Last summer I had the good fortune to join up with a group of fairly inexperienced quilt bloggers for the 2015 New Quilt Blogger’s Blog Hop. It was a wonderful experience and I learned so much from the other bloggers, and even more from the four leaders of the Blog Hop. One of the projects that resulted from the Blog Hop was the Fabri-Quilt New Block Blog Hop. About seventy quilters designed an original block using fabrics donated by Fabri-Quilt. Together, this made for a wonderful series of creative, original blocks, each of which was posted with a detailed tutorial.
One of the leader’s of this year’s Blog Hop, Stephanie Palmer, of Late Night Quilter, took it a (giant) step further. She has created a Quilter’s Planner for 2016 (and isn’t it crazy that we will be heading into a new year so soon?) Stephanie put hours and hours of thought into the creation of this calendar. She included both monthly and weekly pages, quilting references and tools, and pages to write detailed quilting plans for your projects.
There are pages to write notes, doodle designs, and plenty of room to organize your quilty life and your family life. This is perfect for me. I am a list maker and keep a list on the kitchen counter that I create at the beginning of each week. There are always four lists containing my goals for the week. I use one each for Sewing Etsy Product, Blog Posts to Write, Personal Sewing and Quilting and Family/Household. Stephanie thought of everything and I think this book will cover all of it for me. She collaborated with Kelsey at Lovely and Enough. Kelsey created artwork that is interspersed throughout the planner.
In addition, there are a number of quilt patterns from numerous pattern designers included (including Pat Sloan, Amy Garro, Yvonne Fuchs, Lee Heinrichs and Kitty Wilkin among others). Finally, on each weekly page there is a gorgeous original quilt block from the Fabri-Quilt Block Blog Hop, with instructions included. And guess what… my block is included!!
This calendar will be the perfect holiday gift for that quilter who has everything. Or a gift from you, to you! I just ordered mine and it should ship the first week of December. I am so excited to receive my copy.
If you are interested, you can click here to order. Alternatively, you can also click on the Quilt Planner button on my page. (I do not receive any compensation for the purchase of the planner.) Stephanie is self-publishing the books so she is using Indiegogo as her tool to sell them. These lovely planners are available for order until the end of November. The planners should ship in the first week or so of December.
This week marks the first of four weeks that will be spent introducing a number of wonderful quilt blogs! In earlier posts, I mentioned that I am taking part in the 2015 New Quilt Bloggers Blog Hop. There are about 70 of us in the group and for the past several weeks we have been working together to learn more about blogging and to help each other to improve our blogs. If you have come to Needle and Foot for the first time, via the Blog Hop, welcome!!
First, a bit of background.
I am one lucky person. Married to an amazing guy and mom to four kiddos, I live in the Sierra Foothills in Northern California. We have a bit more than three acres which allows us space for a large vegetable garden (which we couldn’t plant this year due to the wretched drought in California) as well as a coop for six hens. Three of my kids (the boys) are adults and are off living all over the country. My daughter is still at home and will enter high school in the fall.
I have been sewing for over 40 years now (which looks so strange when I see it in print!!) Growing up I sewed many of my clothes and when I became a mom, I sewed clothes for my kids. I started quilting when I was 17. I made three quilts over the next three years and then didn’t make another one until 2012. (If you want to read about the first quilt I made, here is a post.) When I retired from a career in Human Resources in 2012, I suddenly had time to devote to sewing again.The quilting bug (obssession, passion, craze, addiction – call it what you will) bit me hard and I have made a number of quilts over the past few years. If I were to try to describe my style, I would say that while I enjoy almost any type of quilt, I have a propensity to the modern. I love large blocky patterns – I don’t often make a very fussy block. I have always quilted all of my own pieces. It feels right to me that I make my quilt from start to finish. (I have only quilted one queen size and one full size piece, usually I make lap size or mini’s.) I use either straight line or free motion quilting depending on the project. My FMQ is absolutely a work in progress – it is challenging and requires tons of practice. With each project it improves a bit more.
This is my sewing space. Totally as it is – no cleaning or organizing before pictures! I sew on a Janome 6500P and also have an older Janome that is a little workhorse. I love them both.
Here are a few of my favorite projects:
This lap size quilt was made for my amazing daughter-in-law for her birthday. I love the pattern and it was one of the first times I used solids for the bulk of a project.
Naomi’s Birthday Quilt February, 2014
The quilt below was made for my daughter. I love it because it is the first time I took on a large FMQ project. I had no idea what I was getting into and quilted this without knowing I had to drop the feed dogs for FMQ – I fought the quilt and the machine the entire time. I remember thinking this is so dang hard, why would anyone want to do this for pleasure. See all of that pebbling and all of those spirals? No free motion there, just an amazing amount of tugging and moving. It was nuts. I’ve learned a bit since then!
Julia’s Quilt October, 2013
This final quilt was made for my sister. I love simple patchwork quilts! This is a lap size quilt with a huge heart pieced into the lower right corner. I love the texture of the matchstick quilting on the heart.
Patti’s Heart Quilt; March 2015
Though my quilting projects are often leaning toward modern, I have an unstoppable passion for anything vintage. I especially like two eras. I love the fabrics from the 1930’s through 1950’s. I recently acquired quite a collection and you can find more information on that here and here. In addition, I collect vintage linens, usually from the 1970’s. There is quite the stash of these in my sewing room now. I have lots of fat quarters listed in my Etsy shop if you are interested in vintage sheets. There is also a smallish collection of vintage patterns listed in the shop.
Here is a simple blogging tip for you: Take your time with each post! Last June when I started this blog, I was learning as fast as I could by reading other blogs and trying to figure out what worked best for me. Over the year, I learned so much. Something that really helps the quality of my writing is to write ahead of time. As much as my schedule allows me, I try to sketch out a post and then come back to it in a day or so. When I come back and edit the post I will invariably find typos or phrasing that isn’t as clean as I would like. It helps hugely to look at the post multiple times. I don’t mean spending hours pouring over it. Rather, I write it, save it and read through it at another time. If I write in a hurry and publish, there will be errors. If I can let it sit for a day and come back to it, I will usually catch a few typos. Also, I can improve phrasing or move pictures around that don’t look just right. That second reading improves the post almost every time.
Finally, three fascinating and compelling facts about me that you are probably dying to know.
1. My favorite vacation I have taken was my honeymoon in 1998. We went to St. John in the US Virgin Islands. It was breathtakingly gorgeous.
2. My husband and I dated all of six weeks before he proposed. We were married five months later. While I do not recommend this as common practice, we were lucky and are happily married 17 years now. To my children, when they bring this up (usually to give me a hard time about it), I always say, “do as I say, not as I do!” (Which happens to be excellent parenting advice!)
3. I am lucky enough to be the fourth daughter in a family of six girls. My sisters are my dearest friends and you can read about them here, here and here.
Thanks so much for stopping by. If you want to follow me it is easy – you can enter your email address at the top of the page or click on the Bloglovin button (with the plus sign in the middle) and add me to your feed. This blog hop is a wonderful opportunity to meet a host of new bloggers. In the hop with me this week are three other terrific quilt bloggers. Hop on over and check them out!
