.   They can be ironed gently on the wrong side.   They come in some totally funky designs.   And they can be used for so many more things than a table cloth.

Our design team is going to showcase just a few of the ways you can use laminates.

Stay tuned!

Glamp Summer Camp

My Glamp kit arrived yesterday!   I have until August 11th to get it finished and then we are all posting them here and over at Amanda's site.  This is her pattern and she has a ton of prizes and giveaways for those making Glamps and those of us on her design team to give out to our followers.   Yay Amanda!

When I first opened it and saw the hardware, I got a little freaked out.  I do not have a technical mind whatsoever.   When the kids hit a wrong button on the tv, I have no idea how to get the picture back.   I decided that I should at least read the pattern before having a complete meltdown.   I am so glad I did, it is super easy to assemble!   I couldn't believe it.  I don't think I am even going to ask my DH to help!

I have my fabric picked out and  a rough sketch of my design.  All I need now is some time to get it done.    

One more thing, if any of you are having a burning desire to have your own fabric line, check out the contest here.

Friday Tutorial and your help is needed!

The design team is at it again!  Jana is up with her uber fab  tutorial.

I have to tell you, Jana has to be one of the funniest people I have ever met.   I mean hilarious.   Go and read a few posts on her blog, and I know you will agree.  This quilt is fast, cute and oh so cuddly.  Read about it here.

Now I am going to need your help... Amanda, our fearless leader of the design team has us in Summer Camp.   She has us making a Glamp!   See awesome photo:

Now I admit, this is pretty cool.  She sent me all the hardware and the kit.   When I say 'sent', I mean she mailed the team their Glamp packages.   The rest of the team got theirs.   The Glamp is due August 11th.   Guess what lonely Canadian doesn't have her Glamp package yet?   (I'll give you a hint, I am Canadian)  Did I mention it was due August 11th?

Amanda is having prizes, so if you want to participate you can order a Glamp kit here.

Don't worry if you can't participate, dear sweet Amanda is giving us prizes to give out.

 In the meantime, if you have any crazy ideas how I can totally make my Glamp beautiful via many, many embellishments, please leave a comment.   It would be so appreciated as I only have till August 11th, and don't even have my kit yet.  Have I mentioned that yet?

I guess that would be really embellishing if I had to actually make the whole Glamp including hardware?

 Do you think the team would notice if I mod podged fabric around a balloon and stuck a flashlight up the hole?   I would call it the 'Glampalloon'.  I just know my faithful followers would vote best all around Glamp, wouldn't they?  Well, I bet you would if I promised you fabric=)

There is also the option of just rolling fabric around a candle till it gets really thick and lighting the 'Glampandle'.   Now I may have to just light this in the tub or on a lake.

I could potentially glue squares on the front of my microwave and when I reheat my mashed potatoes, the 'Glamprowave' will light up.  

What about quilting some covers over the headlights on my car and calling it the 'Glampmobile'?

I guess we all better hope I get my package soon, before things get really ridiculous around here.

New Fabric and Creating Fabric

As promised, I have a whole whack of new fabric to show you.   First off is the stuff I bought from Ikea.   Up until a month ago, I didn't even know they sold fabric there.   By chance, I had to go to the closest city that has an Ikea store last week.  I might add that it is a mere 6 hour drive each way.   I planned my route so that the first stop would be Ikea, you know in case the family started getting restless, I had my priorities right.

Onto the fabric, there are so many things I love about this fabric.   It is not a quilters cotton, but  a heavy cotton, like a jean type fabric.   I bought it for purses and bags and maybe a secret juried quilt!   I must confess, I also bought it so I could keep the selvage where it says 'made in Sweden'.   Come on, how many of us have something that says that on it?   Not me anyway.

This next picture should really have a lifesaving device on it.   I had started a rather large art quilt using all my hand dyed fabric for the background and alot of Amanda's Sugar and Spice for the 3D embellishing to go on the front.   As I didn't have a complete sketch drawn out, just bits and pieces, I had no plans for borders and binding and more embellishing.   Then panic hit.... I wasn't going to have enough fabric!   Trying to remain calm, I quickly buzzed an email to fellow Design Team member Julie of the Intrepid Thread and begged her if she had any scraps left from her new etsy store.   Might I add, she always has fabric on sale, and the new stuff, not the old odds and ends.   I  personally wonder if she may be just have sniffed one too many bolts of fabric... but the deals are the best!

