Hi, friends!

How is your week shaping up? Things are going well in my neck of the woods- lots of fun with pretty fabric.

I case you missed it, I posted on Monday on the Quilt Theory blog and shared these two mini quilts I made from some Mountain Calling blocks.

I also finished up the bow ties for my daughter that I started last week.

 I had so much fun with them, and now my husband wants some too! So I’m currently on the search for some great Liberty of London prints for him.  I’ll also be checking at my local thrift stores for silk blouses that can be remade into ties.

And last on my list of fun, sewing-related things this week: On Saturday, I’ll be taking a class in Seattle with Mister Domestic. We’ll be making his Improv Flower pattern, which is gorgeous! He is a very fun teacher, and I’m looking forward to seeing him again and spending time in class with some friends from my guild.  Here is the bundle of fabric that I got for this project.

And I bought enough to make the pattern twice!

And what have you been up to lately? I love looking at all the pretty stuff that everyone is making, so please feel free to comment a link to your latest project post or tag me on Instagram so I can see what you’re doing.

Happy Sewing, ~L

Hi friends, I hope Monday is treating you well!

I’m just writing a quick note to let you know that it’s my week to share on the Quilt Theory Designer Corner.

Click on the photo above to hear about the Quilt Theory coloring pages and see some of our quilts dressed up for Independence Day.

Happy Sewing! ~L

I had a horrible thing happen to me this week that I wouldn’t wish on any of my quilty friends. While searching through my stash for good bow tie fabrics, a SPIDER came crawling out on one of my lovely stacks.  I screamed, but then had the presence of mind to squash the little bugger.  I’m usually kind to bugs, but spiders and I have a deal: if they stay out of my house, I won’t squash them. This guy did not hold up his end of the bargain.

Given my fear of spiders, you can imagine that rummaging through my fabric stacks since then had been a bit difficult.

But, I summoned up all my dragon courage this morning to get in there and find this great bundle for Color Play Friday.

Most people think green when imagining dragons, but I my head, I kept picturing two beautiful dragons living on separate mountains far away from each other. I don’t know their history, but I suspect they were once in love and both long to be together again.

If you’d like to play along for Color Play Friday this summer, simply make a bundle from the prompt, snap a photo, post it to Instagram, and add the hashtag #colorplayfriday so we can all see it.

Next week’s prompt is:

Happy Sewing, ~L

Hi, friends!

This week has brought the normal craziness accompanied by kids being on summer break and having to keep a house ready for showings at all times. I’m REALLY looking forward to getting this place sold. I think I’ll leave dishes in the sink and laundry on the floor for a while just to celebrate!

Yesterday I finished a ‘pattern test’ quilt top for my next Quilt Theory pattern. My daughter loved the scrappy fabrics I used, so she will be getting the quilt when it’s done. It is now #9 in the list of the finished tops that need quilting.  NINE! Needless to say, it’ll be a while.

Unfortunately, I can’t show you the quilt quite yet… gotta wait til fall! But for now, you can enjoy these scrappy sneak peeks.

And speaking of my new pattern, I’ll start cutting this week for the quilt that goes on the cover. I’m using these gorgeous Michael Miller fabrics and Aurifil threads, and can’t wait to see how it all comes together.

There will be hand quilting, friends.

In July.

But it’ll be amazing, so it’ll all be worth it!

I needed some quick finishes this week, so I decided to learn how to make a bow tie. My daughter loves them, but wanted some more feminine options to wear with a skirt and her button down shirts. She’s made a few of her own using this tutorial from Tie-a-Tie. I didn’t read the tutorial, but watched her to learn how.

I started with some fun Kaffe Fasset fabric to get the hang of the process. This isn’t totally her style, but I figured one of her guy friends would like the fabric, so it can go to him if she doesn’t want it.

I got two cut and ready to sew last night, and plan on cutting two more out of the florals shown. Hopefully I will get them sewn up before next week.

In the near future, I would love to get some nice Liberty of London florals to make ties with. They have such beautiful floral prints, and the sheen on them is perfect for bow ties. Heck, I might even get really brave and do some silk ones!

