Summer Blooms

A while ago my friend Brenda at Pink Castle Fabric asked me to put together a blogger bundle for her, so I pieced together the Summer Blooms bundle you see above. I'm seriously in love with all the saturated colors! I'm going to be whipping up a new quilt with it soon...and I think I'll be pairing it with a white solid because it will set off all the bright colors nicely :)

For those of you who might be interested in where I start when I'm putting together a bundle for a new project, I'll talk a little bit about my source of inspiration.  It's rare that I sit down in front of my stash with a blank slate and think, "oh I'll use this color, this, and this". Usually I already have an idea in mind from something I've seen on the internet or around town. Much to Ray's embarrassment, I'm ALWAYS taking random photos of displays in stores, cool shapes & patterns I see, and fun color pairings with my phone while I'm running errands.

Then I go back and save the photo to my computer for future reference. For this particular bundle, I used a Crate & Barrel pillow I've been lusting over for a while (man I miss having a local Crate & Barrel!). I pulled up a picture of the pillow and the Kona swatch page, and started matching colors - it's really as simple as that! I played with them a little bit (softened the pink), but for the most part stayed true to the color scheme found in the pillow.

If choosing fabrics is something you struggle with, you should try this next time - Pinterest is really great for comparing photos side-by-side if you don't have the software for it :) And if you need more help, you can always refer to Jeni's great series called the Art of Choosing.

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"Sewing" Our Wild Oats

A group of us that bonded at the Sewing Summit last year have been planning a meet-up since the Fall. Our motley crew includes Angela, Kelly, Karen, Cherie, Ali, Michelle, Tracey, Kristie and Cara. When we were planning our little shindig, the priority was finding a central location that was wallet friendly. Being the awesome friend that she is, Ms. Kelly generously offered up the house she and her husband just bought outside of Nashville. They don't move in for another week or two, so we had to bring all the necessities like towels, air mattresses and toilet paper, which was actually pretty fun....like an indoor quilting camping trip! I'm kind of sad now we didn't attempt roasting marshmallows in her fireplace...although she probably isn't because the group of us are a fire hazard, lol

Only me, Cara, Kelly, Ali and Cherie were able to make it this time, but we're already planning one at the beginning of next year that will be bigger & better - woot woot! Most of us got in around 7:00 Friday night and we ate a late dinner at 55 South, so this is what the scene looked like when we got home. Online friends getting together, laying on air mattresses...and not talking...but typing to each other and the friends that couldn't make it via Facebook, lol! Well...except for me, because I'm too cheap to pay for an iPhone + plan, so I just laid there and drifted in and out of consciousness.

(I was too lazy to take photos most of the trip, so all of these are stolen from various members of our five-woman posse)

The next morning we had grand plans of hitting up all the local quilt shops (Kelly even had a printed list of the addresses and hours), but we hit the motherload at our first store and nixed the others. It was like Hoarders: Fabric Edition. The store was HUGE and there were thousands of fat quarters stuffed into every last nook and cranny, and even stacked along the walls in plastic bags. We got lucky and found a pocket of out-of-print Anna Maria Horner prints in those cubbies, so we literally yanked every single fat quarter out to make sure we didn't miss anything. There might have been screaming and dancing involved each time we found another hard-to-find print...

And then we started tackling the dozens of bags along the walls. Cara and I were crawling around on our hands and knees, and I'm pretty sure anyone who had the misfortune of walking up behind me got a healthy view of my butt crack...but I mean c'mon...who has time for pulling up their pants when Good Folks & Garden Party are at stake?!

Also, I'm pretty sure they hadn't swept or vacuumed for about a decade, because I was covered in dust bunnies by the time all was said and done.

 Some pre-checkout bartering...

Discovered this little gem on the inside of the front door as we were about to leave....which is pretty hilarious, because we were in there snapping photos and systematically taking apart their store for the better part of 3 hours...so they either didn't notice or didn't care.

And all that fabric hunting makes a gal pretty hungry, so we made a pit-stop at Mellow Mushroom pizza on the way home. YUM.

And there's really no point to this photo, other than the fact that it's my favorite one by far from the weekend. A mom at peace, in her PJ's, quilting, scooping up Apple Jacks with her bare hand, and reading some good ol' fashioned celebrity gossip. Cara and I shared a table, and I couldn't help but glance up at her every now and then because she looked so darn content :)

And to cap things off, here's some good ol' fashioned fabric porn. Because what's a quilty weekend without a beefcake fabric shot?

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Scottie Watch

 

Life's been full of curve balls this past year, and I haven't been able to keep up with my blog like I wanted to. I have lots of quilt + bag patterns in the works, and I was also sad I didn't have time to scout things for Scottie Watch every week and it kind of died off. I'm going to try to put one together for every Friday, but fair warning - it might take me a little while to get back in the groove!

1. Fabric Mart has marked everything on their site 20% off right now (you'll see the discount once the items are in your cart). Even better, if you're a new customer you can use the code 'NEW' and get an additional 20% off. That means you can buy yardage of the Little Folks Voiles they have priced at $5.99/yard for the insane price of $3.83/yard!!!!

