This weekend.....

....has been such a treat!  A big THANK YOU to the Riverwalk Quilt Guild of Naperville, IL who invited us to be their featured artists at the first "Naperville Quilts" show at the NIU campus.  Not only did they hang more than twenty quilts of ours, but they also featured members' beautiful quilts that were made using our patterns!  We have never seen as many Blue Underground Studios quilts hanging in one place!!

And, the mayor of Naperville came to do a ribbon cutting.  The city has an official pair of "Ribbon Cutting scissors"--I must confess, I am a little jealous.  I've never seen scissors of this magnitude before...

We also have to thank all the wonderful quilters who stopped by our booth to say hello!

This week, Janine is off to market in Portland.....I'll be talking about more quilts from In Love right here next week.

Happy Mother's Day!

Quilting in Heels

On Monday, I came home from school (yes, school) and traded my black heels, a copy of the Creating America textbook, and 40 tests on the Interwar years for a stack of quilts and a three ring notebook.  For the past seven months, I have been teaching history again! Teaching was my first career, and still holds a dear place in my heart.  I am still keeping a foot in the quilting world, however. And Monday night, I had both feel firmly planted (on TOP of the cutting table, to be precise) at Patched Works, Inc. in Elm Grove, Wisconsin.  Janine and I took all of our quilts from our latest book, In Love with Squares and Rectangles, to show to a group of Patched Works' lovely customers.  We had a wonderful evening browsing Julie's beautiful selection of fabrics--and patterns!  She has a whole wall of our patterns!

I love showing and talking about our quilts.  Especially our book quilts--I hadn't even seen many of these quilts since we packed them in boxes and sent them off to California at the post office with a sprinkling of holy water for good measure (just to make sure they'd arrive).  So, in honor of the official market debut of our book in Portland in this month, I am going to talk about each of the quilts individually right here over the next few weeks.

I have to start with Berry Patch--I love this quilt!  The inspiration for Berry Patch started one day as I was organizing my batik bin.  I took out all of the pieces I had and arranged them by color.  I of course had a fair number of greens and blues, and they made substantial piles--each of their own color.  Reds--I had a fair number of those as well--but I was lacking in the hot-pink department.  So, I decided to throw the pinks in with the reds.  This is the moment I started wanting to make an entire quilt out of pink and red batiks.  As is usually the case, I am astounded by the color variation in tonal fabrics--especially batiks--when I make a quilt with an analogous color palette. Hot pink can have many different looks--and together, I think a variety of reds and hot-pinks look stunning.

After I had amassed what I felt was enough batiks for the larger blocks in this quilt  (which took a fair amount of digging through unorganized parts of my own stash, Janine's stash and also a couple of trips to the quilt store), I had only to decide what color I would make the smaller squares.  The decision to use plums and purples came naturally.  I couldn't stop thinking about berries when I looked over at the stack of pinks and reds on my cutting table. So, I decided rather than fight it, I would just go with a berry theme.  Sometimes going with your gut reaction is the best thing.  To continue the berry theme, I quilted this quilt on my long arm with a freehand stone design.  It's a little time consuming, but I always feel it is worth it in the end.

We came up with three variations for each of the book quilts--the variations for Berry Patch include alternate color ways, and alternate setting options.  Check out the book to see them!

If you missed Monday's book signing, Patched Works has a stack of signed copies.  And, we'll be at some of the other local shops this summer.  Join our facebook page for the latest news!  We are also the featured artists at the Riverwalk Quilt Guild show (Naperville Quilts!) May 10th and 11th at the NIU Campus in Naperville, IL.  We'll be talking about color, AND showing our quilts and patterns.  Hope to see you there!

Coming Back with a BANG

Although sewing has been part my life for well over 1/2 of it, I have to confess to periods of time (some of them lengthy) during which I am unable or unwilling to do any sewing. Of late, until recently, I have been going through just such a period. I have however, a pretty good excuse--and her name is Elizabeth Louise!  Since March, she and my little Maggie have received top billing in my life. And what a fun time we have been having!  I converted my longarm to a clothes drying rack (as it turns out, 12 foot metal bars with canvas overlays make a great place to hang little girls dresses as they are drying!), my sewing table to a laundry folding table--complete with a baby seat, and my design wall became the world's biggest felt board for Maggie to experiment on. I had a slight twinge of regret about putting all of that time and effort into refinishing the basement--after all, it was in the name of "working" down there.  But I knew that when I was ready, I would get back down there, clear out all of the miscellany and get back down to business.

It happened a couple of weeks ago. I woke up raring to go, and before I knew it I was in the basement with a gigantic cup of coffee and did not come up until that evening. The result: a clear sewing table, empty longarm frame, blank design wall (much to Maggie's chagrin) and about 300 new ideas I was dying to try.

I had to put some order to my thoughts! I am famous for having a ton of ideas and getting none of them done....So, I started with a couple of projects that could be completed quickly, one long term project, and one project that was completely new to satisfy that itch. Here they are on the design wall...as you can see, I am still happily sharing space with the alphabet train.

The quilt in the background on the left is a sample of a new pattern that I released at spring quilt market called Juxtaposition. I had been wanting to work with these particular fabrics by Malka Dubrawsky.  I love their bright colors (lime and teal are currently on my list of favorites). These blocks had been cut out before Eliz. was born so they were a cinch to sew up and get on the wall. The blocks in the background on the right are some pillow tops that I am hoping to quilt and put on my couch.  I love the way quilted pillows look but it seems that I suffer from some sort of creative laziness. Despite the fact that I love the way they look, and I not only know how to sew and quilt but even have many tools at my disposal to make the job easier, I still put off this task of making pillows.  Hmmmm....

