Here is the finally finished ladder quilt that has been 90% complete for the past 8 months – barely squeaking by the finished-in-2011 deadline.  This quilt started in the sweltering summer, and I can remember pinning it in shorts with all the windows and doors open to bring in as much breeze as possible.  Now we can actually use it!

You might notice that the stripes are not straight.  The blocks were originally designed for a quilt that would look more like this, but when it was all spread out on the floor, the colors were not contrasting enough to pull it off – hence the simplified design.  Thanks to my East Bay Modern Quilt Guild friends for teaching me how to feature this little selvage swatch detail – it’s my favorite part:

Wishing you all a warm holiday season and lots of finished projects!

It’s feeling a lot like Christmas everywhere you look! Here in the studio, we look forward to the moment when we can put our little Pantone pine out on the table. Every year we decorate the studio tree with swatches that were left out in the sunny Texas studio too long, thus they were no longer matchable. Instead of throwing them away, we saved them for our little tree … I guess you could call it the Tree of Misfit Swatches. (I just had to link to a clip from our beloved Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. It’s just not Christmas without at least one viewing.) Which makes me think … Hm? I wonder what color that nose really would be? Perhaps Pantone 200C or Pantone Red 032C?

Hope you are enjoying your Christmas decorating as much as we are! We would love to hear about your unusual Christmas tree adornments or holiday decorations. And, we hope that your holiday season is as colorful and bright as Pantone 17-1463, (recently announced 2012 Color of the Year) !

Visit the Jolly Jabber blog at Fat Quarter Shop for a fun star sighting of our new Bot Buddies collection, plus a few peeks at studio life, (including a visit to Neville’s crooning video). AND, since it just happens to be Cyber Monday, and Fat Quarter Shop celebrates this special day with 25% off all the way to Thursday, you can buy enough fabric for all of your 2012 projects. I’m headed over there right now for a little cyber-shopping.

Thank you Kimberly and Stephanie from Cathy, Ellen, and Baby Bot, too.

Wishing you all a wonderful holiday full of family, friends, and all those little projects you’ve been itching to finish for the past few months…  Safe travels, and:

Love, Cathy and Ellen

Here is some background music for today’s post … so that you can sing in the rain, like we are! It rained today in Austin, Texas and it was a real, no-kidding soaker rain. I was in the grocery store when the skies finally opened after months of water rationing and 100+degree days. Everyone came out of the store just to stare at it, as if to collectively say, “what is that?” When I returned home, this is what was waiting for me: our beloved, but possibly dumb, dog standing in the rain … either he loves to be wet, or he just doesn’t have much common sense, as he could have easily waited under the eve. Since I love him so, I’ll vote for “loves to be wet,” but deep down, I think it might be that he is stu_ _ d … hey, look, when you leave the up out of stupid, it spells stud! (Can you tell I love this fella even when he smells like a wet dog!)

And below are pictures of what it looks like outside the studio window, along with two new colorways to emerge from today’s heavenly weather. The first one is called “It’s Rainin’ Rain, Hallelujah,” and the second one is called “Flower Shower.” We hope you are enjoying your weather as much as we are!

When the doors opened to the International Quilt Market in Houston, one of the first booths one beheld was that of Newcastle Fabrics. There, our Jumpin’ Monkeys collection was ready to jump onto flannel jammies and blankies and the sweet Emma collection looked as fresh as a pink-and-green bouquet.

On the walls were all the pieces made just days ago by our Austin elves, showing off the DIY possibilities. We were delighted to see our work and our friends at Newcastle. Here we are (photo below) with Dan Weidmuller, chief of everything at Newcastle.

Jumpin’ Monkeys is a new flannel group scheduled to be in the stores in November. Before market, we received a few small pieces of strike-off material to check for color. We decided to try to make a few monkey projects, one of which would be flannel jammies, but we only had enough fabric to make one blue leg and one brown leg, which is the original reason that the pants bottoms (below) became “two-toned.” BUT, after all was said and sewn, we decided these play pants were downright adorable. I guess you could say small strike-offs are the mother of invention!

I also love the matching appliqué monkey that Nancy added to the onesie. This is so easy and packs a great “wow, you did that” factor.

Here is something else that happens when sewing with tiny bits of soft flannel strike-offs: a toddler ragland jacket that is monkey-blue-stripe on the front and monkey-green-stripe on the back. It’s like wearing the whole collection in one tiny jacket!

We can’t leave Jumpin’ Monkeys without showing you the fastest quick quilt you ever did see (made by Deborah Elliott) … all you have to do is follow the outlines of the animals on the panel and it looks like you slaved for weeks piecing and appliquéing this soft quilt. Even the striped border is part of the one yard of fabric that you will buy to make the quilt top! (You may want to add some edging as we did with the palm leaves fabric (see second photo below), but it’s cute even without it. It might depend on what time the baby shower is tomorrow!)

