…and the winner of Little Bits Quilting Bee is #19, Sarah. Congratulations! And all the rest of you can order a copy of the book!
My Sewing Room
I’m starting to outgrow my space again. With plans to get another machine and a big project coming up, I need to get organized. In the past, I was keeping all my fabric down the hall in a separate closet, but it really needs to be in front of me. Now I have a lot of jumbled piles on various shelving. At some point, I need to face the fact that my fabric will not be in neat little stacks, so maybe storage with doors? The two photos above left show what the room looked like before I wrote 1, 2, 3 Sew. I had just painted and gotten it all organized for the Craft Spaces feature over on CRAFT. And then on the right is a photo taken last spring, with a quilt top draped on the mantel. And what to do with the mantel, which totally impedes my space.
Now I’ve asked you folks over on Twitter for some storage advice and this seems to be a pretty hot topic! So, let’s hear some more ideas. What is your best advice for getting organized?
Costumes
Chaos. Halloween always turns into chaos for us and trying to get a photo of the girls as trick-or-treaters are starting to arrive is sure to be a bust. My house is a wreck, but I managed to get both kids into DIY costumes yesterday. I have my priorities.
Here we have Mary and her little (completely uncooperative) lamb. I made a little lamb costume for the dog, but he hated it and just continued to jump and twist around trying to bite it off. The dress is Burda 9702 and the staff is a coat hanger wrapped in quilt batting and stuffed into a fabric tube.
And my older daughter was a gumball machine. We saw the idea over on Dollar Store Crafts and made our own version using two plastic bowls, pom-poms, an embroidery hoop stuffed and covered with fabric for the top and aquarium tubing in the skirt. Parenting tip: when you have to make air holes for your child, you probably haven’t picked the best costume! We only let her wear the top for 10 minutes at a time, and there is also a vent in the bottom part with mesh for breathing — I tried it on and it’s hot, but breathable. (Just so you know that I am not a completely terrible parent.) She won Funniest Costume at our school carnival and was a big hit last night trick-or-treating, never mind the fact that she could barely see anything after dark.
This is the same kid who went as Violet Beauregarde a couple of years ago. I begged her to be a headless Barbie this year, but she wasn’t interested. Maybe next year. You can read my post about costume lessons learned from a couple of years ago here. I am so ready to move on from Halloween. Onward to the next holiday!
Happy Halloween
Happy Halloween! These are some drawings that my kids made that I scanned and traced in Illustrator to use on their school Halloween carnival invitations. They love to see their drawings turn into digital cartoons.
Hope you have a fun and safe Halloween. Costume update tomorrow, maybe.
Quilt Market
If you’re not familiar with Quilt Market, it’s the semiannual event where fabric and quilting notions manufacturers bring their new lines to sell to retailers. I just got back from Houston today, and I am worn out and hoarse from talking way too much. This was my first quilt market and the best part was meeting so many great people! It was somewhat overwhelming. You can see my bit of the Moda booth above with a quilt that I designed and Moda had sewn for me. Thanks to Moda for helping me out with that one! You can see all the prints in my Quilt Blocks collection in an earlier post here. The fabric will be shipping to stores in April 2012.
There were so many beautiful new fabric collections that I couldn’t begin to list them all here, but I will give you a few of my favorites. First, at the Moda booth, I was thrilled to meet all the great designers, who are as nice as they are talented. And it was exciting to be a new designer along with two incredible artists, Malka Dubrawsky and Lucie Summers. Both have fantastic new collections.
Lucie’s collection features the designs that you’ve seen on her fabulous screenprinted fabric in her Etsy shop, Summersville. And I’m so excited to buy and use this fabric!
And Malka’s collection captures the look of her vibrant batik fabrics. I think this fabric will sell like crazy.
As always, I love everything that Cloud 9 Fabrics produces and I was delighted to see their adorable new Ed Emberley collection, as you can see below. They also have some other fabulous things coming soon. Gina and Michelle are two smart women who are doing such a terrific job with their business.
Melody Miller‘s new collection for Kokka is fantastic, as usual. How cute are those typewriters with hearts?
Here are some photos that I took at Market, but I missed lots of booths and didn’t get to meet everyone.
Betz White and her new Stitch collection, Cynthia & Jason Mann of Birch Fabrics, Julie Comstock of Cosmo Cricket with Lucie Summers and Malka Dubrawsky, a play tent in the Cloud 9 Fabrics booth, Deborah Moebes with Jenean Morrison and Lizzy House, Carrie Bloomston of Such Designs.