If you are headed to New York City this weekend for the largest surface design show of the year, come see us under the Little Big Top.  We are looking forward to visiting with our great licensees and our wonderful artist friends. We’ll be sure to tell you all about it when we return! Ballyhoo! (I know that’s actually a noun, but I think it sounds like “Onward!” in circus language.

We’re so excited about the Quilt Market debut of Cuteville County Fair, our newest independent-quilt-shops-only collection with Henry Glass Fabrics!

International Quilt Market is coming up this weekend in Portland, and although we can’t be there, our county fair critters will be.  If you are a quilt shop owner going to Portland, please head over to the Henry Glass booth and take a gander at Cuteville County Fair.  It’s chock full of all-American prize-winning critters combined with fresh new takes on some favorite coordinates, like a jumbo bandana border, a chunky gingham and a perfect paisley.

The fabrics will be shipping at the end of September 2013, which is perfect timing for bright summer picnic quilts (or perhaps bold and cuddly Christmas gifts for the super-efficient quilter!) One of the most fun aspects of this collection is that we were able to create a suite of great free downloadable projects.  You can already see them here on the Henry Glass site.  Here is a quick peek at the page o’ projects … it almost looks like a quilt in and of itself!

As soon as the fabric is available, we will be sharing the projects with you in more detail. (Thank goodness the magic elves at Henry Glass can make such excellent patterns for our ideas.)  For example, I (Cathy) am actually learning to sew.  I know.  I can’t believe it, either. But it’s true. And the first thing I plan to make is one of these cute nursery pillows. My goal: that it actually turns out to be square!

Another of our favorite projects – and very easy – is a 4th of July picnic set.  We cannot wait to make these fun coordinating napkins.  In fact, I might make the napkin set before I try that square pillow.

And, for those of you, who have a special baby in your future, we have created projects to decorate the entire nursery.  No better theme for a best-in-show baby than a blue-ribbon nursery.  We love using the jumbo bandana print for the dust ruffle and the valance.  And, depending on where you live, you might even see a cute little goat, like this one, peeking in the window.

Well, we better stop here, as this post was actually meant to be a sneak peek! But, as soon as Cuteville County Fair arrives, we’ll be whipping up some fun, and maybe a pie or two to go with it.

Wishing you a prize-winning week! Cathy and Ellen

The folks at SURTEX asked us to write a guest blog post for their site.  With the biggest surface design trade show coming up in only a few days  … (I won’t say the exact number for fear of scaring the living daylights out of those of you exhibiting) … we thought SURTEX artists and exhibitors might need a little bit of stress relief … and perhaps some massages. Since we are not trained in the art of massage, we have sent along a little message of encouragement, so please visit the SURTEX site for a few words of comfort and calm.

Happy Mother’s Day to all the great moms out there … and you know who you are!  Love, Us

…a bright new project is in the works!

Wishing you a colorful day from Cathy Heck Studio!

Today we have a guest blogger, Julianna, amazing middle Heck sister and current advanced graphic design student at VCUarts, to share one of her class assignments.  She has been working with a group on a semester-long project that will culminate in the design of an instructional interactive media piece.  Their subject: how to make home-brewed kombucha!

We’d noticed this new drink “growing” in our grocery stores and had not yet had the guts to try it, but since Jules was embracing it in such a big way, we each had one small sip … and … we liked it!  So, Jules is here to share some of her experiences growing SCOBYs and a few of her mobile app designs.

Here’s Jules:

For the past couple of months my apartment has smelled like a kombucha tea factory. Why, do you ask? Well, I’ve been a kombucha brewing queen. I have mastered the art of home-brewed kombucha, and am now an official kombucha nerd. Though the appearance of the murky liquid looks like a potion that a toddler would make at the dinner table, kombucha is a tasty and fragrant tea filled with probiotics and other nutritious goodies that help clean and fortify the different systems in the body.

The semester-long assignment for our interaction class involved working in a group to develop a “How To” web or tablet application that would teach users a subject and then deliver a product to them.  My team decided to create an app that would teach users how to make kombucha tea at home.  I had always been curious about the cloudy tea with crazy prices and was very skeptical of the positive results.  This project was a perfect excuse to put kombucha to the test!