And, if you have questions about anything fun and new at Newcastle, here is the go-to-gal for the answers, Cheryl Jukich. She is new to the Newcastle team and she is just adorable and full of energy … even when we saw her after many hours of trade show standing!

While Jumpin’ Monkeys was hoppin’ off the wall, the Emma collection was displayed nearby and it was shining in its own preppy cute way. Since we already introduced you to lots of Emma in an earlier post, we’ll just share some pictures of her cute self on display at the show. Photo left: Ellen in front of the quilt she made with the Emma strike-offs. (And her very first quilt ever!) Photo right: Cathy and Ellen in front of the sassy Emma dress made by Nancy Keirns. The great thing about Emma is that it can be made into a baby bumper or a tween jumper. It’s for little bitty girls, or their mamas.

While we love to visit with the companies that make our fabric, we double-love to visit with shop owners who sell our fabric! Here we are below with a fellow mother-daughter team, Judy Fenton and Megan Wilson who run Millcreek Sewing & Fabric in Erie, Pennsylvania. While they were gathering samples in balmy Houston, Texas, I believe several inches of snow fell on their shop in Pennsylvania. A nice early reminder of the importance of a warm, snuggly quilt!

Although, we don’t have any weather close to a white winter here in Austin, we definitely caught the quilting bug while we were in Houston. I hope our little adventure in the aisles of Quilt Market have you all quiltified, too. We’ll keep you posted as we learn of the stores that will have Emma and Jumpin’ Monkeys in hand. Enjoy your November, and have fun quilting, whether you are wearing flip-flops or snow boots!

We are just back from Quilt Market in Houston … and it was so much fun. There were so many quilts that I bet if you laid them end to end they would stretch across Texas and beyond!

For us, a market is often the culmination of months of collaborative work, and it is satisfying to see it all come together. Lots of faces are beaming … and bleary. Two of our favorite faces to see were those of sister team, Joanie and Melanie of Tailormade By Design. They were responsible for four quilts made with our fabrics, as well as many quilts for several different companies .. all of which need their quilts ready on exactly the same first-day-of-Quilt-Market! And, every year they make that tough deadline and arrive in Houston with big smiles. We are amazed and in awe. Here we are with them at Blue Hill Fabrics.

Our favorite surprise was the Bot Buddies™ quilt … we had not seen the final cottons, and we were delighted with the colors and the delightful quilt pattern that Joanie and Melanie had designed with them. We created the cottons to be easy for nursery decor, and indeed the super sisters created a quilt to set the theme for a bright and cheery nursery or toddler room. They even created these sweet fat-quarter charm packs (below left) to get a new mama started. Photo below right is a close-up of the darling Bot Buddies quilt, ready for snuggling.

I believe these cottons have just arrived at the warehouse, so as soon as they are in the stores, we will add some links to the blog so you can go bot-shopping. There is a softer than soft flannel group, too. Be sure to send us your Bot Buddies™ projects so we can share them in our up-coming Flickr groups.

Another of our baby collections was also starring at Blue Hill. Zoophabet® is all about personalizing with an alphabet of cute critters. And it comes in both cotton and soft flannel. The group was displayed with lots of one-of-a-kind DIY ideas: personalized pillows, quilts, bags and blocks. The photo below is Cathy visiting with Elaine Sexton, of QUILT Magazine about all the DIY possibilities with alphabets and bots.

Below are more photos from our busy visit in the Blue Hill booth: From upper left clockwise:
1. Zoophabet® display including personalized blocks, bag and pillows made by Deborah Elliott and soft flannel jammies made by Nancy Keirns 2. Ellen and Cathy with Roger Roby of Blue Hill Fabrics 3. Close-up of the quick quilt made by the Tailormade sisters created with the Zoophabet® Pink Panel. This quilt panel is so easy that a mom can make the quilt top during a naptime (unless your baby naps like my middle gal did … which was not at all … maybe a morning while babies are attending Mother’s Day Out is a better quilt-making venue.) 4. Cathy with quilt designer, Robin Jackson, brainstorming about some creative projects she can make with the Zoophabet® collection.

Well, all this talk of fabric and sewing and quilts is making my fingers itch … I‘m off to make some quilt blocks. Of course, first, I will have to learn how … which is next on my empty-nestin’ list of things to do!