Happy Sewing, ~L

How’s this for irony: In the Pacific Northwest, the sun is shining, the weather is warm, birds are chirping, and our Color Play Friday prompt for the day is RAINSTORM. I’m just happy to be playing with fabric while I listen to the birds sing.

I have more blue in my stash than any other color, but I was looking for a specific type of blue this week. I wanted to play with darker, purple-toned blues to reflect the storm clouds that we get here occasionally. You wouldn’t know it from all the bad press we get, but the northwest doesn’t have the type of storms that most people think of when you say ‘rainstorm’. We mostly get grey, overcast skies and A LOT of drizzle, so I also made sure to get plenty of greys into my bundles too!

(If you don’t know what I’m talking about when I say drizzle, here’s a hilariously helpful article I found for you!)

When I was putting together my first bundle, my husband caught a glimpse of what I was doing and told me how much he LOVED the color combos. He’s right- they are totally ‘his’ colors. I may need to find a project to make him with some of these fabrics!

Next week’s prompt is: 

Have a great weekend, friends!

Happy Sewing, ~L

Oh boy!

After a conversation today with Kitty from Night Quilter about my unfinished projects, I decided to look in my storage bins and take an assessment of what I’ve got going on.

When I started prepping my house for sale, I packed up a lot of my unfinished quilt tops and blocks that needed assembled and put them in bins under my bed. As I’ve finished tops, I have been sticking them in there.

Today, the bins came out… and all I can say is wow.

In total, I realized I have two sets of finished blocks that need to be assembled into quilts along with EIGHT quilt tops plus one more that is almost completed. Two of the tops are mostly quilted, but the rest haven’t even been basted. So, friends, I guess I better get myself in gear. I’m thinking I’ll look at it as an opportunity to really work on my quilting skills!

That being said, I will still be working on the teal and pink hexies project since it’s handwork that I can do on-the-go.

 Other things going on in my life right now:

We’ve made our final choices on our paint colors for the new house. And your girl is getting a bright yellow front door!

It’s berry harvest time in the Pacific Northwest, and my garden is ripe for the picking!

Lastly, summer break has begun! Here are snapshots of my kiddos on both the first and last days of school. What a difference nine months makes!

So what’s up in everyone else’s life? I’ve love to hear from you in the comments what you’ve been working on, and I hope the rest of your week is amazing!

Happy Sewing, ~L

Good morning!

(or afternoon or evening depending on where you are!)

Now that I’ve moved a lot of the Color Play Friday activity to Instagram, I completely spaced off posting it here last week! So today you get a bonus with both last week and this week’s bundles.

First off: Fun in the sun

This one was all about summer gardening for me! I chose the floral first, then added in lots of bright, sunny blenders to coordinate.

And this week’s theme: Willy Wonka

I thought for sure I would do lots of bright colors again this week, but when I started looking at movie stills for inspiration, what stood out to me was Gene Wilder’s amazing costume in the original movie. Something about that brown top hat and purple velvet coat just spoke to me. Maybe because I knew it would bring me a challenge.

I don’t have many browns in my stash. Finding modern browns that I love is really tough. And then couple it with purple, which is one off my favorite colors…. well, let’s just say that the purples saved me this week!

In fact, my favorite bundle of the group was this all-purple one.

Here are the other ones I came up with:

And here’s our theme for next week:

With all the blue tones in my stash, next week should be much easier!

Happy Sewing! ~L

Hi friends; happy Wednesday!

My house finally went on the market this week! So although that means the house projects are done (Thank God!), it also means keeping my studio fairly tidy in case someone wants to drop in and take a look at the place!

So, this week instead of getting elbow deep in big projects, I decided to pull out a couple of smaller WIPs to finish up.

First on the list was this adorable Forest Abstractions Field Mouse from Violet Craft. Her patterns are so adorable, and this FREE little block is no exception!

It feels like forever ago that I first started this block for my daughter’s room. I know it was at least a year ago.

Last September, I finally finished the block with the intention of framing it to go on her wall. And then it sat on my shelf for another nine months. Oops.

Well, today I finally just bit the bullet and made it into a throw pillow cover. All those months sitting there, and it only took like 10-15 minutes to turn it into a finish. I feel a little sheepish about that!

It’s super cute sitting on her bed, and I’m so glad it’s finally seeing the light of day.

