Setting your Easter Table

It's not too early to begin thinking about your Easter gathering... the guest list, menu and decor. A festive table setting is a good place to begin. Goodness, I'm sounding like Martha! But I can't deny that the Garden Diva colors are well suited to spring celebrations.

When I  decorate for the holidays, I always begin with a seasonal tablecloth to set the mood. Here we have created a light and lively table covering using the pink Dots as the center panel and the pastel Daisy Checks as a happy border. The corners have been finished with an elegant miter and for fun we have added a drop of our favorite felt dingle beads... the cats will like these, too!







































After the tablecloth, we can add the colorful accessories, in this case our Fiesta ware place settings and Garden Diva napkins. It is not important that each place is exactly the same, in fact, I prefer just the opposite. I like to mix and match. A variety of napkins in the same color family is fine, no two really need to be alike. The plates and cups, too, are more entertaining if they are color mixed. The Tea Cozy and Reversible Party Napkins are both from our Pint Size Pattern series.

Seasonal events are always family occasions and pretty casual. But there are often new guests who have the overwhelming task of remembering 25 new names, so place cards could relieve some of their stress. And a place card can add a bit of class to any event, so I have designed a free place card that you can download and print for your own holiday table. Just print, cut and fold.

We have also designed a simple basket liner/ bread warmer that you may like to stitch up for your party.
It has the advantage of being reversible. The two layers keep things extra warm as well as offering a bit of colorful contrast.

Here it is reversed. I love the pure white eggs on the dark fancy Iris and Bleeding Heart fabric. Below the liner is flattened, so you can see the pattern. It is almost a square, but the corners are slightly rounded and there are half circle bites taken out on every side.

The topstitching finishes it off quite nicely. So as the spring settles in and Easter plans are underway, don't forget to down load your free place cards and be sure to make some time for seasonal crafting.

Have a Heart!

Several weeks ago I received a handful of emails from Denmark and they were all looking for the "Heart" fabric from the Paradise Garden line. What was happening in Denmark that was creating such a demand for a fabric from several seasons back? I finally learned that there is a talented young clothing designer, Celine Hallas, who was featuring the heart on her refreshing series of little girls dresses!

So, her fans were searching all sources to find the illusive fabric. You can see more of her wonderful work at her blog, Strawberry Flavor. You can have Google translate it into English. Not only is the clothing colorful and fun, but the photographs are stunning, as you can see!

I get many requests for fabrics from past lines. Sometimes I have some in my collection to share, but not always. Even I run out of some designs, so if you see something you like on your vendors shelf today, it is best to buy it before it's too late... and buy lots of it!

But the lack of the "perfect" fabric never stops the creative sewer! It simply forces a new solution. After all, why do we love the old quilts so much? It is because the makers were doing with whatever they had on hand and the results were often odd, but fabulous!

So I decided to play with the heart motif and my current line of fabric, Garden Divas. Each heart is placed on one of the Daisy Check fabrics, since checks are a classic design for children's clothing and suggests innocence and joy.

I added an extra outline around each heart to add definition and sometimes a little contrast or drama, too.

Each combination has it's own mood and attitude. But each group is quite feminine and could easily be used for any young girls's accessories... bedding, curtains, quilts, etc.

I love red, yellow and pink together, so the red checks really speak to me. This combination is especially effective with the repeat of the dragonfly motif in both prints.

Symetrical prints are well suited to the heart shape. I tried to fussy cut the print to echo the movement of the heart. The Lively Silhouette fabric had several design groupings to focus on and the Iris and Bleeding Hearts really fill that space nicely.

The abundance of flowers and critters would also make fitting elements for your Easter decor... table runners, napkins and placematts, too. I hope these hearts have given you a few new ideas for using those "personality" prints.

My sewing machine was just tuned and cleaned and I'm ready to sew! So let's go!

Palouse Patchers

I have just returned from a marvelous teaching trip in Moscow, Idaho for the Palouse Patchers Spring Fling. The Palouse is a stunningly dramatic area of the country of giant velvety hills and valleys. Trees on the Palouse are few and far between and the sky puts on a show all day long. 

The Patchers really made me feel special. At the opening event every place was set with a swatch of Garden Diva fabric and a lovingly crafted fabric flower brooch. The centerpiece on each table was a tiered plate filled with colorful cupcakes.

The next two days we had class in Moscow's handsome community center. The girls in class were good sports and cut into their Sassaman fabrics, even though they didn't know exactly what would happen. Here are the awesome results of Friday's Kaleidoscope class.

I am delighted that they are all so different. Each one has a distinct personality. We didn't have time enough to work on borders, but you can still see the beginnings of some exciting quilts.

                                                                                                  

 

Some students used 45 degree triangle templates, some used 60 degree ones and others did their own "thing". I never get tired of the surprising relationships between the different fabrics, especially when they seem to blend in and out of one another.