The quilt that is on top of the others is an Around the Block sample.  Janine and I released this pattern together in our second year of pattern designing.  Since then, we have made many samples of this quilt. I have long been drawn to the log cabin pattern and I am so happy with the way it looks using a neutral solid and some of Marcia Derse's latest fabrics. It somehow makes this very traditional pattern look modern. We are getting together once a week to sew this quilt up, hoping to get it done in a reasonable amount of time. More on that progress as it happens.

The last project I decided to tackle has been a long time in coming. I have been an ardent admirer of Kaffe Fassett/Westminster fabrics for--well--it has actually been years at this point. I have been shuffling bins of these fabrics around my studio, not really realizing how much I had accumulated. As it turns out, the rough total is somewhere in the neighborhood of 4 1/2 rubbermaid bins.

I decided to cut a strip of each of these fabrics to make an In and Out quilt that I could work on intermittently, throughout the summer. The upside of this project: I got to look at ALL of the prints that I own in this category and use a lot of them.  In some cases, I used the rest of what I had.  The downside of this project: 160 strips later, I have not even used all of the fabrics I have and I was somehow inspired to do a little shopping and ADD to this collection--to fill a few gaps, of course.

To date, I have all of the strips cut into pieces, and 180 blocks made. I'm feeling pretty good about this progress--especially since this particular quilt does not have a deadline. Oh how I love sewing for fun!

Exciting News

Well, I've been a bit absent in the blog world lately--but not without good reason! Last Sunday we welcomed the latest addition to the Walsh family....Elizabeth Louise!  We've already been swaddling her in quilts!!

And some other, only slightly less exciting news: I will be interviewed on Pat Sloan's Creative Talk Network on Monday, April 2nd.  Showtime is 3 pm central!!  Click on the link below to listen in....

http://www.allpeoplequilt.com/radio/index.html

Team Sewing

Last December, Windham fabrics sent us some of their newest (at the time) fabric--it's a line called Echo by Lotta Jansdotter.  When I first saw these prints online, I was drawn to their simplicity.  When they arrived at my house, I loved the scale and colors of these modern fabrics.  Janine and I decided to get together to piece a new sample out of these fabrics so that we could get one done as quickly as possible.  I know I've talked about this team sewing thing before....one of us pieces at the sewing machine, and one of us gets the blocks ready to sew and does the ironing.  The bottom line is, it's twice as fast, and pretty fun.  We started cutting this quilt out about two weeks ago on a Tuesday morning, finished it on that Thursday afternoon, and it was at the quilter's house by that weekend.  We already have it back and it is being bound (thank you Ann Davidson!!).  That's what we call a pretty quick turn around!

Here's some shots of the unquilted top--it's another green glass door--outside, when there was still a shred of snow to be found around here.  I had to take the first image standing at the top of the quilt (which actually makes the prints face the wrong direction in the picture) because of the way the wind was blowing.

We added a few solids to set off some of the rectangles.

I love the way this pattern shows off the prints in this collection.  Because of their large scale, the size of the rectangles is perfect. Green glass door was actually just released last May, and we already have three of these quilts made....I am thinking this might be one of our current favorites!

Kate's Quilt

I told you that you'd have to wait until after Christmas for pictures of the baby LOFT I was working on--I did it!  It was quilted, bound, washed AND wrapped before my sister and brother in law came with their little baby Kate for Christmas.  Here's some pics of the finished quilt:

I am especially proud of the free-form 'K' I pieced for the backing.

I quilted the top with an allover swirl/paisley meander that I've been favoring these days.  I love the freedom you have with an all-over pattern.  As long as you stay consistent with the size, the sky's the limit!

There's something special about making a quilt for a loved one--and something extra special about making a baby quilt.  It's as if all your hopes, dreams and prayers for that little person are sewn into the seams right down to the last stitch of the binding.  I'm so glad I took the time to make this little quilt.  And to be honest, I like it so much, I feel like making another just to have around!

Cookie Mania

I returned today from the annual sister cookie baking weekend at my mom's up in Wisconsin.  My sister Anna and I actually started this tradition about eight years ago when she was living in Chicago.  We made a list of cookies we each wanted to bake and even organized a schedule that included which cookies needed to be refrigerated before baking and which could be baked right away.  All together, we made a whopping 30 types of cookies between the two of us and a friend of Anna's who stopped by briefly to help us but accidentally broke the oven instead.  By Sunday evening, we were both sitting at the kitchen table sharing a much needed bottle of wine and looking at about an inch of flour, sugar and sprinkles on the kitchen floor.  Thus was born a tradition.

Since then, we try to get as many sisters on board as possible.  This year there were three of us, a three year old and my mom.  We made a lowly 15 types of cookies, but it was just enough to put together plates and tins for good friends, neighbors, co-workers, family and still put some away for Christmas day.  We are pretty serious about the cookie baking at Christmas time in our house.  There are some recipes that just HAVE to be made--they are non-negotiable.  These include mini chip snowballs, island cookies (we use macadamia nuts in these instead of walnuts), mandel bread and anise biscotti.  The last two recipes are from Cookies Unlimited by Nick Malgieri.  I have to admit to having a flour and sugar crush on this man.  Everything I have ever made from any of his books about baking has been amazing.  If you like to bake, you should definitely add a book of his to your library.

island cookies

It is just as important to add a few new recipes to the mix as it is to keep making the old ones.  This year, these included Greek butter cookies, crock pot peanut clusters (not really a cookie but there are no steadfast rules here...), cardamom butter squares, and peanut butter thumbprints.

crock pot peanut clusters

cardamom butter squares

It was nice to have a break from sewing over the weekend--especially to do something just as fun.  There is something about baking and Christmas music that puts everyone in a good mood.  And, we had such a feeling of accomplishment Sunday night after we had packed up packages for everyone on our lists and cleaned up the warzone that had once been my mother's kitchen!