WIP Wednesday: The Calm Before the Storm

I now know the true meaning of the phrase "not enough hours in the day." Because, for real, there aren't. With my Sewing Summit teaching gig coming up and a million other things floating around in my head, my to-do list is never-ending! But I think I've been remarkably calm in the face of it. Just taking it one day at a time, doing what I can, and not freaking out. Yay me. : )

 This week I mostly worked on a baby quilt for a friend who's expecting a girl, after two boys. I was kind of at a loss about the design of this quilt until I came across this cute paper-pieced block. It's actually a traditional block from the book The Quilter's Album of Patchwork Patterns by Jinny Beyer, and I drafted the paper-piecing pattern for it myself. Yet another example of a traditional block that I would have sworn was modern. : )

The official name of the block is "Rainbow," but since that's hardly an appropriate name for this particular quilt, I'm thinking of calling it "Cartwheels." Baby's not due quite yet, so I'm bringing this little quilt to Sewing Summit to use as a sample in the Foundation Paper Piecing class that I'm teaching with Elizabeth.

Speaking of Sewing Summit, a few other class samples are on my to-do list as well. In case you haven't noticed, I looooove paper-piecing, so I'm all dorky-excited about showing people what they can do with this technique! And I'm thinking a little of Sweetwater's new collection Mama Said Sew will have to make its way into at least one of my samples. (It's in stock at Pink Castle ... go and get it!)

Last but not least, I signed a contract today to speak about "Modern Quilting and the Online Quilting Community" at a traditional quilt guild meeting in May. Gulp. I'm excited, but also nervous about it already! Between this and teaching at Sewing Summit, I'm thinking a public-speaking class might not be a bad idea ...

So what are you working on this week? Here are the linky rules:

1. Link up any post from the past week that features at least one unfinished work-in-progress (WIP).
2. Somewhere in your post, you must link back here to my blog. (Or grab my WIP Wednesday button for your sidebar.)
3. Comment on at least a few of the other WIP Wednesday links. Because what fun is a linky party without comments? : )

Happy Wednesday, everybody!

Lifesavers Quilt Places Third

Remember my Lifesavers quilt from the EZ Dresden Challenge blog hop? Well, guess what? It took third place in the challenge!

I am just floored that out of all the fabulous, creative, beautiful quilts entered, my little quilt placed. Even third place had the most amazing prize package—100 spools of Gutterman cotton thread in every color of the rainbow, a Sidewinder bobbin winder from Simplicity, two fat-quarter bundles from Robert Kaufman, batting from Fairfield, and rulers and a book from Darlene Zimmerman. And my quilt will be displayed in the Simplicity booth at Fall Quilt Market. Wow!!

It's been quite a month for me. My Supernova quilt went off to Houston to hang at International Quilt Festival, an honor I still can't quite believe. A quilt of mine is appearing in a new book coming out from Martingale. And now this. Seriously?? I can't believe all of this is happening to me.

I love designing and sewing quilts. I would do it even if this blog didn't exist, and even if I didn't have these amazing opportunities to see my quilts published or be selected for awards. Most of the time I feel like I just lucked into all of this. I mean, take a look at Pinterest or the Fresh Modern Quilts Flickr group—there are so many talented people out there, making some incredible quilts. The fact that my quilts have been singled out for some of these honors feels like it's due as much to happenstance as anything else. I was just in the right place at the right time. Or maybe my blog was. : )

But at the same time, I know I've worked hard on my quilts and on this blog, occasionally wondering why exactly I put all this time and effort in. I've stayed up until the wee hours of the morning sewing and blogging, because that midnight-to-2-a.m. slot was the only time I had that day to get anything done. Then things like this come along to make me feel like that time and effort was well-spent. So thank you, Salt Lake Modern Quilt Guild, the EZ Dresden Challenge judges, and the sponsors. You made my week!

You can see all the other EZ Dresden Challenge winners right here. The grand prize-winning quilt by Jenny Cameron is stunning! Congratulations to all.

WIP Wednesday: Getting It Together

Why, hello, Wednesday—where did you come from? It snuck up on me again, you guys! And I don't have a lot to show you this week, since I basically spent the past seven days just finishing up my Candy Coated quilt.

Click here to check out the finished quilt. It was a fun one!

