Modern Whimsy - Big News and a SALE!

I have some fun fabric news...A new collection with Robert Kaufman!!

And it might feel familiar to you :) Modern Whimsy will be releasing October 2011 and shipping to stores in Spring 2012. The new Modern Whimsy collection is based on a few of the Modern Whimsy designs I have in my Etsy store BUT there are a few brand new designs too.

And the color stories coming from Robert Kaufman are all new too. I really, really love the two Modern Whimsy color stories in my shop, but these new colors for Robert Kaufman are yummy enough to eat. Can't wait to be able to share them with you this fall.

But what this means today is that it’s time for me to retire the current Modern Whimsy patterns and color stories from my store. And that means they're on sale! I've dropped the prices on all the Modern Whimsy fabrics in my Etsy store by 15% for this final sale which starts today and ends on 7/20/11. Details on shipping after the pics...

Here's how the shipping for these sale fabrics will work:

--I have limited amounts of Modern Whimsy in stock and will fill the first group orders from that batch of fabric. When you place an order, I'll email you and let you know when you order will ship.

--Then I will be placing 1 more (and only 1) final order for these fabrics from Spoonflower and then shipping all those out at the same time at the END of JULY/BEGINNING OF AUGUST). So if you have been eyeing any of Modern Whimsy fabrics or colors, or you need to stock up for a project, this is the time to do it. This will be the last time you'll be able to get these color stories and most of these patterns. After 7/20 they'll be officially retired and won't  be sold ever again.

Then starting in Spring 2012, you'll be able to go to your LQS and get the NEW Modern Whimsy collection being distributed by Robert Kaufman!

Let the stash building begin! And save 15% on Modern Whimsy :)

AND… I'll have some *brand new* fabric designs I'll be adding to the store in late July!!

Tufted Tweets making an appearance on Apartment Therapy

I still get all geeked out when I see Tufted Tweets out there in the wild. :) My sweet friend Megan of Lilac Saloon emailed me last night with a link to a fantastic house tour she saw on Apartment Therapy. It features an adorable little apartment in CA and it's sprinkled with really great decorating touches. Tufted Tweets makes an appearance here and there which just tickles me. I especially love the hoops, the fabric covered cube, and the message board. Cute, eh? Go take a peek at the Apartment Therapy post and then all of the pictures in the tour. Thanks for sending this on Megan!! :)

All photos by Bethany Nauert

Stash building sale - Tufted Tweets at 20% OFF

Heard through the grapevine that Form and Fabric is having a big moving sale and all their fabric is 20% off!

And among the delicious goodies in stock over there are full collections of Tufted Tweets. So if you're in need of some Tweets for your stash, this is a great time to stock up. The sale could be over quickly, so hop on over there and use coupon code MovingSale. And tell Margaret I sent you :)

Adding a little 'me' to your email

Last summer, I met some really wonderful folks at Surtex 2010 (my first year!). Among them were the founders of a sassy new company called MeebleMail. Think about all the emails you send in a day. And what if you could make your email pretty? And what if you could personalize your pretty?

Over the last year the team at MeebleMail has been hard at work and they've just launched their site. And I'm really excited to announce that a few of my designs are now available as digital patterns for your email!
What's that you say? How's it work?

1. Browse through the stationery and find the design you like. In addition to the designs I have featured on MeebleMail click here to see my designs) there are some other supremely talented designers who have featured patterns. Pretty amazed to find my designs in the company of Tina Turk, Thomas Paul and Jack and Lulu. Blush.

2. Once you pick out your stationery, you can personalize it with your name or monogram. I really am enamored with my Seated Swans. :)

3. Load the stationery into your email client. It's currently compatible with most web mail clients...Although it doesn't yet work with Outlook, the team at MeebleMail is working on it and it will be compatible soon.

4. Start sending your chic new personalized emails.

And the best part is that it's only $4.99 per design/per year!

Another fabulous Pooches & Pickups Quilt AND another giveaway!

The sweet and very talented Nettie over at a quilt is nice, agreed to take a turn at showing off her piecing and quilting prowess with some Pooches and Pickups! Nettie's quilts and projects just speak to me, so I was super excited when she agreed to lend me a hand.

The thing that I find so wonderful about all of the quilts and projects that my blog buddies have created is how incredibly different they each are. Nettie's new Pand P quilt has such a fun sophistication to it that really hits home for me. I just can't take my eyes off it. For me, the counter balance of the youthful dogs and trucks paired with the wonky strips of stripes and dots is just so great. Then she's paired that with a really gorgeous charcoal grey tweed from Robert Kaufman for sashing/roads. Even though the quilt is packed with primary colors it just has a sense of softness to it. I just love it, don't you?!? And...how cute are these adorable little toy trucks?