I am now a true believer in the nasty, icky, and oftentimes-unappealing tea that can be found in specialized food stores.  However, being a daily consumer can be a serious financial investment.  Luckily, there is another option:  home-brewed kombucha, and this app (when it’s finished) will guide you through the whole process!

Above, I have shared a couple of the screens that I have been developing.  By the end of the semester, I will have created a workable app that is clickable, scrollable, and interactive.  For now, I continue to develop the many different screens that will make up such an application.

It’s been a fun project (a little gross at times), but I’ve managed to convert Cathy and Ellen to kombucha consumption along the way, so it’s already been instructional and it isn’t even in the app store yet!

Thanks, Jules, for sharing your recent work with us!  See you at SURTEX!

I can’t wait!  (I’ll bring the ‘bucha!)

On our way back up the great state of California, my husband and I stopped and hiked in Joshua Tree and Sequoia Parks and then took Route 99 up the middle of the San Joaquin Valley.  We’d seen in one of the motel guidebooks that Exeter was known for its many murals, so we parked on the nearly abandoned Main Street on a sunbaked Saturday afternoon and were not disappointed.

The city of Exeter has 29 murals, and for such a tiny town, that seemed like a lot.  We walked up and down the three main streets, mural watching and wondering if all of the orange trees lining the road on the way meant that everyone in Exeter drank fresh OJ all the time.

We never located a fresh OJ stand, but there were several murals dedicated to the orange theme.  Now, in the grocery store, we like thinking the oranges we’re buying are Exeter natives.

We’ve loved Luna Garcia pottery for a long time here in the studio, so I was super excited to be able to visit the actual store and workshop while we were in LA.  There is a back room where you can find pieces that are slightly different from the main collection, and I wanted to buy a few to celebrate the trip.

My husband and I have seven Luna Garcia dishes – many of them from our wedding – and love them.  The four colors we chose were celadon, pistachio, butter, and mustard – but here’s a full chart of the current colors they offer.  In the back room, I also found a subtly gorgeous slate gray color.

Cindy Ripley, the owner and founder was there to tell me that only a few weeks before, Robert Downey Jr. had stopped by and ordered a full set of slate gray and butter dinnerware.  The gray is technically discontinued, but Cindy laughed about how quickly they opened up the old glazes for RDJ.  I can’t resist the Ironman either, and Cathy’s birthday was right around the corner, so this is what just arrived in Austin: The Luna Downey Jr. combo.

For Spring Break, we drove down Route 1 from San Francisco to LA, excited to see Big Sur – both of us thinking it was one specific thing, like a giant rock in the shape of a horse just off the coast or something like that – some pinnable dot on a map.  Apparently, according to the park ranger who was very nice when I asked where exactly “the Big Sur” was, it is the whole stretch of coastline from Monterey Bay all the way to Hearst Castle.  And it’s gorgeous.

Toward the bottom, there is a stretch of coastline where sea lions beach themselves for the winter to mate, and now that it’s spring, they must be pretty tired of it.  We drove for several miles of sea lion littered sand, and the whole herd (apparently a group of sea lions can also be called a raft) was pretty much passed out.  Every now and then a flipper would flip some sand up over a rotundity or a snout would puff a protesting puff, but most of the lions were so beached it almost looked like hard work to stay that procumbent.

Here were some of my favorite poses (I feel like they should have names):

This last one looks like she washed up on shore nose first.

I thought they were so funny, I did some gesture sketches in an attempt to capture the feeling of utter lethargy, though perhaps throwing a wad of wet clay on the floor would have been more appropriate.

Here’s to sleeping like a sea lion!

Before the Easter bunny arrives on Sunday, we thought you might like to see one more painted egg, and this one is served to you on fabric. We are delighted that Ellen’s Lithuanian Easter Egg pattern was just voted as one of the top ten winners at Spoonflower!  Lithuanian Easter eggs are similar to the Pysanky-style eggs you have seen in our previous posts, but they seem a bit more refined, usually dyed with only one color, while preserving the original white color of the egg. Each one is a delicate gem, and now you can buy yards of them!

Spoonflower is offering fat quarter bundles that include all ten winners or you can also buy it directly from the Cathy Heck Studio Spoonflower page. Why not get an early start for next year’s Easter frocks?! (I just said that so I could use the word ‘frocks’ which is so underused these days!) Happy Easter!