It is also interesting what depth the black fabrics create. In many of these pieces there is an underlying  organizational principle like "mirror image", "light to dark" or "alternating". Keep scrolling down to see the rest. You may be inspired to try a "kaleidoscope" of your own!

 

Thanks, Palouse Patchers for your enthusiasm and your hospitality! I look forward to seeing your completed quilts one day soon... hint, hint!

The Kaleidoscope Experiment Continues

Well, I guess it is inevitable but the spring changes are beginning to appear. This is the same enthusiastic crowd of little snowdrops that herald the new season every year. We even have some tulips and daffodils stretching their pointy little fingers toward the sun.

I continued to do a little more play with the kaleidoscope pattern and the Garden Divas fabrics. You can refer to the previous blog for the basics, if you missed them. This tine I used the Spring Wreath fabric for the central star and the border. The Wreath fabric is so busy that the emptiness of the Willow Wands fabric give the quilt top  some needed breathing space.

Here I have digitally added black borders which give the composition some muscle and punch. This would be my preference. The black outline defines and focuses the wild prints.

Again we have the exact same diamond and border fabrics, but we have switched out the corner squares
and triangles (surrounding the star) for the Iris and Bleeding Heart fabric. This substitution added some extra movement by suggesting circles of bleeding hearts. Pretty interesting.

So now we have added the black borders again. It is amazing what those borders do! Again it tames the business and focuses the best parts of the composition. This has been an entertaining experiment, but so far I have just used fabrics with black backgrounds, which always makes thing rich. Next I am going to try some pastels and see what happens!

One Pattern, Two Looks

This time of year seems to inspire everyone to regroup and get organized and this was my direction this week, too. Greg varnished and installed the new studio shelves and I filled them with fabric. My helper, Susan, cut bolts of fabric for kits and bundles to take to class. I reorganized the studio space in to new task areas, including a zone for shipping and packing.

But during the whole time, the Garden Divas were competing for my attention. This was not the time to begin a large quilting project! But, hey, a "little" one would be OK, right? So I got out my favorite template, the Fast 2 Cut Fussy Cutter Diamond Ruler designed by Jan Krentz! This is the perfect ruler for symmetrical prints and that's why I have used it for almost every collection. The results are always fabulous.

In the first quilt top the construction is obvious. You can see the diamond, the 9" square, the half square triangle and border. The design is very clear despite the patterned fabric. The colors and simplicity remind my of Delftware ceramics.

The second top is exactly the same, except the squares and triangle have been substituted in another fabric. The effect is very different. Now we have a kaleidoscope that blends and flows through colors and textures. The pattern pieces totally disappear. The composition looks more sophisticated even though the piecing is exactly the same.

This is an exercise worth continuing. I think I will try it in some different colorways and see what happens.

All Tied Up

This week I heard the first Sandhill Crane, a sign that spring is truly in the wings. I also shipped my new fabric designs to Westminster and found the perfect shelves to store fabric in the new studio. The giant work wall is installed and covered with white paper. A little progress occurs every day.

But after so many months of designing exclusively with paper, pencil and computers I am feeling a desperate need to fondle some fabric and sit at the sewing machine. It is always best to warm up with a smaller project, so this week I am showing off these fabulous new bow ties made with Sassaman fabrics past and present.

Oh, that feels better! These are "mood altering" accessories! You can't be crabby when you wear one of these happy ties. Now I can pull out my Illinois Album quilt, the one with the salamanders, and begin quilting the borders. This week I will also be visiting the Heritage Quilter's Guild in Lockport, Illinois. It is always a treat to have work so close to home!

Back in the Picture

Yes, I will admit it! I have been hibernating in the studio since my return from three delightful classes in Florida! My flight left O'Hare the day of the biggest blizzard of the century. It was a tense day all around. But my flight managed to take off before the worst of it, so the rest of the trip went as planned.

But after three weeks on the road, I was way behind in my fabric designing schedule! So I've had to put in some mega concentration to get the new line finished by March 1. I'm very happy with the results and have been printing the designs for shipping on Monday. I seem to measure my life by projects and it is always an exciting time when one goal is completed and another venture begins.

But there has been another project brewing during my absence! My Greg is the energy behind this adventure and I was a willing, but quiet supporter. But now that it's finished, I'm grinning from ear to ear!

My studio is connected to the garage and a large screened porch. Here you can see the garage is just a door away. Since we don't have an attic or basement the garage was filled with everything but cars. So Greg moved all the "stuff" into the porch, which we don't use much anyway, so we could turn the garage into extra studio space!!!!

Here is the cold day the door came down and the new wall was installed.

Windows came next, east and south. Basically, we are replicating the existing studio, but in reverse, as the windows are on opposite walls. Lighting and saffron colored paint made a huge improvement and laminate flooring finished it all off.

The new view looks like this! Pardon the mess, but many displaced objects are being parked in my room as we look for shelves and tables to fill the new work space.

Can you believe it? Now I can spread out!!! Time for a trip to Ikea.