Goodbye Google Reader!

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Follow me on bloglovin. :)

Reader shuts down for good tomorrow - so be sure to switch over and transfer all the blogs from your reader to bloglovn (or feedly, although I just couldn't get into feedly).

See you on the other side! :)

International Quilt Festival Chicago: Open Studios

What a weekend! Last weekend Chicago (Rosemont) played host to the International Quilt Festival! We're lucky to have the festival here this year and I was even luckier to be chosen to demo in the show's Open Studios. 

Open Studios was the place to find demos for all sorts of projects and techniques ranging from stitching / quilting / painting / embellishing. The demos were set up in two hour segments and on Friday I demo'd foundation paper piecing. 

As excited as I was about demoing I was also a little bit nervous. It all turned out great though. It was a really excellent experience! In the quilting studio there was a sewing machine available - and I had a bit of trouble getting it set up at the beginning of my demo time - thankfully my guild friend Sarah came to the rescue and fixed the presser foot / threading! (thanks Sarah!!)

The demo went really great. I had a lot of people stop by during the two hour demo, and they all seemed really responsive to paper piecing! Some couldn't believe how easy it is once you figure it out! 

I had an excellent experience demoing at open studios, and it makes me even more excited to get started teaching some classes. I hope that will happen soon. In the meantime I'll keep perfecting my skills! 

(Thanks to Emily B who took lots and lots of pictures on my camera while I demo'd!)

Emedoodle Fabric Bundle!

Remember way back, when I mentioned my favorite Kona solid colors? Well my friend Ebony has made an order of some bolts (bolts!!) of Kona, and she ordered a few of my fav's! She's decided to  sell some mini bundles of my favorite Kona's! You can buy yours here, and at $10 for 6 FQ's it's a steal!

Sponsor giveaway: Sewing Patterns by Mrs. H!

This week I'm happy to bring you a fun little giveaway from one of my sponsors! Samantha, from Sewing Patterns by Mrs H is offering three patterns - one for each winner!

First you'll need to head on over and check out her awesome patterns - and come back here to tell me what you think! What's your fav? Do you love sewing purses or are you nervous about it? Do share!!

Now for the rules:

• 1 entry - leave a comment, any comment!
• 2nd entry - follow my blog or Samantha's blog (and leave a comment saying so)
• 3rd entry - tell me the name of the Village where Samantha Lives! 

This giveaway is open to everyone. I will draw a winner using mr random.org Monday July 1st!

Quilt Festival Chicago! Modern Meetup & Demo-ing!

I can't believe how quickly this week has flown by! It's already Friday! I had intended to announce this earlier here, but better late than never! 

This weekend Chicago is host to the International Quilt Festival and we're so glad that it's come back to our city! As a way to encourage our guild members to attend the quilt festival, the Chicago Modern Quilt Guild has joined up with the Naperville Modern Quilt Guild to host a "Modern Meetup" Anyone interested in the modern quilt movement is invited to join us! We'll be meeting at the Rosemont Hilton, Liberty Bar, 7pm.

In other exciting news I'll be demo-ing at the Open Studios at the quilt festival tomorrow! If you're roaming around the festival between 4-6pm stop by the Quilt Studio - I'll be teaching about foundation paper piecing! I'm pretty excited about this! My bags are packed and I'm all ready! You can check out the schedule for the Open Studios here.

I hope to see you guys there!!

How do you choose fabrics?

Last night my friend Emily came over to hang out - and to help me pick out colors for my next quilt!

Konas! Chartreuse, Cactus, Canary, Melon, Coral, Ice Frappe, (and maybe School Bus).

I have to say that it was a really enlightening process! I knew the feeling I wanted the quilt to invoke, and the pattern (put together using the Threadbias design tool!) only uses a handful of fabrics. That made it pretty hard! Emily has an art degree, and an exceptional eye for color - which helped a lot! 

The part that makes me nervous. There is a distinct difference between the old color card (the one I chopped up), and the updated color card.

I'm excited (and a little nervous) to say that I'll be using Kona Ice Frappe as my background color! I'm hoping this will give a nice crisp summer feeling - like rainbow sherbet. 

Now I just have to wait for the fabrics to arrive! This quilt has to be finished by our July guild meeting ... so I have some work ahead of myself!!

So how do you choose fabrics for a new project?

Quick and Dirty PJ pants!

Tonight  Last week (let's face it, it's been one of those weeks where it took me 6 days to get around to taking a decent picture of these...) my I found myself bored with a little bit of new but not very "me" fabric. Somehow this ended up in me making some pj pants for my daughter. How could I resist??

A little back story? Sure!

A couple days ago Allie and I were lounging around watching cartoons (Mona The Vampire of course!). Allie all the sudden decided I should make her pajama pants "Just like yours." I love how she has so much confidence in my garment sewing ability that she doesn't have a bit of doubt that I could do such things.

Of course I promised her I would make her PJ's. Wouldn't you?

So tonight I did. Randomly. With bright yellow fabric printed with cars and campers. Moda - it's cute, but not my style. It'll look pretty adorable on my kid though!

I hope they fit. I drafted them based on a pair of pants laying around.... I'm excited for her to try them on in the morning!

Disregard the untrimmed threads, and the additional seam line down there... I wasn't kidding about "Quick and Dirty"

I read this tutorial, then winged it. I could have straightened out the cut on the top part (where it folds down for the elastic casing) - that part was a bit odd... and bunchy because I didn't cut it with that in mind... and I should have trimmed the extra off there, instead I just sewed two rows of stitching at the bottom of the elastic casing. Lame, I know. But 1 hr later and I have pants. Cute pants.

***

Edited to add: It's too bad, but these pants don't fit my kid! They're perfect length but she could barely squeeze them on! Luckily we have a couple friends who are about Allie's age but tinier in the waist! They'll fit someone. Now I have the chance to make a second pair of PJ pants!