Okay, you know I’m a super duper Uppercase Magazine fangirl, right?! It’s my go-to magazine for inspiration and research. I keep each and everyone… and well, being gorgeous inside and out doesn’t hurt either! I’m super excited that they’re ALSO coming out with FABRIC! Fabric inspired from the magazines spines! SO SO pretty! I can’t wait to see in on the shelves!

Side note: Uppercase is coming out with an Encyclopedia set too! It’s going to be amazing!

At Quiltcon 2016 I was lucky enough to see Janine’s Vangool’s talk about how the whole Uppercase and Windham Fabrics team-up came to be. Mickey Kueger of Windham fabrics happens to be an Uppercase subscriber. That’s him on the right, in front of all the paper dresses that decorated their booth.

AND did you see the dress quilt?  It was A M A Z I N G. We were all smitten.

Okay back to the Uppercase, Windham fabric collection – keep in mind this is extremely condensed but basically, Janine sent Mickey an email about his subscription renewal. Which led to a whole Uppercase collection! What a great story hey! A short but a great one!

Fast forward a month or so later… so there I was. I had to make two flags for a swap.  On my studio table sat an Uppercase charm, a paper dress from the Windham booth and other un-put away Quiltcon bits. I knew I wanted to do something really special with my Uppercase charm pack and I wanted to make something really special for the flags.

Then BINK! A light bulb moment. Charm pack. Paper dress. Fabric dress. Flags… Ooo I could make fabric dresses for the flags AND for cards to send! Eeek!

I remember being told at the Windham booth they’d be putting up a pattern for the quilt on their site. I haven’t found it but maybe I heard wrong? Maybe it was just wishful thinking or maybe I completely missed it. They only have one MEE-llion patterns on their site! And that’s just the free ones. For real!

However, I did find their YouTube link for making the paper dresses. A little starch, a hot iron and some near misses with my fingers, a few buttons and bows later, I had all these pretty little dresses!

When my swap partner posted on Instagram the flags and card people were asking about them. And well, sharing is caring right. Have fun but we warned they’re a teeeeeeeeeeeeeeny bit addictive.

Earlier this summer my son was telling me about his friend in Vancouver, whose high school is being torn down over the summer. On the last day of school they gave the students buckets of paint with permission to graffiti the inside of the school. My son asked me, “Guess what they mostly painted?”

Without hesitation, I said, “penises.”

My son looked at me and blinked twice, “… That’s what I said too.” Then we both paused and stared at each other. Hmm, we both went there.

He broke the silence saying, “Mostly they wrote positive, life affirming messages.” We were both impressed (and mortified at our answers). Then he added, “mostly they were messages like, YOU CAN DO IT!  BUT there was one guy who painted,  apostrophe Ts  behind all the CANs.”

It was like all the air sucked out of the room when I heard that, well not the room, it was my car (we were driving at the time). I realized, I’ve had that same guy in my head! He’s added an apostrophe T to a bunch of my CANs. Although,  the apostrophe T has gotten smaller over time, I can still feel them occasionally. AND since 2015 is my year to live fearlessly, I’ve been diving in head first regardless of any apostrophe T twinges I might have. 

In January I registered for The Art and Business of Surface Pattern Design. That was a biggie. I have one more module left. AND THEN! Earlier this week I discovered one of my designs from the first module was on the, to quote my friend Esmari,  “The holy grail” of design blogs, Print and Pattern!!!!! I’m not sure if I even recovered from that one yet. It’s the envelope design at the top of this post.

Then, this past February Esmari sent me an email telling me how I HAD to apply for the UPPERCASE Compendium book. She told me I just HAD, HAD to! So I took a deep breath and I did it. I just found out I was a finalist! I’ll take that. I didn’t get in the book but I’ve been told that my work will be shared on UPPERCASE’s newsletter. Which I LOVE! Again, I’ll take it!

In the next little bit I’m  finishing up two patterns, due to come out lickity split. My Match Needle Book pattern will be released for the Pacific Northwest MQG  meetup, (Aug 20-23rd). It will be posted on my blog as a free pattern.  Plus, my Hardcore Cassette Tape Mini Quilt is ooooh, so close to it’s final version. Yay!

Finally, this September (WOW! It’s coming fast!) I’ll be showing my Fabric Stash Drawing Project at Drygoods Designs in Seattle! I’m so thrilled! I’ve been searching for years and holding out for the exact right location to show this body of work. AND it’s happening. Yup, it’s on like Donkey KONG!

So take that, little man putting apostrophe Ts on peoples CANs. (…um you know I don’t mean boobs right?!)