thelongthread – Page 88 – the long thread

October 30, 2011October 31, 2011

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.

October 26, 2011

Halloween Thumbprint Art

Here’s a quick and easy project that would be great for a class Halloween party — thumbprint art inspired by Ed Emberley. I’m looking forward to Cloud 9’s upcoming collection of Ed Emberley prints, which inspired me to buy a couple of drawing books for my kids. The pumpkins above were made by my six-year-old and I especially like the crying pumpkin! So sad.

I thought this would be a simple craft for our Halloween carnival this past weekend. We made bookmarks; and since the kids were all different ages, we put out different colored ink pads, made some samples and let them have at it in a pretty free form way. I think the key to getting younger kids to make decent-looking art for a project is to limit their choices. So with preschool kids, it would be a good idea to stick with pumpkin thumbprints and let them draw all kinds of different faces. Older kids can get more creative and make bats, monsters, spiders and witches.

My older daughter has spent hours over the past few weeks working on different kinds of thumbprint art from this book, as you can see below.

And on a different note, Chronicle Books is having a Halloween book sale! Use code HALLOWEEN at checkout for 30% off plus free ground shipping. Be sure to pick up a copy of 1, 2, 3 Sew! Get a head-start on your holiday shopping! The offer expires Monday.

October 20, 2011

Felt Pencil Toppers

I’ve spent the past month helping plan my daughters’ school carnival and it’s been a ton of work. Please remind me how to say no when someone asks me to volunteer! The event is this Saturday and really, it should be fun for the kids.

We’ve got kind of a happy monster/old school carnival theme going on and one of the crafts the kids will be making are these felt pencil toppers, which I made for the next book in the Australian Kids’ Crafternoon series: Felting. As far as I can tell, the book is not available in the U.S. right now, but you resourceful people may be able to find it.

Anyway, the kids will be making this modified version of the pencil toppers with inexpensive felt, wider cuts, no mouth and stick-on googly eyes. It’s one of those crafts that the kids need to be able to do in 5 minutes and we may have up to 200 kids making them. So we’ll see how that goes! We’re also making Ed Emberley inspired thumbprint bookmarks — I’ll share those with you soon if I get a chance.

October 18, 2011October 18, 2011

Betz White’s Project Upcycle

Betz White invited me to preview her new Craftsy video class, Project Upcycle. So much fun! I love the idea of online classes that you can watch at your own pace, and revisit as often as you like. In this class, Betz focuses once again on upcycling vintage materials into something new with five easy projects. You can also ask Betz questions and interact with her and other class viewers. Then you can upload your finished project photos and share them with the Craftsy community.

I tried out her reversible wrap skirt pattern. Of course I can never completely follow directions, so I modified the wrap skirt pattern to make a girl’s skirt with solids and one of my new Quilt Blocks prints, as you can see below. Betz’s instructions were clear and easy to follow and it was great to sew with a friend!