But I've got a brand new stack of fabric that I'm cutting into later today. This quilt will be a gift for a certain long-hoped-for baby. Yes, there are some narwhals in there—and apparently I'm really digging the whole gray/yellow/etc. color scheme lately!

So I'm relying on you all to make up for my lack of WIPpy-ness by linking up your own WIP posts! Here are the rules:

1. Link up any post from the past week that features at least one unfinished work-in-progress (WIP).
2. Somewhere in your post, you must link back here to my blog. (Or grab my WIP Wednesday button for your sidebar.)
3. Comment on at least a few of the other WIP Wednesday links. Because what fun is a linky party without comments? : )

Happy Wednesday, everybody!

Craft Book Month: Candy Coated from Sunday Morning Quilts

Thanks for stopping by for my day on the Craft Books Month blog hop! My project is "Candy Coated," the cover quilt from Sunday Morning Quilts by Amanda Jean Nyberg and Cheryl Arkison.

If you haven't picked up this book yet, you really should. I think I love every single pattern in there. So many I want to make, so little time! (There aren't many books out there I can say that about.) In fact, it was difficult to choose just one for this post. Fortunately, this quilt is going to be a wedding gift, so I ended up choosing the one I thought the happy couple would like the most and started gleefully chopping up my scraps.


I followed the pattern in the book to a T, and that's rare for me these days. (Another sign of how much I like this book!) I stuck with the three-color-scheme of the original quilt (although I used a different trio of colors), I cut all my string scraps to the sizes from the book, and I even quilted it the same as the original, with wavy lines going in the opposite direction of the strings.

The result is a fabulous scrap quilt that's still modern and not overwhelming scrappy. : ) I pretty much cleared out my gray scrap bin on this one—in fact, I even had to supplement a bit from my stash. And this was such a fun, low-pressure project to sew. Sewing strings together in this way is low-key and doesn't require a whole lot of thought or concentration, and that's exactly the kind of project I needed last week.

The back is just pieced together sections of coordinating fabric from my stash.


I think it's a great fall quilt. : )

Have you been following all the Craft Book Month posts over at Craft Buds? So many beautiful projects from craft books have been featured over there! And of course: Prizes. Need I say more? Here's the full schedule:

Sunday 9/2: Hopeful Threads / The Jolly Jabber
Monday 9/3: Stitchery Dickory Dock / Me Sew Crazy
Tuesday 9/4: Olive & Ollie / Sew Sweetness
Wednesday 9/5: Fabric Seeds / The Busy Bean
Thursday 9/6: CraftFoxes / Stitched In Color
Friday 9/7: Katie's Korner / A Prairie Sunrise

Week Two
Sunday 9/9: Sweet Diesel Designs / missknitta's studio
Monday 9/10: Sew Tara / Clover and Violet
Tuesday 9/11: Sew Fantastic / amylouwho
Wednesday 9/12: Projektownia Jednoiglec / Two More Seconds
Thursday 9/13: Ellison Lane Quilts / Don't Call Me Betsy
Friday 9/14: Live a Colorful Life / LRstitched

Week Three
Sunday 9/16: Fairy Face Designs / Canoe Ridge Creations
Monday 9/17: Inspire Me Grey / Freshly Pieced
Tuesday 9/18: Lindsay Sews / The Cute Life
Wednesday 9/19: The Littlest Thistle / Sew Crafty Jess
Thursday 9/20: Urban Stitches / imagine gnats
Friday 9/21: Sew Bittersweet Designs / The Plaid Scottie

Week Four

Link up your craft book project at Craft Buds from Sept 23-30 from your blog or Flickr account, and enter to win prizes. Winners will be announced on Monday, October, 1.

Winner of the Modernology Bundle

Congratulations to Mahoo! You're the winner of the Art Gallery Fabrics Modernology fat-quarter bundle, from my Easy Placemats tutorial post.

Mahoo said:

Look for an email from me! Thanks to everyone for entering!

WIP Wednesday: I'm Back!

Oops! Today is Wednesday, isn't it? Between adjusting to the new school year schedule and coming back from my WIP "vacation" over the summer, I completely forgot to post this earlier! Ahh, so many things to think about, not nearly enough space in my brain for all of it. : ) Sorry about that.