I am digressing, if you know Julie, she will turn the world upside down to get what you want.   Within an hour, and several emails, she had a bundle all packaged up and in the mail for me.   Not only that, look at the card that you get!  It is hand made and she wrote a lovely note inside.   What you didn't see is that the fabric was all wrapped in white tissue and neatly tied with purple ribbon.   There was no picture, because I was just about to explode when I got the fabric I was so excited.

A few days later, I received a package from Megan as I had  won some fabric over at Quiltstory.  This blog totally rocks.  It is upbeat, fun and oh so full of creativity and imagination.  I am sending back a cute little zippered pouch that I made, but don't tell=)

After all that excitement, I thought I better do some creating on my own.  

I had recently purchased some Setacolor paints.  These are the ones where you are supposed to be able to paint the fabric, lay objects on it and let dry in the sun.   I tried a small piece, didn't want to waste a whole yard of PFD fabric if it didn't work.  I was very skeptical and my only instructions were mix 1 part paint, 2 parts water, brush on, place objects on, and let dry in sun.  Seems a little too easy right?   

Well, keep your pants on, look at what happened!   It turned out exactly as it was supposed to.  I used some large washers I had in my studio and I painted on a textured piece of sidewalk.     I love the outcome.   Better get out the scissors and start cutting my PFD fabric in yards!

A few days ago, I happen to stumble across this site.  By using Sharpie markers and rubbing alcohol, I made this new fabric.

Can you totally see me using this in an art quilt?
I think I am all talked out about fabric, so better sign off.  (Correction:  I am never tired of talking about fabric, but I better get stitching with it=)

Skirt Tutorial and News

It's Friday and that means that Johanna from our Design team has created a fantastic tutorial of how to make your own skirt.   How cool is that?   You create a pattern that fits you, not the 7 skinny models the store patterns were made for.  

When you are done reading how to make the skirt at The Quilted Fish, check out Johanna's blog.  She has really funky quilts on it.


On other good news, my quilt 'Bye Gram, I Love You' that was in the Sacred Threads exhibit is now on it's way home.  The show has ended and they have posted 34 of the 173 quilts on their website.  Can you guess where this is leading?   Yep, mine was chosen as one of the quilts to highlight this year's juried show.  It is the 10th one down on the page.

I will tell you, when I sat in my grandmother's chair stitching those 500 buttons onto the quilt, I never imagined that it would have such an adventurous life.   I am both thrilled and  amazed that it has struck such a cord with so many people in the quilting community.

Adorable 9 patch

Hey Peeps!

Our design team is back with another tutorial.   This time Sally is up with a sweet 9 patch quilt.  Simple, yet very effective with the gorgeous white background, emphasizing the new 'modern' quilt era.   This is one of those quilts that you get a 'oohhh, I like that' from.    Yet only you know how easy it was to assemble.

Go and check it out here.   Okay, you have to go and check out Sally's blog... tell me those birds are not the cutest things ever?   The ones hanging on the string.   I could put them up in my living room, or give them away as a housewarming gift, or ......   okay, enough... just go and check it out.

Happy Canada Day! and a Tutorial

HAPPY BIRTHDAY CANADA!

What a great day we had in Canada today.   Celebrations at our local beach, the future King and Queen in our country.... and an awesome tutorial from Julie!

Look at this table runner she has made for my fellow Americans who will have their own celebration on July 4th.

It is quick and easy and oh so cute!  Go and check it out.

Okay, I just have to tell you a little about Julie.  She started out with a blog... then she decided to open up an etsy store.  And oh my goodness, if you like the newest fabric out there and want it fast at extremely good prices,,, run to her etsy store.  Seriously, the girl is always having a sale... and on tons of stuff.  It really is crazy, but let's not tell her=)

And be sure to check out her 'Coming Soon' section of the store.   Trust me when I say, this girl has fantastic taste in getting the hottest fabric lines in for you to buy.  

In the meantime, if you read her blog, she is always offering some coupon to get her fabrics even cheaper.  She also just released a newsletter and it had 3 free projects in them!  I know, she is a little extreme in the generosity department.    But we won't tell her about that either, let's just get what we can out of her in the meantime=)

On a personal quilting note, I had some good, no make that super duper news  this week, but it is too early to tell.  As soon as I can, I will=)  

Magnetic Calendar Tutorial

It's Friday and that means one of our awesome girls from Amanda's design team has posted a tutorial.
Candice created this great functional calendar for our viewing pleasure.

This one would be so much fun for kids.   Go check it out here.

Now I must take a minute and tell you about Candice.  This girl is a real mover and shaker.   You simply must check out her etsy store.   No, she did not ask me to promote her, but you have to see her coffee bag totes, and now she has created patterns for them.   Is it just me, or is that not the most original idea ever?   If my non quilting friends are reading this, please skip over this next part.... I totally plan to make some for them.  I already have the pattern....sssshhhh.  