Zip on over to say hello to Nettie and leave a comment to win a FQ set of Pooches and Pickups. I just heart the story she shared about her own childhood pooch Scratches. :) She's drawing a winner this Sunday June 5 so off you go!

Don't you love surprises?

I absolutely love going to the mailbox and finding an unexpected surprise hiding in there. It probably goes back to those days as a kid when you'd get a card or something from an aunt or family friend who lived out of town. It was always such a thrill! And today it's just such a delight to find something other than a bill or junk mail in the box. Well, I had one of those fun surprises this morning!

The super sweet and incredibly talented Nova of a cuppa and a catch up sent me the most darling little gift. If you remember, she made that fabulous quillow a few weeks ago? (She's posted the tutorial here...)

Well, she had some scraps left over and she sewed me up a really special little pin cushion. In her typical way, each part of the little truck is better than the last. Look at the little pooch in the back. What a perfect fit! And of course the selvage up top just makes me smile. She included a darling little hand made card too.

Thank you so much Nova. I just love, love, love it and it's gone to be parked in a special place on my sewing table. Vroom vroom indeed! So sweet of you!! xoxox

Pooches & Pickups pet bed and another giveaway!

I was so excited to get an email this morning from Anna over at Noodlehead. I simply adore her blog and was so psyched when she agreed to do a project with Pooches and Pickups and host a giveaway for some fabric. I love, love surprises, so didn't ask much about what she was making. And I was just giddy this am to find this adorable creation (and an adorable pooch) on her blog today.

Lookie!!! How totally fabulous is this dog bed? It's for Anna's parent's pooch Cinder. What a pretty, pretty pooch. And the freezer paper stencil personalization. Genius. What a lucky woof!

images courtesy of Noodlehead

Hop over to Noodlehead, tell Anna hello and enter to win a full FQ set. But don't delay... The giveaway ends tomorrow, Wednesday, May 25th at 10pm (central time). Go on now!

Thanks Anna! I just love the dog bed and hope Cinder (and your parents) love it too. :)

Surtex Wrap Up

I'm back!!! Surtex was really amazing. I'm so happy with how my booth came together and how everything looked. Made some really amazing contacts and am beyond excited about some of the opportunities on the horizon. It was fantastic to be back in NYC and to be back in my old stomping ground. I went up a few days before the show and was able to spend time visiting some of my favorite places (and favorite people!) which was a really wonderful way to kick off the show.

The first morning in the city I grabbed some coffee and breakfast and headed to Central Park to enjoy the glorious weather. In the typical wonderful way things just happen in NY, I stumbled upon a group of maybe 30 high-school aged kids practicing their choral singing and horns in advance of a concert at Carnegie Hall. Nothing like NY I tell you. From there I was able to spend some time at the Museum of Art and Design (my favorite museum in the city) and the Folk Art Museum. I do miss the museums so much!!

My friend Alison (who came to help me work the booth at Surtex) and I were able to catch a Broadway show one night before the show kicked off. We got great seats for Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. A.Mazing. Simply phenomenal. A big, splashy, over-the-top, campy musical. And the costumes. Oh, the costumes! If you get a chance to see it, it's a must see. We really, really LOVED it.

The show itself was 3 days. Long days. But really, good days! I felt so much more confident this year and am really pleased with the opportunities I was able to explore and the contacts I was able to make. I've been working non-stop since I got home, working on my follow up with everyone. Loads more to do, but finished off everything (almost!) I had hoped to get accomplished this weekend.

Thanks again to everyone for your good wishes and for the positive vibes you were sending my way!! I'll keep you posted on any exciting news :)
xoxo

My whitebalance on my camera was set to the wrong setting (sigh...grumble...) so the colors are a bit wonky in the pics but you can at least get the idea! Oh, and you can see my new red hair :)

And those of you with eagle eyes will probably notice a few designs that haven't made it to fabric yet. Hoping that a few of them may make it to Spoonflower fabric (and then hopefully Robert Kaufman fabric!) at some point in the future. And the trays...Oh the trays!! They're just mockups that I had made for the show but you never know what the future could bring!

