tumbling blocks

kitty stairs quilt

friendly attack of redwork kitties

You may have seen it on the sidebar already, but I wanted to post about Quilts, Baby!, a new baby quilts book from Lark, edited by Linda Kopp. I've contributed a pattern to this book, but before I get into those details, I want to say how much I like the other patterns in the book. Lark really did a great job in putting this together. They wanted us to focus on fresh quilt ideas that a beginner can handle, and I think the book really hits that nail on the head.

I am in very good craft blog company in the book. if you have a minute, check out the sites of these other great quilt makers:

For my quilt I did a traditional bricks quilt (easiest one in the book!), and then turned the "bricks" into the idea of stairs, because playing on the stairs is really fun. Then I made little redwork kitties who galavant up and down the stairs—they march, they slide, they jump... The cartoon-ish kitty shapes are easy to adjust, if you want to customize one. Or, if you hate cats, you could change the ear shape and make a dog/mouse/bear/etc. It was a lot of fun to make.

A little sew hip

tee-hee

i wield a mean iron

cuteness page one cuteness page two

You know how sometimes you can feel a little shy about something and also really excited about it? There's a little article about my creative space in the March issue of Sew Hip, which is a new-ish UK sewing magazine. Yay! It's pretty cute, and fun to see how someone else arranges all the little bits and pieces of my home which make it dear to me. What really makes this really cool is that all the photos were taken by my good friend Lisa, and we got to do this as a project together, and now we can have a cup of coffee and look at our magazine and be pleased with ourselves.

The pattern for my honeycomb smocking tutorial is also included in the issue, and is the reason for all of this. (Thanks Manda!) There's a lot of other cute in the magazine—an embroidery pattern from Hillary, an interview with Liesl, an interesting article on old-school woodblock printing, and Betz White fuzzy goodness. If you're in the UK, you can pick one up, but it's not to be found here in the US. Maybe one day it will make it to Borders?

a-line dress with flower pocket

patchwork pocket

It's been a week since my little girl headed out for some time on her own with her grandparents. From what I hear, they are having a lovely time with continued plans for fun.

The photo was taken before she left. She was playing the role of the bored model—being made to try clothes on repeatedly for fit, sick of it but acquiescent. The flower patch pocket is the same one that I used in this apron a year ago. (Still a favorite apron for me.) It looks so cheery and kid-like in these pinks and cutsy prints. There is a bit of fabric from my most recent shirt in the petals, so yes we could do coordinating mother-daughter outfits if we wanted to. Scared of that. The flower is that little bit of quilting that I was working on during the plane ride from San Francisco. I really liked having that work to do on the plane, and since I'm taking off again tomorrow, I think I'd better get some pieces cut.

on model

So, I'm happy to share that the dress above will be featured in a book published by Lark. Absolutely A-line (the title) takes a simple a-line dress pattern (Simplicity 5284) and shows you different ways to change it up with embellishments, shortened bits, added ruffles, etc. My contribution is the patchwork pocket. The book is due out in about a year—I think it will be a pretty cute book!

can't keep cool any longer

Pretty Little Patchwork Pretty Little Potholders

Books! With me in them! Eeeeee!

I went to Barnes and Noble on Saturday to get a baby shower present and these two covers just accosted me from a little stand in the craft section. (Oh, you know the craft section is on the way to the baby section!) I didn't think the books were out yet because I don't have my copies yet, but OMG, there they were. It made me eep!

I have a project in Pretty Little Patchwork and a project in Pretty Little Potholders, both published by Lark. The books are really cute, and there are some other nice people you might know in them. When I get my own copy, I am going to be sewing some projects. (They will be pretty little projects, of course.) My patchwork project is a star pincushion like these ones, and my potholder has yo-yos. You know I love a yo-yo.

I've been excited about this for a really long time, but I wasn't sure when to bring it up. I mean, what's the protocol on that? At first I didn't want to blog anything because what if I somehow didn't make it in at the end? Then once everything was finalized, it seemed randomly in the middle nothing in particular. So here I am, seeing books in the store and sharing right now. E!

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