I think it is just the coolest thing ever, and nothing would be more durable.  If they hold 130 lbs of coffee beans, I am sure they can hold our girl stuff!   She currently doesn't have any in her etsy store as she has all her inventory at a local quilt shop for the weekend, but I know she would sell you one if you asked!  

I am busy in my studio making some very large 3D flowers.   I can't wait to show them to you.   I also had a brain wave for two future quilts, 3D of course, and need to get those designs on paper.

Chat later!

Magnetic Board Tutorial

This tutorial is so amazing!   My friend Stephanie, put together the most amazing, non-sewing, kid friendly, functional, colourful magnetic board ever!   Check it out here.

I have read these instructions and they are so clear and precise.  I plan to do this with my kids this summer.  Stephanie had her daughter do one with her as well, it is that easy!

Go check it out and be sure to leave a comment.   If you do make one, buzz me a pic and I will post it.

Now I do have to tell you that at our year end guild dinner last night, I finally won Judge's Choice award for the President's Challenge.   Remember we had to make something nice out of some really ugly fabric?   I designed a miniature Dresden plate pattern and used that.   

  Off to get working on my next quilt of Sugar and Spice.   I am doing a border that is taking more time than the quilt top.  I can't wait to show you!

Cup o' Tea

Hi Everyone!

Today is my day to post my tutorial featuring Amanda's new line of fabric 'Sugar and Spice'.

This fabric is so much fun and the line is so varied and unique.   Please go and check me out on The Quilted Fish.    
This is my original teacup and saucer.  I provide all the instructions and the templates.  Trust me when I tell you the template took a few tries before I got it just right.  

These are awesome little gifts.  And you can make them functional by using the teacup to keep your spare bobbins, or seam ripper in.  

I sent Amanda one for Salt Lake City Quilt Market and she loved it so much she kept it!   ( I did tell her that was okay=)

Okay, go check me out and let me know what you think, either there or here.

Mug Rug Tutorial

It's that time again!  The design team for The Quilted Fish is doing their tutorials every Friday.   We are starting with Brooke... please go and check out the tute and how to make these cute mug rugs.

I am up next Friday and you will love what I am going to show you how to make!

Hallowe'en in June

My friend Jana is having a Hallowe'en in June party over on her blog.   She finds that come October, with school, fall, and other stuff she doesn't have time to stitch up Hallowe'en projects.  That's why she decided to do it in June.

Jana is absolutely hilarious, and she is part of our design team for The Quilted Fish.

If you want to have some fun, join in.   I am definitely going to.   

A Piece of Me Attended Market

This past weekend was Quilt Market in Salt Lake City Utah.  This is where all the fabric companies and designers go and showcase their new products to vendors.   The booths are decorated to the hilt and are so fun to look at.

Reading through blogs that have attended market is my absolute favourite thing to do!  I have never attended a market, but it is definitely on my bucket list, right near the very top!

The darling Amanda, from the Quilted Fish, whom designs fabric and I am part of her Creative team, had a booth set up.  I just have to say it was fantastic!   She did a theme of the Mad Hatter Tea Party.

Candice over at Made With Love  allowed me to post one of her pics here.  She is also part of the Creative team that went to Market with Amanda.  Go and check out her blog for some more great pics of the booth.  While you are there, you really must check out her Coffee Tote Bags from real coffee sacks!  Seriously these are  awesome.

So, the super exciting part for me, was that Amanda asked her team to make something for market.  She is such a doll and loves showcasing us whenever she can!

I made a cute teacup and saucer out of her new line Sugar and Spice.

And ....(drumroll please)  here it is at a real market!  Something of mine at an actual quilt market. (insert me jumping up and down!)

Here is a close up of it, before I sent it to Amanda.

That is my excitement for the weekend.   

A Reminder

I love getting mail!   Today was no exception.   I got my zippers from Jennifer at Zipit on etsy, and my zipper pulls.   Look at these fun ones she sent!

Now if you order soon, Jennifer is giving a 15% discount on her etsy store to all my fab followers.  See this post  for the coupon.  And I am going to be a tutorial for the design team on my zippered pouches, which will require a 8.5" zipper or 10" total length.   

 I am also going to be showcasing some very funky zippered flowers as soon as I get playing with my zippers.  

One last thing, please go and vote again, see my bar to the right, where it says 'vote', hit the flower and give me a vote.   You can do it every day right up till May 24th, and I would soo appreciate it1

Thanks super fabulous followers=)