A quillow or a planket from a cuppa and a catch up

What's that you say? Has Laurie finally gone off the deep end. What on earth is a quillow? Or a planket? The ingenious ~nova from a cuppa and a catch up has done it again. I've been following her work for quite some time and she's simply a creative genius. I sent her some Pooches and Pickups so I could see what sort of wonderful creation she'd whip up. And I am simply gobsmacked (yes... I've been itching to use that since everyone was bantering it about with all the royal wedding excitement).

Oh my goodness, right? Is that not the very most adorable thing? It's a quillow! Or a planket! I really, really, really need one of these. Don't you just want to snuggle up under that immediately? And I love how its been embroidered. So sweet...

~nova's planning on posting some process shots and perhaps even writing a tutorial for how to create one of your very own. And to get you started, she's hosting a giveaway for a FQ set of Pooches and Pickups. So skeedadle on over to her blog and leave a comment with what you'd make if you're the winner. She'll be drawing the winner this Saturday May 14 (Aussie time) so off you go! :)

Thanks so much Nova. I have the most gigantic crush on your quillow.
xoxo

Red Pepper Quilts Stacked Coins Quilt from Pooches and Pickups

I'm just having so much fun seeing quilts from Pooches and Pickups starting to come to life. The uber-talented Rita at Red Pepper Quilts created this adorable stacked coins quilt. Oooooo... So pretty!! She's done a really wonderful job mixing the 6 prints in the collection with some really lovely coordinating Kona Cottons from Robert Kaufman. I think I'm especially fond of the single pop of black on the top right side. And the little strips of Pooches just make me smile.

Image from Red Pepper Quilts

Image from Red Pepper Quilts

Hurry over to Red Pepper Quilts where Rita is hosting a giveaway for a full FQ set of Pooches and Pickups. She'll be drawing the winner on Wed 5/11.

Rita, thank you so much for creating something so fantastic from my fabric. Its always so fun to see your creations and I just adore the quilt. It's simply precious!

Mad zipper skills | Nesting Chairs Pouches

I stumbled across this great shot of these little sweet little zippered pouches by applecyder and was completely inspired to conquer my anxiety over sewing with zippers.  Aren't they darling?!

In her post, applecyder shares links to a few tutorials she's used and the one from Kelby Sews really made the whole concept finally click together. It even shows how to make the tidy little tabs that cover up the zipper ends (aha!!!).

A friend of mine's daughter Hailey (Hi Hales!) uses the term 'mad skills'. Which just makes me giggle. But I have to say, when I sewed up these 2 little zipper pouches, I started feeling all 'mad skill-y'. Look at me sewing zippers! And they're not all munged up and my bag doesn't look like a 2 year old made it!

And for the 2nd project in a row, my seam ripper hasn't made an appearance. I think that's why I was feeling all sassy and mad skill-y when they were done...

I even happened to have a yellow and orange zipper in my stash which were a perfect match to my Nesting Chairs fabric. (The fabric is available in my store here.) The finished size is 7.5" x 8" and they're the perfect size to hold my laptop cables and all the miscellaneous purse goodies that are always floating around at the bottom of my bag. I used some mid-weight interfacing so they have some structure and are really light weight but aren't too bulky.

Next on the skills list: If anyone knows of any tutorials for how to use these little flexiframes clasps (from unhandbag) and be able to cover the hinges, would love it if you'd share :)

Pickup Parking Quilt

Jacquie over at Tall Grass Prairie Studio has done it again. I love Jacquie's style and was super excited to see what she'd create with Pooches and Pickups. I sent her some FQs so she could play with them and show off what she's created. And she's got a full FQ set to giveaway to one of her readers! Head over there to register to win. BUT don't go until you read my gushing post over her quilt and what she's doing with it...

Meet Jacquie's Pickup Parking (from Pooches and Pickups) quilt. Gasp, right? Jacquie is not only a supremely talented lady, I'm just so deeply touched with how generous she is. She created this incredibly fun twin sized quilt that any litte boy would love. And she's donating the quilt to Basics in NYC which is a program that collects quilts for homeless families. It simply makes my heart sing to know Jacquie's quilt is going to a little boy who really needs something special.

Is that not simply one of the cutest things you've ever seen? I love everything about it. The parking spots, the license plate, the quilting!!!

So NOW you can scoot over to Tall Grass Prairie Studio to register to win a FQ set of Pooches and Pickups and read how the quilt came to be. It's such a sweet story.

Jacquie: Thank you so much for taking my fabric and turning it into such an amazing creation and truly kind gift. The quilt is so creative, fun and some little boy is just going to squeal with delight when he gets it. You're simply wonderful!