Bee Imaginative quilt top

I got this top, from the last bee I was in - Bee Imaginative, finished up yesterday!

I love it. I think that when it comes to bee quilts, it's a balancing act of asking for a block that allows for creativity but will also lead to a group of blocks that work together... Thanks to all of the bee members for their great blocks!!

The top started with these fabrics...

...and a request to be inspired by this photo.

(which I discovered over here on Cathy of California's blog. BTW - if you don't read her blog you should. Nothing but inspiration all the time.)

I can't wait to quilt it. I might long arm it... I'm determined to make this my Summer Of The Longarm! I will get past that learning curve!!

Block Party book video

My twin sister, Cate, is a film editor.  Sometimes that comes in handy!!  Check out this great promo that she put together for Block Party.

The blog tour is starting on June 20th so say tuned for more details!

American Quilter Magazine

Hi everyone! Have you seen the latest issue of American Quilter Magazine?

There's a big article in there about The Modern Quilt Guild and how Latifah and I started it!

It's a great article! I love to see a traditional quilting magazine directly acknowledge the difference between modern and traditional quilters with a very positive and accepting "there's room for all of us" sort of approach.

This has always been my personal feeling as well (I truly can't comprehend some of the feelings out there - in either direction - we're all quilters and most of the world thinks we're all lame!) and it thrills me to see it reflected in the pages of a traditional quilting magazine. I thought I'd post the entirety of Christine Brown's (the magazine's editor) intro to the the issue because I truly appreciate what she has to say.

Hope you all have a great week. I know I will because I've finished up my latest freelance job and I'm back to sewing sewing sewing!!

Book signing party!

Another event for those of you in the Los Angeles area... A little party for my book, Block Party next Friday the 17th at Sew Modern!  Come say hello and have some wine and cheese. All of the quilts from the book will be there too, so maybe you wanna come on by?? Hope to see you there!

Denyse Schimdt is coming to LA!

Hope you can make it if you're in the area!

All finished.

The Nice Baby Quilt is all finished.  So simple. It was perfect for needing to sew up a quick gift for friends.

I used lots of linen and Kona Ash which are very close in value. They really make the greens, yellows and bit of pink pop out of the blocks.

I used up my last bit of this Castle Peeps pink stripe with the binding and it was just a bit too short so I added some solid pink to make it long enough.

I'm finishing up my day job this week and will be back at full time quilting shortly! So many project and plans to tackle... I can't wait!!

The Nice Baby Quilt

I got some good sewing time in this weekend after weeks away from my machine. It was so nice to be reunited.  I took the time to work on a baby quilt for some friends having a baby girl. Their last name is Nice so I made The Nice Baby Quilt! I picked fabric...

I pieced...

I basted...

And I got the whole thing quilted and bound!

Just the hand stitching of the binding now and I'll be done. Sometimes it's really nice to sew up a fast quilt.

Hope you all enjoyed your long weekends as much as I did!

All Block Party all the time!

The reason I went to Market in the first place is that Kristen and I were promoting Block Party.

We did a schoolhouse (which are these 30 minute presentations) to tell shop owners about the book.

We talked and talked (something that Kristen and I have no problems doing! ha!)...

and we showed all of the quilts that the Block Partiers made for the bee and book.

Jacquie and Rashida, who were both in the bee, were nice enough to help us out with the quilt holding!

Then the next day we had a super fun book signing!

From here, keep an eye out! We are organizing a blog tour and the book is going to be on shelves so soon!!

And if you're interested, you can see all of my Market photos here!

Spring Market MQG Meetup

A quick little recap post is over on The MQG blog! Check it out!

Market Whirlwind

Wow. For a couple of years now I've seen the blog posts about other people going to Quilt Market and it always looked like so much fun. I wasn't wrong. It's an amazing time! It flies by and it's tiring and your feet hurt at the end of every day but it sure is a hell of a lot of fun! It is almost surreal (but oh so wonderful!) to suddenly have everyone you know online all in one place together! I'm going to blog about a couple of events that happened soon, but meanwhile, my three favorite things that I saw at Market (aside from people or things I was involved in):

The Michael Miller inspiration wall.

This booth!

And Yoshiko Jinzenji's amazingly beautiful fabric:

Back soon with more!

Are you going to Spring Market?

I'm headed there on Wednesday and I hope to see you there! Please join us:

The Modern Quilt Guild Meet Up Friday, May 13th at 8:00 PM at the Marriott’s Destinations Lounge

Looking forward to meeting so many of my online friends in person!

A plea for your vote.

