Month: June 2011

New ideas, New quilt pattern, Quick Little Projects

New Pattern, Santa’s Gift Bags #177

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I’m a bit stuck on Christmas and you’re about to see in the upcoming days just how stuck I am.  I don’t know why, but I love the colors red & green together.  I could put combinations of the colors together all-day-long! 

So, show me some Christmas fabrics and I can go overboard for sure.  This next pattern, “Santa’s Gift Bags” was created with my wanting projects of every size for this quilt market. 

Voila, small:

The pattern consists of bags in two sizes; large for wine bottles & small for other treats.  They’re fun and easy, so easy in fact that you won’t hesitate to make one for each of your best friends at Christmas time! 

 Check back tomorrow for more show & tell of my new patterns.

Until next time,

Susan

My Life, New ideas, New quilt pattern, Quilt Market

New Pattern, Santa’s Pockets #178

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Besides my “In Season” series that I’ve been showing you as they’re completed, I have nine new patterns that premiered at Salt Lake City’s Spring International Quilt Market 2011.  I love them all, but my favorite is this gem:

 As you can see it’s called “Santa’s Pockets” and it’s an advent calendar/Christmas countdown.  You can purchase yours here. When my kids and nieces & nephew (9 total) were small I made them each an advent calendar with 24 pockets.  I started with a pattern that I purchased and added my own pockets to accommodate a Hershey’s Kiss.  The day after Thanksgiving those advent calendars still come out and during my black Friday shopping I buy the bags of Christmas Hershey’s Kisses.  Since they were quite small when I made them, that was quite a special treat to eat chocolate BEFORE breakfast each morning.  It was a treat for me too as a stay-at-home-mom because it occupied their attention several times throughout the day for almost a month!  Waiting for Christmas as a youngster is a hard thing to do without driving mom crazy!  Even though they are all three teenagers now, they still fill the pockets & eat the Kisses each morning.

With that said, I’ve been wanting to create “The” Christmas countdown/advent calendar complete with numbers so we could keep track of how many days are left until Christmas.  I think I did it.  What do you think???

I had a real lightbulb moment last winter when I finally figured out how I was going to make the numbers on the pockets.  I discovered I could trace the numbers that I created in just the right scale for the pockets that would accommodate gift cards, Hershey’s Kisses or notes.  After tracing, I stitched them on my old Bernina sewing machine with Sulky 12 wt. thread.  That’s right and you can too.  No embroidery machine required. Another day I will show you just how I did that.

I’m thinking when our local shops get their “Countdown to Christmas” yardage I’m going to have to buy enough to make each of my kids one, this one’s mine!!!

Until next time,

Susan

new fabric collection, New ideas, Quilt Market

No rest for the weary

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It seems no sooner do I get home from one market and deadlines for the next market are waiting for me in my “in” box!  No kidding, I’ve already got my flight booked for Houston the end of October.  I’ve booked a hotel to share with pattern designer buddies and I’ve already received a shipment of love from Moda!

Meet Amelia:

Dots, bright pastels and just the right amount of black (my personal favorite) thrown in. I had ideas in my head on our flight home from Salt Lake City, so the first chance I got I went to their website to drool over fabric collections due out this fall for spring designs.  It’s a fast paced cycle getting current fabrics to make samples with so shops will hopefully have the fabrics in stock to sell with the patterns.  It’s fun to dream with new fabrics that the folks at Moda are generous enough to supply to pesky designers like myself! It’s a win win situation I guess.  I can’t tell you how many shop owners came to my booth and fell in love with the fabric collection many of my booth samples were made with, Sweetwater’s “Countdown to Christmas.”  Remember my post here? The pre-cuts were just arriving in shops the week of market I heard over and over that weekend, but no shops had the bolts of yardage yet. I’d bet if you tried your local shops that they are receiving them by now.

Now that I have a bit of dreaming time on my hands (before I need to get back to graduation party prep for this weekend) I’m drooling over these pretties! 

I know, you want to know when you’ll see the new stuff from this market, right?  Tomorrow!  I will start those tomorrow, I promise!

Until then I’m going to go back to drooling and dreaming over Amelia!

Until next time,

Susan

Family Time, My Life, Quilt Market

Here I am!

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I’m sure you’ve all been wondering, “Is she EVER coming back?”  Well, I’ve been home for a while now, but I’ve been extremely busy. 

My son graduated from high school

 

the same day my niece got married.

I hosted my family throughout the holiday weekend so we could all visit with my out-of-town brother & his wife.

Next I spent two days with my son at SIU-E’s orientation getting him ready for not only school this fall, but also a class later this summer.

 I also attended our guild’s Quilt Away, a three-day retreat which Celine Perkins of Perkins Dry Goods came in town to teach at. More on that in a later post.

 

Salt Lake City’s Quilt Market was a very successful show for me!  Chloe was a great help. I met lots of new shop owners and employees that loved (and bought) my new “stuff”. The city was beautiful, what we were able to see of it, and the time shared with fellow quilt designers was priceless.

 

A photo of Chloe & me in our booth.

Here are some of our friend’s & neighbors’ booths:

Mary Jane of The Quilt Branch (Susan was out & about).

 

 Celine of Perkins Dry Goods & friend Barb.

 

Susan & Leslie of My Favorite Things.

Roger of Blue Hill fabrics. 

 I’ve met so many nice people through quilting and Salt Lake City was no exception! Going to market is a LOT of work; from designing and making samples, to writing patterns, to photography and printing, to packing, traveling, booth set-up, working on your feet 9 hours a day…  Then there’s tear down and more traveling, not for the faint of heart for sure, but the feedback from shop owners and distributors has been great and keeps me going!  It was fun to experience market with my daughter, Chloe this time.  Not only was she great help, but she was fun to spend the week with.  She and Celine have already been planning to meet up again in Kansas City next spring where Celine hopes to also bring her daughter.  That should be fun too!

Until next time,

Susan