This sweet bundle of nap-worthy flannel is fresh off the presses this week!  Little Forest flannel for David Textiles under the CathyLoo brand should be hitting stores soon, and there are already a few bundles here on the Etsy site.

It’s fabric season here in the studio and we’re loving every minute of it.  These forest daisies remind me of the flowers popping up all over the lawns now that we’re only a few days away from the official start of Spring!

There are also still a few more days to enter the Peek-a-boo flannel giveaway.  Have a great week!

We love it when our new products arrive on the studio doorstep!  Since the manufacturing time is often several months, it’s fun to revisit designs we haven’t seen in a while.

Peek-a-boo, I love you! flannel for David Textiles under our CathyLoo brand arrived last week, and we love how soft and snuggly the flannel made these cute critters.

To celebrate, we’re giving away one of these 6-piece fat-quarter bundles to a randomly-selected commenter to this post!  And if you tell us another favorite game you like to play with your little one, we might try to translate it to soft fabric next season!  We will choose a winner on Thursday, March 21 at 10pm CST.

And here is a Peek-a-boo, I love you! camouflaged Easter egg made by Cathy!  (While we were together in Austin for QuiltCon, we snuck in a little Easter egg dying … more to come.)  This egg reminds me of a character from Monsters Inc. practicing its camo skills.  :)

We don’t have any links to online stores yet, because most of this collection is just shipping now, but we do have a few bundles here on the Etsy site, and we’ll be sure to post links when Peek-a-boo flannel becomes available.  Happy snuggling!

We’re excited to announce that our newest photo book for Shutterfly is live and online now!  The theme is called Glad Tidings.  It’s an elegant and sophisticated background for Christmas family photos with a rich color palette and large selection of words and embellishments inspired by the Christmas story.  Here are just a few examples of interior pages that you could make online with this group:

Designing a photo book with Shutterfly’s custom path is just like putting together a scrapbook with pages and photos and stickers, with a very sleek end product!  For example, with Glad Tidings, you can choose from these patterned background pages and add embellishments, words, and pattern bands to design your own custom layouts. Or, if you prefer (or are bumping up against a gifting deadline), you can upload your photos from a folder and autofill the pages with layouts that have already been designed by us (to work in any combination)!

Above is an example of our system for making sure all the embellishments can work on any background.  It’s fun to see all the different design possibilities with a click of the mouse!

Glad Tidings is our fourth custom path book for Shutterfly.  To see our other three baby-themed groups, you can select “Our Top Picks” or “Baby” in the Occasions panel of the Custom Path Style Store.

Happy scrapbooking in the digital age!

Are you already wrapping presents? Yeah, neither are we. But, here’s a little something that might get you started. Today we are guest bloggers for the C.R. Gibson blog where you can download (for free!) holiday gift tags that we created just for you. Just print, cut, and if you want to add a pop of color, mount them on colored card stock, like we did in the photo below.

And, if you need a foodie gift idea, we included our treasured Holiday Pecans recipe, which makes an excellent hostess gift. You will be the hit of the party (if you are very careful not to eat them all before you arrive). Let the holidays begin! Happy merry!

We’re back from Quilt Market in Houston, which was a quiet blast!  (Quiet because all the quilts muffle so much sound that we always feel like it’s an oddly peaceful trade show considering how many people are walking around.)

We had two new fabric collections coming out under the CathyLoo brand for David Textiles this season.  Here are some fun product shots of “Here-a-Hug, There-a-Hug” which is a bright and playful juvenile collection loosely based on the song, “Old MacDonald had a farm.”  We loved the above knapsack made from “Farmyard Friends” in green and “Counting Sheep” in red.  And below are two close-ups of the quilt made from all of the fabrics in the collection.

This all-over “Counting Sheep” pattern is so much fun:

And finally, here is the pattern for the whole quilt designed by Heidi Pridemore:

It was a lot of fun to see everyone and get excited about the next season of fabrics coming out of the studio!  Now back to the drawing board – with a quick sketch here, and painted flower there, here a toss, there a panel, everywhere some future flannel…  (We might have stayed up a bit late last night working on those new designs…)

Have a great weekend!

Love,

The Studio

Before we head to Houston for International Quilt Market, we have to take a moment to brag about the wonderful quilts that Heidi Pridemore of the Whimsical Workshop, created with our nursery fabrics for David Textiles for the last Quilt Market. This summer, the quilts came to Austin for a little photo shoot, so that we could share them with you for a some quilt-making inspiration.

And, If you suddenly need to make a quilt for a baby you love, we have some itchin-to-stitch fat quarters that you can win to get you started. Just comment below with the themes you would love to see next on our drawing boards, and we’ll pick a winner who will receive all three bundles!

The first quilt was created using fabrics from the Little Train collection. We love the way Heidi created this wonderful big train out of our little train pieces. And the hand-stitched touch around all the wheels makes it seem like this little train might just chug right off the quilt.