I was going to send you some photos of the outdoor gourd display that Jim created in some kind of Mr. Martha mood a few weeks ago to impress and amaze visitors as they walked to the entrance of our home studio … but alas, the gourd decor has rotted in such a creepy, furry, mouldy kind of way, that I cannot share them with anybody. It’s as though we are growing a penicillin garden. In fact, I am so glad that it is finally Halloween, so that we can send them on to gourd heaven after tonight. I just hope they don’t scare our trick-or-treaters away. That would mean that I would have to eat all the candy myself! (… hmmm, on the other hand …)

So, instead of sharing our Do-It-Yourself Gourd Garden/Science Experiment with you, we thought we would wish you and yours a fun Halloween with some happy mold-free studio owls. (Well, that last one isn’t very happy … must have had too much candy.) Have a hoot tonight!

Emma is feeling trip proud about her journey to Houston for the International Quilt Market. The Emma collection will be blooming in preppy pinks and greens perfect for DIY projects for girls of all ages. We hope you will visit her at the Newcastle Fabrics booth. Here is our market-bound gal modeling her new Emma dress and ruffled pants, accessorized with her Emma coin clutch … just in case she needs to buy some tasty TexMex.

The minute we received our production yardage, we asked our studio elves to whip up some Emma fun. See more Emma eye candy below.

Here’s an Emma patch quilt hanging in the rose garden. The dot patterns created for this collection make great frames for the appliqué animals toss patterns.

And here’s a favorite around our house o’ girls: A twirly skirt! If you are a girl, I bet you are remembering your own twirly skirt right this minute. So off we go to Houston … twirling all the way. Hope to see you there!’

It all began with an apron and a porcupine. (or maybe it was a hedgehog, on its way to becoming a porcupine.)

So, I thought the cute child’s apron that Deborah made for us to send to Quilt Market would be extra-adorable with some embroidered embellishments … and I said to myself, “Self, you can do this, how hard can it be?” followed by “Self, you actually have done this before when you were a Girl Scout, remember?” And was I ever a Girl Scout … I loved … LOVED … earning badges. In fact, if I were a Girl Scout today, they could create a reality show called, “Girl Scout Badge-Hoarders Gone Wild,” and I would be the star. To earn the needleworks badge, I learned all kinds of stitches, and ALMOST, but never actually completed an embroidered panel, which read, “Waste Not, Want Not.” I still wonder exactly which badge requirement stated, “Girl Scout must complete at least 75% of an embroidered panel.” In fact, the more I think about it, the more I wonder if I really earned that needlework badge legally. All the more reason to relearn the craft and redeem myself. So here are the steps I followed to QUICKLY re-teach myself to embroider like a pro:

I was in a bit of a deadline, so I said to myself, “Self, you have 15 minutes to learn some basic stitches.” I found a book I bought a few years ago, when I thought I was going to take up embroidery another time, Sublime Stitches by Jenny Hart. She turned embroidery into something totally hip and edgy. She seamlessly mixed designs featuring teapots and cherries with skulls and margaritas. Under her tutelage, I could be crafty and cool, all at once! And, more importantly, her book had a stitch guide.

Straight stitch: check. Stem Stitch: check. Back Stitch: check. Satin Stitch: later. Cross Stitch: check. Chain Stitch: much later. Then I said, “Self, good enough, you are ready to move on to the real project.” (Here is my prep sampler piece below. See how easy it is … you can do it, too!)

I popped the apron into the embroidery hoop, gave it a little thump … (just because I felt like real embroiderers would give it a little thump to make sure it was tight enough) and then I started stitching away. That deadline was still looming, so I was flying. In, out, in, out. The sound the thread made pulling through the fabric was very satisfying. Zip, zip, zip. I was not only embroidering, I was embroidering fast! Here is how my project was looking:

I kept stitching like a little machine, when I started having a funny feeling that something just didn’t feel quite right, but it didn’t stop me … I just kept going with a furor. Finally, I realized that the extra fabric that was all around my hoop was acting weird, so I turned my project over and this is what I beheld … yep, I had fast and furiously sewn the front of the apron to the back of the apron. Really tightly. Dad-gummit! Now, I really had to return to the deadline at hand, so I tossed the project aside … saying to self, “Tomorrow is another day.”

As you can see, I had to return to Step 1. I should think about stitching a panel that says, “Haste Makes Waste.” Happily, the next day, with a bit more patience, I pulled out all the hastily-stitched thread, and patiently began restitching (frequently checking the back!).

And, ta dah! Here is my first embroidery project since the unfinished Girl Scout badge requirement.

Then, I was feeling so sassy, I decided to outline the bird, AND even attempted a bit of stitched typography … it was very gratifying … now I am a stitchin’ fool. If you have been thinking of taking up embroidery, I hope my little story is not disheartening, but rather inspiring in a “wow, if she can do it, I can do it” sort of way … and please join me on my embroidery journey. I’ll keep you posted, and we can stitch some postcards every now and then. P.S. Tips are greatly appreciated! (I mean tips of stitching advice … not the kind in the money jar.)