2. My friend Kelly let me on to a Fabric.com coupon code good for 20% off orders of ANY amount. The code is 'AMZN20'....and I might have ordered a buttload of Echo with it to use for pattern-testing :)

 

3. Speaking of Kelly, she had a genius idea for a new QAL (quilt along) yesterday. It's called the My Precious QAL because she's encouraging people to pull out those hard-to-find fabrics they've been hoarding like Gollum in Lord of the Rings, and actually USE them! Angela and I are her helper minions for the QAL, and the three of us scoured Flickrdom and put together a rather fabulous Pinterest board of ideas (there is so much talent in our Flickr community!). 

Oh, and did I mention there will be prizes each month for those who participate? Yeah. So put on your thinking caps and pull out those Heather Ross/DS/AMH scraps you've been hoarding! 

 

4. My other friend Tracey also started a fabulous new project on her blog, because we sewers/quilters have a tendency to overcommit ourselves. She's encouraging readers to limit themselves to three projects or goals a month, and stick to it. I know I could certainly use some boundaries with my quilting projects because I'm usually working on about 1,000 projects at a time...which is probably why I get burnt out and frazzled about once a quarter : /

5. Remember the Tallahassee block I used for my Cherry Blossom quilt? Well I found it on this awesome site called Quilter's Cache and they have about a billion different FREE block patterns available. What's really nice is that for most of the blocks, she has both paper piecing and regular templates you can download (depending on your preference). SO convenient!


6. This next item falls into the category of why the heck didn't *I* think of this before? It's a completely ingenious (and easy) way to make custom Roman Shades. I was frantically trying to get curtains up in my guest room last week because my parents decided to come down for the Final Four (GO UK!!!), and I wanted to make a roman shade instead of regular curtains. Problem was, I only had two days in which to do it. I read through about a dozen online tutorials, and all of them looked complicated and involved way more work than my lazy butt was willing to do. Enter this tutorial, which has you buy a cheap fabric shade at Walmart and sew your fabric directly over top of it. GENIUS!!! And it only cost about $30, which was totally worth it to me :)

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Snow = Laziness

I took this early in the morning before the sun was up. I love getting up and looking at the unblemished snowfall before the salt trucks and cars turn it into dirty sludge...and I love how eerily silent it is after a fresh snow. It's one of my favorite experiences in nature :)

Doesn't snow make you feel lazy? All I wanna do on a snow day is curl up on the sofa with an old quilt, watch movies, and occasionally raid the refrigerator. It started snowing almost the moment Christmas arrived. We were down in the basement watching It's a Wonderful Life on Christmas Eve, and right around midnight the most beautiful snowflakes started falling. When I woke up the next morning, there was about 4 inches of snow on the ground. It was both a blessing and a curse. Ray and I had plans to go see friends in Ashville, NC and my mom and I had also been organizing a trip to the National Quilting Museum and Hancock's of Paducah for months, but unfortunately both trips had to be cancelled because the roads were so bad. There was a layer of ice under all the snow, roads in Kentucky aren't exactly straight and easy to navigate, and my husband and I are super paranoid because we got in a really bad car accident during Christmas 2007...so we decided to stay close to home and make other arrangements.

Beware the dread pirate Snow Beard!

I decided to make the best of things, so I stayed in and did a lot of sewing while Ray played his XBox in the background. Sometimes it's nice just to stay home and do nothing for a couple days. I think maybe the snow was God's way of telling me to lay low and relax for a change...I'd been running on all 8 cylinders the past 2 months. So aside from a quick day trip to meet a college friend at our alma mater, I did a whole lot of nothing last week. And it was glorious.

Right about now you're probably saying to yourself, "but where's the fabric? Snowy Christmas anecdotes are all well and good, but WHERE'S THE FABRIC?!" Patience, my precious. Patience.

Remember that day trip I mentioned? Well after I met my friend Meghan (the one I'm making the Modern Meadow quilt for), my mom and I stopped at a quilt shop in Louisville. After cancelling our trip to Paducah, I wasn't about to go home empty handed, so I looked up the address to a quilt shop I've bought a few things from online before. I'm soooo glad I did...can you say JACKPOT? It was ginormous. Appearances are definitely deceiving, because the photos of the storefront online made it look like this tiny shop in a strip mall. Nope. It was massive. So massive that they had an entire back room filled with nothing but hundreds of clearance bolts of fabric. Unfortunately we got there only an hour before they closed, so I ran around snatching up fabric like a soccer mom on Black Friday.

All of the following fabrics were purchased at Among Friends Quilt Shop in Louisville, Kentucky:

Instead of putting your purchase in a plastic bag, they had a super cool idea. If you spend $75 or more at their store, they put your purchase in a fat quarter sack. All they do is baste two FQ's together, so when you get home you can easily take it apart and use the fabric! I'm totally suggesting this to all my local quilt shops!!!

All of the goodies stuffed in my little sack :)

I found all the Park Slope fabrics in the clearance room! All of these are at least 1 yard cuts. From L to R: Riley Blake Cheery Dot in Blue, Park Slope Floral Dots in Teal, Park Slope Leaf Dots in Teal, Park Slope Floral Dots in Orange, Park Slope Floral Dots in Pink, Joel Dewberry Basket in Red, Heather Bailey Mod Beads in Green

Fat Quarters!!!! From L to R: Metro Market Apple Slices in Black, Hoots in Marshmallow, Hoots in Sky, Neptune Anchors in Aqua, Riley Blake Star Dots in Blue, Misc Orange Fabric???, Wheels Micro Dot in Brown

Riley Blake Colorful Christmas Dime Pack

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