Hey all! I'd mentioned it before, but just one more time, would you mind please clicking on over to Apartment Therapy and voting for my sister's super cute house in their Small Cool Contest?? She is close to winning her division but she has recently slipped to second place. Think you could help move her to the top?

There's so many of you reading, and it would REALLY make a difference if just 50 or 60 of you please please vote! Voting ends Sunday at noon (EST) and you didn't hear it from me but her competition has a wagon wheel coffee table. So let's just do the right thing and vote for Cate, pleeeeeeeease!

Thank you so much!!

Quiet

Things certainly have been quiet over here on the ol' blog, huh? Hope you all had great weekends.  I finished up a quilt that you'll see more of down the line. Lots of behind the scenes sewing happening over here!

Later this week I leave town for the first of three trips, all happening in May.  I'm so excited for Quilt Market!  Mellow blog means busy life, right??

Block Party...

For REAL!

I got an advanced copy earlier this week and it's so crazy to finally have it here in my hands!  Monday  is my birthday and I'd say that this is a pretty great present!

It's been a long process getting to this point. In October of 2008 (!) Kristen emailed me to see if I might want to start a bee with her. It was just one month later that she mentioned the idea of a book and we were instantly off and running with the idea.

Block Party is about quilts and community. In finding quilting a few years ago, I also found community and I really think that the book captures the spirit of that. There have been great friendships made through the bee.

And needless to say, it's a huge thrill that Denyse Schmidt, whose book inspired me to start quilting in the first place, wrote an amazing foreward for us!

And here's a just a couple of the 12 quilts in the book!

I really couldn't be happier with the amazing job that Stash Books did.  It comes out so soon and I hope that you all like it too!

Quilted Pillow Tutorial

I wrote up a simple quilted pillow tutorial for Janome recently. You can find it here!

Such pretty stitches.

And now - the winner of Modern Log Cabin Quilting! Random number generator gave me number 19 out of 223 comments! So that's Alice R. who says: "I love the tweaking of the traditional log cabin. What a beautiful book – I have book lust big time!" Congrats Alice - keep any eye out for an email from me!

And one last thing, Cate, my twin sister has her house in Apartment Therapy's Small Cool contest and it would be so great of you if you could click on over and "favorite" her place. You have to sign in or create an account but 1) I figure a lot of you already have an Apartment Therapy sign in name and 2) if you don't it just takes a second to create one! Thank you!! I'm pulling for her and her place is seriously so cute.

Modern Log Cabin Quilting Blog Tour & Book Giveaway

When Susan Beal asked me to be a part of the blog tour for her new book, Modern Log Cabin Quilting I jumped at the chance.

If you've been reading my blog for any length of time you're certain to know that I have had quite the love affair with the log cabin block.

There was a time when I would sew pretty much nothing but!  There's so much room for creativity with them and as a beginning quilter I was comfortable there.  I loved that I had so much room to explore design while also using just this one simple construction method.  Modern Log Cabin Quilting shows just how much this is the case. Check out these two amazing and completely different quilts, both with log cabin blocks.

Pretty great, right?  The book is filled with ten wonderful quilt patterns and loads of cute home dec.projects...

...and bags too!

The beautiful photography really shows off the fun and fresh atmosphere of all of the projects.

The generous people at Potter Craft have been kind enough to offer up a copy of the book for you! Just leave a comment on this post and you'll be entered to win. (US residents only please.)  Good luck!

I'll leave the giveaway open through the weekend and announce a winner on Monday!

Blue.

Lots of it in this quilt!

Plus a little gray and just a tiny bit of golden yellow. And I seem to be on a dense straight line quilting kick these days.

A friend from the LAMQG is adopting from Ethiopia and I made this quilt for Linus, her little baby boy!

Otherwise, did you see that Challenge 3 of Project Modern was announced? Check it out here!

My weekend.

First some piecing...

...and then some quilting!

Now I'm stitching the binding.

What did you get done this weekend?

So busy!

So awhile back I promised myself that I wouldn't blog about not blogging and here I am breaking that promise.  Being freelance with my work, my quilting free time ebbs and flows.  After a very long time just quilting a ton (mostly stuff I can't post here!), on Monday I started back up on a job.  So I'm in an ebb and I will be for about three months.  I'll miss my sewing machine but the paychecks will ease the pain. Meanwhile, the fabrics for the next quilt have been pulled!

Oh gray - why can't I quit you?!?

Can't wait to get cutting and sewing this weekend!

Apartment Therapy

Hey all! I'm super excited that the lovely Bethany from Apartment Therapy came and shot my sewing space recently.

Check out the full post here!