The second thing I’ll be working on this week is making some more pink and teal hexies for a couple of baby quilts I have planned. It’s an easy project to take with me when I get booted out of my house for a showing!

I hope you enjoy your week and that you make lots of progress on your own WIPs!

Happy Sewing, ~L

Hi, friends!

I hope you are all doing very well this week- we’re halfway through!

I am so excited to finally be back behind my sewing machine the last few days. The house preparations are coming to a close, and we will be putting it on the market within a week…. it’s all starting to feel very real. At the same time, we are starting to make selections for the finishes in our new home. This is that part where everything starts to move really quickly. Before I know it, I’ll be sewing in my new studio!

I’ve been working on some secret sewing lately. Not only am I working on my cover quilt for Quilt Theory’s third collection, I am also doing a little pattern testing behind the scenes. Here’s a little sneak peek of whats been going on in my studio the last week:

Keep an eye on my Instagram account over the next month or so. I’m sure there will be more sneak peeks along the way!

Speaking of sneak peeks, this afternoon my favorite LQS is hosting a preview of some of the fabrics that they ordered at Market that will be coming to the store soon. I’m so looking forward to seeing all the lovely fabric!

And here’s an update on some of my other projects:

I’m at a bit of an impasse with my mini weaving project with putting my third color in. Because my bias tape is smaller than is intended for the Wefty needle, I’m really having to cram each row through which is not only tough, but messes with my nice, straight lines. So I got annoyed and now the project is in time out!

Oh, and guess who FINALLY recovered her pressing board!

Happy Sewing! ~L

Hi friends! You may have noticed I was silent this week for What’s Up Wednesday, because the honest answer was that NOTHING was up. In the attempt to cross the final tasks off ‘The List’ (aka the bane of my existence aka ‘Everything that we have to do before selling this house’), I completely ignored sewing. For real… it’s been tough. Today, I am nearly done with the dreaded list, but am choosing to ignore it for an hour this morning so I can sew.  I’ll finish it soon enough.

In the meantime, we’ve picked a color for our new place. I don’t know if being a designer makes it harder or easier to pick. On one hand, it’s bad because I am being super picky and want to get it just right. On the other, my color theory knowledge helped me to know what would work (and what wouldn’t) against the greenbelt behind us. There were several times I told my husband, “This is a great color- but not for this house”.  As you can see from the picture below, we like dark colors! Our final choice, though, was to go a shade lighter on our favorite dark for a really nice mid-tone greyish/greenish/brownish color! I like that it’s a bit obscure and hard to pin down.

So, on to the real reason you’re here!

If you’re new to Color Play Friday, welcome! This is my fun way of taking a little time each week to expand my color knowledge and fabric-selection skills.

We’ve changed up the rules for the summer, but you can head over to my Color Play Friday page to see the standard rules and my palettes and bundles from previous weeks. You can also search #colorplayfriday on Instagram to see lots of palettes and bundles from the past! If you’d like to know more about participating in Color Play Friday, please feel free send me an email and I’ll let you in on all the details of how to join.

Here are our summer rules:

Each week, I’ve shared a picture with you and asked participants to select colors from it and create a bundle. For the next few months,  instead of using a picture as a prompt, I will be posting a prompt word or phrase to use for the following week. You can create a real bundle from your stash (this is what I will be doing) or a virtual one online like we’ve always done.

For example, when working the prompt “Harry Potter”, you could choose colors based on your choice of Hogwarts House, or draw inspiration from a particularly favorite scene or character.

I’m hoping this will give the participants and myself a little more freedom when choosing bundles and create a fun twist for summer.

And who knows, if it’s working well and everyone is enjoying it, we might just keep it!

Our prompt for this week was ’50’s Diner’, and here is what I came up with:

I knew right away that red, black and aqua would be my go-to colors. But as I was thinking on it during the week, I decided to try adding pink in too. I’m so glad I did, because the pink, red, and aqua bundle ended up being my favorite!

So, on to next week’s theme:

Summer weather has finally arrived to Washington state, so I thought some bundles inspired by the summer sun were in order!

Thanks for joining me this week, and I hope you have a fantastic weekend!

Happy Sewing, ~L