Fresh Figs

Return from Quilt Market

Well, another successful  Quilt Market is done and we are finally home and slowly trying to get back in the swing of things. As many of you already know, this year Spring Market was in the beautiful city of Portland, Oregon. A place with great food that we had the chance to partake in [our favorite was Toro Bravo for tapas], a charming river running through the middle of it [that we had the opportunity to take a dinner cruise on with our MODA colleagues] and my favorite bookstore in the whole country. Wow, it doesn't soundl like we did any work at all... but I can assure you that indeed we did and somehow we managed to get in a few of these wonderful moments listed above! In fact between setting up & breaking down, manning the booth, teaching workshops, breakfast meeting, dinner meetings, and the grand MODA Friday night party... there wasn't much time to do anything else. At least we got to work in wonderful places surrounded by great people!

Market itself was a fabulous whirlwind. Here are some shots of our booth which we were very happy with due largely to the delivery of lots of fabulous props from our home & studios by our favorite local quilt store owners, Joe & Roxie, and our piece de resistance... a wonderful slipcovered chair, made out of several of our favorite Fig & Plum fabrics. I was inspired by Camille & her wonderful red Dottie upholstered chair & thought, how hard could it be to make a slipcover? Well, given that I had never made one before... it was a bit tricky but actually easier than I anticipated when I set out to make the pattern. Alot of tracing paper later, some help from my friend Keiko and a bunch of strange shapes, voila a slipcover was born. Unfortunately, I think I might have created a monster and am seeing potential slipcovers everywhere I go... in the dining room, in the bedroom, in the kids rooms.... If I'm not careful, before this summer is done, we might just be completely slipcovered! 

As always, we were acrosss the aisle from the wonderful MODA booths [whom we affectionately like to refer to as the mothership] and I had occasion to take some shots of some of my favorite products over in MODA HOME. One of the things that they have is a whole array of wonderful things inspired by vintage milk caps... talk about Fresh Vintage! I have to tell you that when I first found out they were doing milk cap inspired products a few months ago I was crestfallen. Over the past few months I had managed to collect hundreds of those cute little things and was working on a way of incorporating them into my next collection. I thought it best to put a hold on that idea and see how the MODA products looked. But of course after seeing their charm and retro feel, I am inspired all over again to add them back into a group here or there.... we'll have to see the continued saga of the milk cap inspiration... they are just so charming. Here is a little tidbit about the MODA ones... the designers who worked on them have all managed to work their own last names into the designs... perhaps you can find them

Talk to you soon.

Jelly Stars

A new jelly roll pattern.... one of my favorites right now. This one is made with 1 Dandelion Girl roll. At Market we will also have one done from 1 Fig & Plum jelly roll.... who would have ever thought that lone stars could be this simple.... no special cutting, no y-seams....

more peeks tomorrow.

talk to you soon.

Happy sneak peeks and Happy Mother's Day

Well, its the night before Mother's Day and in order to be able to take the day off and enjoy my family tomorrow, I am working late into the night today to earn that privilege... is there something backwards about that thinking? Who thought of scheduling Spring Quilt Market the weekend after Mother's Day anyway??

Anyway, I promised some sneak peaks so.... what do you want to see first, patterns or fabrics? Well, I happen to have a nice little page of some of my new swatches so I think we will start there...Fig & Plum...
tomorrow, some patterns.... maybe Jelly Stars which so many of you have been asking about... stay tuned and Happy Mother's Day to all you moms out there!

talk to you soon.

Updates...

Its Market production time again... and we all turn into hermits.
A few of my fun accessory items that come with Dandelion Girl came last week... I couldn't resist getting off the computer to go outside with my little "model" and have her display my favorite item... this patchwork backpack. Isn't she the cutest? Ella of course, but the backpack isn't bad either. I have a few extra on hand if anyone is interested and I would be happy to order a few more if you all "need" it. Retails for $25. Email me here if you like...

Speaking of retail, wanted to let you know that Ihave a few left of everything Dandelion Girl related. All of our kits have gone out, packaged cuts have been sent... and we have a few happy little packages remaining [ several print bundles, layer cakes, charm packs]

Look at this nice little Dandelion display at Quilted Treasure in Rogers, MN... over here
Confession time.... which state is MN? Which is MI? MA? ME? MO? MS? MT? I confess that every time I have a customer from one of the "M" states, I have to look it up! I feel like I am a remedial US geography student but being raised on the West Coast, we just never had the need to learn the abbreviations for many of the midwestern states and now its coming back to "bite me on the butt" as they say... There is gotta be some good way of remembering some of these states? Someone help me :-)!!

And last but not least, this image has kept me laughing even at 3:00 am after 10 hours of pattern editing... so I thought I would share it with you.

As for product sneak peaks... a few more days and I will start sharing.

talk to you soon.