Below is a close-up of the handwork on the quilt, and a matching pillow, with an edging using the coordinating Luggage Labels pattern.

The second quilt was created from our Little Carousel group. The all-over Carousel Park design can be fussy-cut into little vignettes … almost like peeking through window panes to see all the fun happening at the park.


Here’s a close-up of one of the little scenic squares. It’s as though the quilt is telling a story, and your little napper can doze off getting to know all the critters in the park. Like, “Wait, look there, a little bunny is peeking around from behind the bush. Silly bunny. Come play with us.”

And the third quilt is a very handy quickie quilt made from the Play Day Pond collection. The entire center section is a panel ready to go. But if you have a hankering to add some borders, like Heidi did, this blend of Little Carousel Stripe with Froggie Plaid and Turtle Toss works great. Then, just top it off with Ducks Day Out around the edge.

Here’s another view of the panel and a closeup of the very appropriate wavy quilting that Heidi added to the outer border. We think this quilt is perfect for a pond-themed nursery or a picnic by the pond.
Thank you again Heidi, who is probably working into the wee hours preparing for market this weekend! We love your creations.

Now you show and tell! Here are three sets of fat quarters for one lucky winner. Let us know what favorite themes you like to see for baby fabrics, and our random-number-generator will choose a winner on Thursday, October 25 at 10pm.

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.

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.

These are sketches from our Berkeley-Austin studio convergence which Ellen mentioned in this post. While Ellen featured our healthy hike, I’m here to give you some tips for foodie finds and other fun discoveries to enjoy before and after wholesome excursions. Enjoy.

When we arrived in California, Ellen whisked us to a great restaurant in the Rockridge neighborhood of Berkeley/Oakland. A Coté was a cozy little café with cuisine inspired by Provence. The pomme frites were toasty, salty and extra perfect with the aioli sauce for dipping. The wine list was excellent, the cheeses divine, and recently, I have become a mussels searcher-outer, and theirs, perfumed with Pernod, are on the top of my list.
Friday was our day to visit with our friends at Shutterfly. (Watch for our three digital create-your-own books coming out this month!) We were fascinated with the follow-up work that had been added to the final files we had provided. It’s so satisfying to see the magic that occurs when we collaborate with creative designers who know how to use digital wizardry. And, they are friendly wizards, too!
As you know by now, I am a farm-hand-breakfast kind of gal. And, since we were headed off for a hike, morning sustenance was a must. In Albany (near El Cerrito), we discovered an excellent breakfast spot, the Royal Cafe. Surrounded by mid-century toasters and artifacts, we enjoyed a great breakfast with my beloved thick-sliced bacon, eggs, homefries, and since they are known for scones with lemon curd, we ordered that, too! I was fortified for a hike (and maybe a little meeting with my Weight Watchers counselor).
One day, we took a walk around the 4th Street District of Berkeley. It’s full of eclectic shops and favorites like Anthropologie (just had to pop in for a little Anthro-spiration). But we were actually on 4th Street for a reason: succulents. So we headed to the Cactus Jungle (but more on that in another post, because it deserves its very own shout-out!) Then, because we had passed a boat-like restaurant entrance a hundred times and wondered about it (Ellen said it always had a line outside on Sundays after church) we just had to try it…
… Spenger’s Fresh Fish Grotto. The same family has owned it since it opened in 1890. The fish was excellent. The ambience was a mix of old and new and the patrons were a mix of old and young. Our favorite bit of lore was the 34-carat diamond ring, which had been given to Hawaii’s Queen Kapiolani, which was displayed in a free-standing porthole near the entrance. It is quite something to behold and a little bit odd in its presentation, which makes it all the more amusing.
Saturday night we happened to find ourselves having dinner inside a great little theatre, The Rialto, where we were to see The Artist. The Rialto serves real food and it’s very tasty. However, as the opening credits began to roll, I took one small bite of my crunchy pickle. C-r-r-r-unch. Whoa, I can assure you, I did not take another bite of pickle during a movie about silent films!
One morning we grabbed our lattés at Café Fanny, another Alice Waters restaurant. (I just had to try it, because I read Fanny at Chez Panisse a bazillion times to the girls when they were growing up.) There isn’t much room to eat inside, but, oh my gosh, if it’s a pretty day for you, just go with your nose on, and sit outside, because the delightful scent that will waft over you will be from the well-known Acme Bread Company, right next door. Eau de Warm Bread. Mmm.
While we were in Berkeley, we planned to go by Stonemountain & Daughter. (I love that name) The store was filled with fabrics from floor to ceiling … and notions and books, and all things sewable. Our extra treat was seeing several of our juvenile fabrics mixed into the wonderful selection. Here are some pictures of them waiting on the shelves to become blankies and bags and booties.

So if you are headed to the Berkeley area, you might want to pop into some of these fun finds. And, if you have some favorite Bay Area Best Bets, we would love for you to share them with us and others headed out for some California dreaming.