We were in LA last week and I came home to four packages from my Stash Fabulous bee! Yay! I love mail…sigh. Anyways I just wanted to give you a heads up that my site will be down for a bit because…..well, you’ll see. It will be NEW and very exciting!
Haaaaappy Birthdaaaaay to youuuuu, Haaaaapy Birthdaaaaay to youuuuu, (every one join in!) Haaaaappy Birthdaaaaay deeeeeear Caaathy! Happy Birthday to you!
My good friend Cathy was given a surprise birthday party back in April. Yay! Unfortunately it was the last night of our guild hosting Happy Zombie so I wasn’t able to make it. Boo! But later I gave her a wood 6 inch square canvas and told her I’d draw what ever she wanted on it. To my delight Cathy landed on the idea of her favourite buttons. Yay! I love buttons and together we came up with the idea of turning the drawing into a clock. Yay! Her buttons were quite large so I had to scale them down to fit. That’s one boo and three yays! The yays win!
Cathy and I have an mutual adoration for buttons and get weak in the knees for our favourite ones. I think it’s fair to say it’s the same affliction we have for notions and trims, which I suppose might seem strange to some, unless you have the same affliction. Lucky for Cathy, she own’s Stream Trunk Craftworks so she can get her fix through her store. Lucky for me, not only do I get to draw a lot of her trims notions and now buttons. Cathy has has been one of my biggest cheerleaders. She has always been very generous with her encouragement, she’s commissioned my work and more recently licensed my work, for which I’m very honoured and grateful. Plus she’s just so darn cute, smiley, sweet and can give it to you straight, which I really appreciate. Not to mention she has a great giggle!
And Baby I’ll rule, I’ll rule, I’ll rule, I’ll rule (okay Lorde sings it better)
May was my month to be Queen Bee for Stash Fabulous, an online Quilt Bee. I had three inspirations for my theme this month. The words, “PILLOW FIGHT!!!!”
The colour from this:
… and as I’m sure you can recognize, Anna Maria Horner’s feathers (side note, she liked my skirt on Facebook! Squee!). I asked my bee members to scale down the pattern and to use it as only a guideline so the feathers are all different sizes and shapes. They’ve been making one feather each (I got carried away in my example sewing – oops!) and a 30″ strip using the same colours with a 45 degree angle. I have to say I’m lovin’ what I’m seein’! They’re a pretty talented bunch.
I’ve also used this May to get caught up on my end. Phew… since February it’s been pretty full on around here between quilt shows, giving talks, doing give-aways, we lost our lovely cat LEGO (that wasn’t any fun), a big zombie apocalypse birthday bash and then everyone got sick. Yowza! It’s been busy. Which is why it’s been such a relief to get caught up! The two blocks below are for Jennifer! Jennifer was the one who invited me to the Stash Fabulous Bee and I met her threw my first Sew Mama Sew Givaway. She has a great little blog called Second Hand Dinosaur. I’m always inspired with what I see there!
I had major disagreements with this block but in the end I think it came around to my point of view. Get it, point of view, wink, wink!
And then this a 16″ block is for Jan. She has lots of goodies to check out on Flickr. All the fabrics for her block I used were from my Warp & Weft fabrics. I’m so in love with these low volume fabrics, especially the Bark & Branch-Line leaf Grey and the Bluebird Park- Stone!
I’ve already posted about this one but I wanted to put a shout out for Joanne’s blog Don’t Drink and Sew. As she say’s “you might spill your wine on the fabric! And that would be waste of good wine and good fabric!” As you can tell Jo has a pretty great sense of humour and I love her quilts and her links!
Up coming in June is Liz’s block. She’s the Swedish Scrapper! She’s wanting us to make a Korean Pojagi (bojagi) inspired block. I had no idea either what that meant until she showed us these pictures and gave us these links, her Pinterest board and this blog link turtorial. This is what I love about Bee’s, the exposure to all kinds of things and methods you wouldn’t normally come across if you were just sewing for yourself.
Well off to the sewing machine I go! Catch ya later, alligator!
It’s June! How can it be June? It seems every month I’m surprised it’s *fill in name of month*. I’m not sure why? Maybe it’s from the same place that leaves me surprised when my little seeds I’ve planted pop out of the dirt and sprout. It happens every year but every year I’m… well, surprised!
Here is my June calendar drawing… just click here.
Last weekend I went to visit my friend Cori in Vancouver. She lives in Coal Harbour and it’s beautiful. Everyone was outside enjoying the parks which made me think of this Warp & Weft bundle of fabric Esmari sent me called Bluebird Park by Kate and Birdie for Moda. Just like the fabric, we saw…
Hedgehogs (okay you got me there, we didn’t see any hedgehogs but I have seen one in real life and I almost held it. Almost.)
Stones (a really great low volume fabric by the way!)
…at the City Park that evening.
Yup, the fabric pretty much summed up everything we saw at the park that day… well, except for the giant public art sculpture that we thought possibly could be Godzilla poo. You gotta think it would be substantial. Funny I never thought to take a picture of it… and I don’t think we’ll see in in any park themed fabric any time soon. I’m just say’n.
Thanks for popping by! (whoops I almost wrote pooping! I know potty humour, the best!)
My guess is it was bound to happen… I’m falling in love with Anna Maria Horner. A couple of years ago I bought this Anna Maria Horner voile at Sew Modern in LA. It was one of those I have to have it purchases. I wasn’t sure what to do with it though, it had to be special. I was thinking maybe a skirt but I couldn’t really decide on a pattern that I liked enough. Then I found this pattern and it suggested to use voile for the skirt and for the lining. Then I remembered a voile (the flower print) that I bought in New York at Pins and Needles, again another, I have to have it. LIGHT BULB MOMENT! I could use both and make the skirt reversible. I also made the skirt a little longer than the pattern called for and I’m quite thrilled with it! 
A couple of weeks ago, when I registered on Bloglovin’, I came across Stitched in Color’s blog and more specifically this post about a linking party to sew Anna Maria Horner’s Flirting the Issue Pattern. The schedule seemed doable and a perfect reason to finally sew my lovely fabrics. Ta DA!
While I was following the sew along, Rachel used a rotary pinked edge blade (on day 3). I realized, D’oh, I have one of those! It wasn’t until I had cut the fabric I realized it wasn’t exactly the same but since all the seams are on the inside I’m pretty sure it will work. Either way it was another excuse to use something I’ve had tucked away!
Then, in the sewing of the skirt, I had a “sewing moment”. I live for these moments! I had an opportunity to match up the pattern and Woo Hoo!!!! It worked. It made me want to do a little happy dance…
Well, okay I’ll admit it… I did a little happy dance!
And then this funny little accident happened. It was almost was worth a little happy dance too… Did I do a little happy dance you ask?
Why yes, yes I did!