At any rate, I'm thrilled to be back to hosting WIP Wednesday! I missed you all! But I have to admit, the break I took for the past few months was pretty nice. : ) And I hope you enjoyed "meeting" some new bloggers and seeing their lovely projects. I want to send out another big thank you to all of my guest hosts! In fact, this summer's experiment went so well, I've decided to keep it up—I'm going to continue to have guest-hosts on the first Wednesday of every month. I've got a fabulous slate of bloggers lined up for you:

Oct. 3: Debbie - A Quilter's Table
Nov. 7: Svetlana - s.o.t.a.k. handmade
Dec. 5: Elizabeth - OccasionalPiece-Quilt
Jan. 2: Heidi - Boys, Buttons, and Butterflies
Feb. 6: Jenelle - Echinops & Aster
March 6: Claire Jain - Sewing Over Pins
April 3: Natalie - Greenleaf Goods

But for now it's all me. And what have I been up to lately?

Here's a fun project that's coming together quickly—this will soon be my version of "Candy Coated," the cover quilt from Sunday Morning Quilts by Cheryl Arkison and Amanda Jean Nyberg. Come back on Monday to see the (hopefully) finished quilt during my stop on the Craft Books Month blog hop!

I'm still making lots of these little improv-y log cabin blocks with my Oakshott Rubies ...

And this week I cut into this massive stack of Madrona Road yumminess! This is one of those collections where the more I look at it, the better it gets. Pink Castle still has lots of Madrona Road in stock, but it's going fast!

Your turn! What have you got going on? Here are the rules:

1. Link up any post from the past week that features at least one unfinished work-in-progress (WIP).
2. Somewhere in your post, you must link back here to my blog. (Or grab my WIP Wednesday button for your sidebar.)
3. Comment on at least a few of the other WIP Wednesday links. Because what fun is a linky party without comments? : )

Have a lovely week!

Easy Placemats: My New AGF Tutorial

Happy Monday! It's my turn again this week to share a new tutorial for Art Gallery Fabrics' Fat Quarter Gang. This time I'm showing you how to make some easy, ribbon-embellished placemats. So head over to the Art Gallery blog to check it out!

These placemats are made using one of my absolute favorite Art Gallery lines: Modernology! Want to win your own stack of Modernology fat quarters, so you can make something just as fabulous? All you have to do is leave me a comment, and follow Art Gallery on your favorite social media platform (Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest). I'll draw a winner on Friday. Have a wonderful week!

Friendship Quilts Blog Hop

Calling all children of the '80's! Have you heard about the Friendship Quilts Blog Hop going on right now, hosted by Diane of from blank pages ...?

If you remember making friendship bracelets and passing them out to all your friends on the playground, then you will love this blog hop. All the projects on the hop are inspired by friendship bracelets, '80s stylin', and most importantly, friendship itself. Check out some of the projects that have already been posted by some of the blog-hoppers:

By Melinda of Quirky Granola Girl 

By JanuaryT of Sew Sew Go 

By Whitney of The Peacock Tree

Such a great concept, right? I hadn't thought of it before, but friendship bracelets really are an amazing source of design inspiration for quilting. Diane's got a link to a source for thousands of friendship bracelet designs that could come in very handy for quilters. So head over to Diane's blog right now for all of that and more!

The blog hop runs for two more weeks, and then you'll get a chance to link up your own "friendship project"—any project for someone that is important to you. There are TONS of prizes for those who link up! And guess who gets to decide some of the winners of those prizes? That's right—it's me! Faith of Fresh Lemons Quilts, Megan of Canoe Ridge Creations, and I are judges. Thank you, Diane, for asking me to participate!

Plus, everybody is sharing goofy '80s pictures of themselves as part of the blog hop—and that might even include us judges. That's reason enough to follow along, right? Radical!

Catching Up

After an insanely busy and eventful summer, this week has been ... even more insane.

My oldest started all-day kindergarden this week, and like most moms, I'm feeling pretty conflicted about it. She's old for her grade, having turned 6 a few weeks ago, so it was definitely time for her to go. Still, it's been a big adjustment for everybody, including me and my younger daughter, who misses her like crazy! As I got ready to pack her lunch last night, I thought, "Seriously, she has to go there again tomorrow?" Guess I need to get used to this—it'll only be this way for the next 13 years, after all.

