Tag Archives: tula pink

Free Spirit — Big Changes Ahead

Like many of you, I was taken aback by the news that Free Spirit is closing it’s doors. Wow! How can that be? The artists designing for Free Spirit are an amazing group; including but certainly not limited, to Tula Pink, Anna Marian Horner, Joel Dewberry, Denyse Schmidt, Amy Butler, Heather Bailey and Kaffe Fassett. It is hard to get my head around this as the news seems so sudden.

For those of you who haven’t already read this, here is the note published on the Free Spirit website:

We are certain you have heard the news. Please forgive us for delayed communication, but our first priority has been to support our employees and designers. It is with great sadness that we announce, effective May 1, we are exiting the Westminster Lifestyle/FreeSpirit fabric business. Our sister company, Coats and Clark, Inc. will continue as part of the sewing and quilting landscape just as they have always been for over 200 years.

We appreciate your support and love of our fabrics throughout the years. We’ve enjoyed bringing to you the best designers printed on the most luxurious of fabrics and watching you create incredible works. Thank you for your love of our fabrics.

For customers: We will continue to fulfill orders placed to date for delivery prior to Tuesday, May 1, with new orders for existing collections on a first come first service basis. We will not be producing new Westminster or FreeSpirit Fabrics from today onward.

I can only guess why something like this is happening. For Coats & Clark to close this division, it must make sense for their bottom line. Hard to imagine a company isn’t profitable with such an AMAZING team of fabric gurus designing for it, but it must be the case. I have been reading with interest the responses from some of the designers.

There is a video on Tula Pinks Facebook page where she talks about her feelings.

The note on Kaffe Fasset’s Facebook page is shown below:

Dear Friends,
By now you have heard the news that the fabric company that we started over 20 years ago will be no longer in business by May. Coats has made the decision to stop producing the Kaffe Collective line, the Artisan line and the fabric lines of many of our good friends.

We have been caught completely by surprise and have not yet gathered our thoughts on how we will move forward, but rest assured, we will! Our fabrics and books are popular and in demand and there is no doubt that we will have a bright future.

Thank you all for your support and encouragement.

Kaffe, Brandon, Liza and Philip

So many people’s lives are in a tizzy, I am sure. I don’t know how many people are employed by Free Spirit but surely this will take a toll on a good number of families. I hope they are able to land their next position relatively soon and that Free Spirit treats them well as they close their doors.

I look forward to hearing about the next path taken by each of these amazing designers. Surely the larger fabric companies are looking to pick up some of them. I have long wanted to carry Denyse Schmidt, Anna Maria Horner and Tula Pink in my shop but had not yet created a purchasing relationship with Free Spirit. I could see Andover picking up any one of these three and if so, I will be eager to start purchasing their lines.

Wishing only the best to all those impacted by this change. Change can be difficult but hopefully this one will lead to new opportunities for those involved.

Progress – Tula Pink 100 Modern Blocks

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I don’t have very many unfinished projects. Right now the count stands at four. There are two quilt tops that need basting, quilting and binding. Plus two WIP’s – my Tula Pink project using her 100 Modern Quilt Blocks book and a quilt that I am piecing with (mostly) American Jane fabrics. While this is quite reasonable compared to what I have read about quilters with lots of quilty UFO’s, I want to work toward finishing them all up. There are always projects swirling around in my head but I don’t want to start too many at once.

This week was derailed with a series of migraines but I was able to spend a little time sewing and I got several blocks done for the Tula Pink City Sampler quilt. I am using Floriography fabric for this project. Last year I won a gift certificate to Doe Street Fabrics and spent it on some 1/2 yard cuts of Floriography. I started to cut it up for the City Sampler project. The blocks finish out at 6″ so you can imagine that many of the pieces are small (1″ to 6″). Because each block is different from the next, it isn’t a project where I can cut a stack of anything ahead of time. I am cutting each block independent of the next. I soon found that I didn’t have enough variety in the 1/2 yard cuts that I bought.

