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

Hi friends! How is everyone this week?

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. Often, a picture will take me completely out of my comfort zone and force me to combine fabrics in a new way.

We have a change to Color Play Friday for the summer, which I will explain after my fabric links.

 You can head over to my Color Play Friday page to see the 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.

This photo is from Sarah at 123Quilt. What a fun picture to work with!

I loved the bright colors here and wanted to showcase a fun spectrum of what jumped out at me.

Here are the fabrics I chose:

Tula Pink, Tabby Road, Tent Stripe in Blue Bird

Me + You, Indah Batiks, Stitches in Dark Orchid

Me + You, Indah Batiks, Speckles in Gemstone

Cotton + Steel Basics, XOXO in Clementine

Alison Glass, Chroma, Scatter in Carrot

Alison Glass, Sun Prints, Ink in Yellow

 

I used the Stash Fabrics design wall feature to create this bundle… it really helps to collect a group of fabrics quickly! These are not affiliate links, I just really love the feature!

A note about scale:

• While I believe scale is a very important part of fabric selection, the fabrics shown in my Color Play images are not always perfectly to scale. I do my best, by you should always double check scale before ordering!

And now for the changes to CPF!

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!

So then, the prompt for next week is 50’s Diner!

Happy Sewing, ~L

Hi friends!

If I’m super honest, the answer to “What’s up?” this week is “Not much sewing!”

It’s a lot of this:

and this:

 

My house goes on the market in a couple of weeks, so in preparation, I’ve been doing a LOT of repairing, painting, and cleaning.

It’s tedious and I’m sick of it, but at the same time, I get to pick cabinets and paint colors for the new place, and watch it progress through the stages of becoming our home…. so it’s worth having to do some work on our current house!

Speaking of the new place, take a look at the view out the window of my new studio! I love seeing those trees, and am curious how the new view might effect my work. My guess is you’ll see a lot more green in future projects!

I did manage to get a little weaving done this week. I’m excited about this triaxial weave… can’t wait to see the third color going in.

That’s about it- my pressing board is still in a nasty state. I’ll get it done eventually… maybe! Lol

I hope you all are getting more sewing done than I am. I’d love to live vicariously through you- let me know in the comments what you’ve been working on!

Happy Sewing, ~L

 

Finally!

 The day has finally come when I get to tell you all about the By Your Side quilt.

This one holds a special place in my heart.

When designing this quilt, the Quilt Theory tagline “Where can your quilt take you?” kept ringing in my ears. But instead of thinking about a physical location, I started pondering how the quilts we make for people draw us deeper into their lives.

I am very fortunate to have a group of four ladies in my life who are forever friends… they are really more like family. The five of us have celebrated together as well as weathered the toughest of storms. Birthdays, adoptions, parents being sick and passing away, raising kids, vacations, holidays, family drama, trips to the ER, job promotions, calls to say, “I think I might be going crazy… I need to talk to someone”, and texts just to say “Good morning”…. we’ve been through it all together.  We walk through life together.

Ironically, between the five of us, we couldn’t find one picture with all of us in it…. too busy chasing children when we get together!  (We have 20 children altogether ranging in age from 16 to newborn!)

Those of you who are very observant may have noticed by now that the the By Your Side quilt consists of five Cotton + Steel prints…. one to represent each of us. And of course, there are the solid links that keep us bonded together… shared history, common ground, but most importantly love for each other.

So, five of us, all linked together…

But as I continued on with this design, it didn’t feel complete. Although it started with those relationships, I didn’t want this quilt to be about just the five of us. I have many other amazing ladies in my life who have supported and encouraged me.

And through this awesome adventure that is Quilt Theory, I’ve made six more friends that I cherish dearly. Through our shared love of quilting and design, we’ve gotten to know each other, encouraged each other, learned to work together, and grown as artists and people.

Beyond all that, there are the friendships I’ve developed with many of you. Through social media, I’ve had the pleasure of getting to know so many new friends from all areas and walks of life, all bonded together through our love of making beautiful things. It was this online community that taught me to sew and who has encouraged my efforts along the way.

So, in order to honor those friendships, I added in one more element to the quilt- the second row of squares and links to represent all those relationships in my life.

For all those wonderful friends in our lives who support, inspire, or encourage us to grow- the By Your Side quilt was made to celebrate the people that walk beside us in life.

I’m so glad to finally share where I was coming from when creating this quilt. I hope my words will encourage you to honor those relationships in your life and let those friends know how much they mean to you!

If you are currently at Quilt Market, you can see By Your Side in person at the Checkers booth!

Now, a little more about Quilt Theory and how you can get your hands on this collection of super cool patterns:

Our goal at Quilt Theory is to create simple and modern quilt patterns, and we design collections of patterns printed on small cards and one-page PDFs. As a group, we have become a strong team as we worked through writing, testing, editing, and quilting the patterns in our collection.

For our second collection, we challenged ourselves to write patterns that utilize precut bundles of fabric. We hope you find a lot of inspiration in our collection to make quilts from your favorite bundles in your stash.

PDF patterns are available now through our website QuiltTheory.com.

Pattern cards coming soon to a local quilt shop near you! Let your local quilt shop know you want them to carry Quilt Theory patterns.

If you are a quilt shop and want to carry our patterns, set up a wholesale account here, or order through Checker Distributors, EE Schenck Company, or Erie Quilt Art for Canadian shops.

Giveaway Time!!

To celebrate the launch of Quilt Theory, I am giving away a PDF copy of my pattern, By Your Side. To sweeten the deal, I’m including a Fat Quarter bundle as well. I’m obviously a big fan of the C+S Basics, so I’ve gathered five of them in a bundle for you!  

To enter, simply leave me a comment here! Anything will do, but if you want a suggestion, tell me a favorite memory you have with one of your friends. 

For extra entries, leave a comment for each way you follow me (e.g. Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Bloglovin’, WordPress, etc)

The giveaway ends Monday, May 22 at midnight eastern time and a random number generator will select the winner. Giveaway open to participants 18 years or older and international participants are welcome. 

*If you buy my pattern and then you win it, I’ll refund you or let you pick out another free Quilt Theory pattern!

Be sure to visit Yvonne tomorrow and the rest of the Quilt Theory designers if you missed their posts this week.

Quilt Theory Release Blog Hop Schedule

Friday 5/12 – Quilt Theory

Saturday 5/13 – Kitty @Night Quilter

Monday 5/15 – Michelle @Michelle Bartholomew

Tuesday 5/16 – Daisy @WarmFolk

Wednesday 5/17- Stephanie @Late Night Quilter

Thursday 5/18 – Cheryl @Meadow Mist Designs

Friday 5/19 – Lorinda @Laurel Poppy and Pine  (<= <= YOU ARE HERE!)

Saturday 5/20 – Yvonne @Quilting Jetgirl

Monday 5/22 – Quilt Theory

 

If you make the By Your Side quilt, be sure the tag me on Instagram and add the hashtag #ByYourSideQuilt so I’m sure to see it!

Happy Sewing! ~L