My younger daughter started preschool this week as well. She goes three mornings a week, and I admit that I'm not as conflicted about this one. LOL. Three mornings a week is a welcome break from a strong-willed 3-year-old, but still leaves us plenty of time to play (and butt heads!) the rest of the week!

So lots of sewing-ish things are happening around here as well. I packed up my Supernova quilt and shipped it off for the Modern Quilt Guild Showcase at International Quilt Festival in Houston! Supernova will also be traveling around the country with the rest of the MQG exhibit for almost a year afterwards, so I won't see this little quilt again for quite a while, which makes me kind of sad. But I'm excited about the adventure it's about to have! It's not unlike my kids going off to school, is it?

Here's another bit of excitement: My first-ever collaborative book project is now available for pre-order on Amazon! Modern Quilts from the Blogging Universe features quilts by 18 talented bloggers, plus their thoughts on modern quilting and blogging. I'm so honored to be included with all these amazing people! The book is gorgeous and it's very exciting to be published in book form.

My quilt is called "Candy Necklace." The shapes and colors reminded me of those candy necklaces I used to have as a kid. You can pre-order the book right now, and it will be available in December.

And speaking of books, have you seen the news about Craft Book Month, going on all this month at Craft Buds? It's a huge celebration of all things craft book-ish! I'm so excited to be participating in the blog hop this year, and can't wait to show you what I'm working on, which is from Amanda and Cheryl's amazing book Sunday Morning Quilts. (If you haven't picked it up yet, please do—it's packed with of great patterns for using up your scraps.) Today's Craft Book Month posts are by Katie of Katie's Korner and Sharon of A Prairie Sunrise, and my post goes live on September 17. Be sure to follow along, because of course there is tons of inspiration and giveaways galore.

I'll leave you with what I've spent the past day or two working on—I'm putting together a table runner with that beautiful stack of Oakshott Rubies that I got a while back. Yes, it's wonky! I can hardly believe it myself. Have a wonderful weekend!

WIP Wednesday: With Guest Host Emily of Mommy's Nap Time

Hello! I'm Emily and I blog over at Mommy's Nap Time. I'm really excited to be guest hosting WIP Wednesday this week!

This week I have a lot of projects up in the air - halfway done, partially done, nearly done. That's the way it goes. I like to go from one project to another frequently! It's been a crazy week this week with school starting and my guild's retreat coming up this weekend. I've been in plan/pack organize mode!

Here are some of the WIP's I'll be bringing with me to our retreat. Some of them are brand new projects, and some are just begging to be finished!

Lindsey's Quilt - project bag. Even the binding is prepared!

Lindsey's Quilt - I need to piece the back, baste and quilt it! I am pretty confident I can have this one big finish at the retreat!

Bella Bella {for someone special} quilt - this is a long-term project. It requires a lot of attention to details. I'm hoping to draft patterns for another paper pieced border. Perhaps I may even sew some of the pieces for that border. I'd be happy just looking at it once in a while at the retreat!

Scrap bins to make mug rugs

13 Mug rugs. These have been commissioned by my MIL for Christmas gifts. (The payment for these is helping me make my way to QuiltCon this winter!!!) They're for my MIL's employees + co-workers. I have free reign over design. I'm hoping to try some new things and let my guild member's projects inspire me.

Figure 8 Scarf. I really can't wait to make this one. It's taking self restraint to not finish it right now. My friend Emily and I decided to make them together at the retreat! That's always fun!

I have some fabric cutting, pattern testing, and a couple secret projects to work on too. Too many to list here. I like to have variety. I'm not used to being able to sew for hours at a time. I'm so used to breaking up my projects into little increments of time that having a huge chunk of time for sewing is fabulous. I get too ADD to focus on just one project!

Finishes of last week (no longer on the list!!)

• RATZ Swap  - name tags finished!
• August bee block - finished!
• Super secret project - finished!

Now it’s your turn to link up. Here are the rules:

1. Link up any post from the past week that features at least one unfinished work-in-progress (WIP)
2. Somewhere in your post, link back here to my blog. (Or grab my WIP Wednesday button for your sidebar.)
3. Comment on at least a few of the other links—because what fun is a linky party without comments?