For immediate release: the mild-mannered Little Robot and his loyal pup, Gif, have been featured in … not one, but two well-known quilting magazines. The lovable stars are featured in Better Home & Garden’s Quilts & More Spring 2012 issue on an adorable, yet super-easy quilt made from the Bot Buddies® flannels by Blue Hill Fabrics. The amazing team, Joanie Holton and Melanie Greseth of SewQuiltCraft.com created the quilt and you can even buy the Toy Box Quilt Kit from their site and make one of your own.


Another beautiful quilt designed with the Bot Buddies® cotton appears now in the Simple Sewing & Quilts Spring 2012 issue. Again, Melanie and Joanie (the real stars of this story, but don’t tell Little Robot) designed a playful quilt featuring the TurtleBots and FishBots border panels. Little Robot himself doesn’t actually show up on this quilt, but he is humble and understands that he has to share the limelight with his other bot buddies.) If you would like to be the star of your next baby shower, you can buy the Go Fish Kit from SewQuiltCraft.com, and whip up this great project.


If you are headed to Kansas City for the Spring International Quilt Market, be sure to stop by and see the Bot Buddies® fabrics in person. However, Little Robot will not be signing autographed copies of the quilt magazines until he learns his ABCs.

With our booth full of paint swatches and paint cans, we thought we needed painters’ aprons this year. So here are our booth uniforms ready to go. The great thing about these is that the perfect coordinating shoes will be the comfortable, yet hip, Jack Purcells to finish out the look.

Thank you to wonderful Kathy Buck, of the Monogram Lady shop, just up the road from our studio in Austin. As you can see, if you need any kind of monogram, she can make it happen!

SURTEX is right around the corner … May 20, 21 and 22! This great event is the global B2B marketplace for original art and design, where artists, agents and licensors connect with manufacturers and retailers to create the next best-selling products in every category under the sun … or under the rainbow, as the case may be.

If you are planning to be in New York for the show, please come by our booth. (#550) And, if you prefer to visit with your designers in Las Vegas, we will also be exhibiting at the International Licensing Expo June 12, 13 and 14, so come by our booth there. (#4825) And, if you would like to make an appointment for a specific time during either of the shows, please email us here. See you soon! Cathy and Ellen

This year, I had the great idea for a fun way to spend Spring Break as a family:  Spring Break Work Week right here in sunny Austin, Texas!  My idea was that Ellen could fly to the Austin office, and our two college gals could join us for one full week of trade-show-prep amusement. For college students, this is probably not the first idea that pops into their heads for an exciting Spring Break, but I had a list of great reasons to join the fun: 1) opportunity to earn extra spending money, 2) warmer weather in popular Austin, Texas–although that part didn’t exactly go as planned 3) we could try out the hip new Austin trailer foods between projects  4) do not have to dress up ever  5) airfare included 4) your mom/boss will love you forever (oh yeah, she would do that any way).

Happily, all three helpers arrived from states afar, and the work week began.  By the end of the week, our trade show booth props and marketing were finished.  I guess our holiday wasn’t exactly an episode of Studio Girls Gone Wild, but we had fun and felt very accomplished–at least from my point of view.  Here’s a little video snippet with another perspective of the action-packed week from two of my workers.

And, here are a few pictures of our busy week in the studio. As you can see, we have a ROY G BIV thing going on as the theme for our booth. However, our particular rainbow is actually PROY G BIV–we just had to add a little PINK to the front of the color spectrum.

Here is our wonderful new studio assistant, Erynn, who also joined the work week fun. And, yes, she did survive the sisterly banter, and we are happy to say, she is still with us.

If you would like to try a Spring Break Work Week at your home or workplace, you are welcome to borrow my list of compelling reasons for attending the event. I think the secret is to take off time for a movie or two, and feed your staff well. And, for those of you attending SURTEX in a couple of weeks, we are looking forward to seeing you there!

Recently, Alex Colombo, a fellow artist, and author of The Moon From My Attic blog, interviewed us (Cathy, the mom, and Ellen, the daughter) for her site.  Thank you Alex. It was fun for us to reminisce about our paths, which we discovered were paved with children’s books in the playroom and an art supply drawer in the kitchen.  If you know a budding little artist, you can learn some tips of the trade from the interview here. Happy drawing!

If the trees are budding and the birds are tweeting, then SURTEX is just around the corner. SURTEX happens every May in New York City.  The Javits Center is filled with artists, agents, manufacturers and retailers gathering together to begin the creation process for the next best-selling products in every category under the sun.  We were delighted to be asked again to write a guest blog post for the SURTEX site, and this year, we decided to share a few of the places which inspire us after show hours.  Enjoy this link if you are heading to New York for SURTEX or just heading to New York.  It even includes a Google map with the imagination stations marked. Bon Appétit!

P.S. If you have more Big Apple ideas for the creatively-bound (or attendees in need of post-show sustenance), please add to the comment box on the SURTEX blog.

Congratulations to our two winners of the Emma Collection fat quarter bundles selected by the random number generator.

Allyson, we come from a family of three girls and know that there is nothing better than a suite of matching twirly skirts – and the twirlier the better!

Michelle, 10-11-12 is the best birthday ever!  Congratulations!

Allyson and Michelle, we’ll be sure to contact you.  We’d also like to thank everyone else who submitted a comment.  We love reading all of them and will be sure to post some more fabric goodies in the near future, so stay tuned, and have a great week.

I had hoped to send you these bunny bag ideas in time for you to make them before Easter, but our deadlines set me behind on my best-kept-blog-post plans.  Thank goodness the real Easter bunny has many magic Easter elves to help him produce these treat bags without us! Hope you are having a wonderful day full of happy sweet surprises.

Every now and then, it’s fun to follow a sketch as it evolves.  Here is the mint colorway of the Lily Blossom pattern from our Emma collection:

and here are some early sketches that became foundations of many of the patterns in this group:

Since the pink and green of this collection has become so much a part of what it is, it’s funny to remember that originally, we tried so many different colorways.  Here are a few swatches we tested early on – even before several of the design elements were complete:

These are the two colorways we thought we were going to choose, until near the end, we decided to change the light pink version to the mint green version that was eventually printed:

And here is the strawberry colorway of the final design on cotton:

Well, there you go!  From start to finish.  The little sketch is all grown up!

And to celebrate this ready-to-leave-the-nest soft cotton Lily Blossom fabric, we are giving away two fat-quarter bundles with Lily Blossom and 6 of her coordinating patterns. (See photo below.)  To win, please write in the comment box below and let us know what you plan to make with your pretty-in-pink fabrics.  We will choose two winners randomly on Tuesday, April 10th at noon.

After a recent project using the fabrics from the Emma Collection (thank you Emily), this pile of scraps was left behind.  I suddenly felt like a mama bird and ran to get some eggs to fill the nest.  I am planning to hide these scraps in the garden just in case one of our yard birds wants to do a bit of decorating. Can’t you just hear her, “Honey, look what I found around the corner … I’m going to re-do the whole nest in pink and green … would you mind flying over and picking it all up? It might take a few trips.”

Hope you are all enjoying your springtime activities.  And, if you are wanting to do a bit of nesting with the Emma fabrics, you can buy them here, or here in the UK.