As luck would have it, last November I found a jelly roll and charm pack of Floriography on sale at The Clever Quilt Shoppe. I bought them right away as it would give me small pieces of the full line and would be so much easier to cut from.

While spending last weekend up in Downieville, I was able to cut the pieces for eleven blocks. I’m not sure it even matters but I have been doing blocks from each section in no particular order. The book is organized with the blocks divided into sections such as triangles, squares, rectangles, etc.

I have stitched ten of the eleven prepared blocks so far. I love having a stack of blocks cut and ready to piece. Each block is actually quite simple to piece. More time is spent on planning which colors to use in the block and cutting the pieces. I made several errors with fabric choice when cutting the blocks and it wasn’t until they were up on the design wall that I could really see it. Not enough difference in value which causes the design to be lost. This fabric is busy and many of the prints are the same value. Even though I plan to sash the blocks when I make the quilt top, I need to start adding in a couple of solid fabrics to tone things down a bit and increase the change in value. After I take Julia to school today, I will make a quick stop at the store for some solids. When I cut the next set of blocks, I will incorporate the new fabrics in the mix. There are a few blocks that I will take apart and replace pieces with solids.

Overall, I am very happy with the blocks this far into the project. I am not sure I will do the full 100 blocks. I need to decide how big this quilt will be and how I plan to sash it. The blocks will be arranged in color groupings or it won’t “make sense” to me. The colors are what will define the layout. Look at the difference.

And with sashing and organization by color:

For an example of a horrible fabric choice with values in the same range, look at the green block, middle line on the far right. The flying geese are lost in a fog on that block. For that one, I probably won’t rip it apart – it will be quicker to just make a second one and ditch the first. Quilting is always a learning experience, and this quilt is all about color.

The weekend promises to be a fun one. My sister and her two girls are coming along with their husbands and boyfriends. We are going to dinner at a fundraiser for my parents’ church. Yay for family time. 🙂 I hope all of you have a nice weekend with family or friends and at least a little time to sew.

Linking to Sarah at Confessions of a Fabric Addict.

A Vintage Pillow Finish

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Last week I decided to cut into my collection of vintage sheets and play with them. I made two pillow tops. One of which I took up to Downieville last weekend to practice hand quilting. This was my first attempt at hand stitching. I didn’t get that one quite finished but it is looking pretty good so far. I did finish another one though. I plan to use them on the guest bed, which unfortunately is located in my sewing room and often cannot be found underneath all of the projects that lie on top of it. Ha ha.

I used Corey Yoder’s Scattered Squares pattern which was published on the Mode Bakeshop website last summer. Corey designed the pattern to be made with a mini charm pack. I decided to adjust it a bit and use 3 & 1/2″ squares since I was cutting my squares anyway. Simple straight line quilting was used with a spacing of about 3/4″ or so. I didn’t measure or mark this, rather I used the edge of the walking foot as my guide.

I used a sheet to make an envelope backing. If you need a tutorial for this, there is a great one over at Crazy Mom Quilts. Super simple and takes no time at all.

This afternoon I decided to play with the Tula PInk City Sampler book that I wrote about in my last post. This is going to be a fun project. I made three blocks today and they came together easily. These are all from a section of the book that features various cross block patterns. I am liking the look of this already! Each block finishes at 6 1/2″. Three down and who knows how many to finish it.

Hope everyone has a wonderful weekend!

UPDATE: I forgot to include my April goal for ALYOF!! Yikes – I plan to make three gifts this month. I think each will be a tablerunner, though one may be a mini quilt wall hanging. Finishing these three gifts are my goal for April. Phew!!

Linking to Crazy Mom Quilts (yay – she is back after her month away from the blog!) and also Sew Bittersweet Designs for ALOYF!!

Gratitude – Part 4

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We’re home! My husband and Julia and I spent a long weekend up at the Downieville house working. It was really productive and, consequently, tiring! We made so much progress though.

Over the weekend Julia and I painted the basement level bedroom. It had dark paneling on the walls – ick. It made it feel like a cave in there. We primed the paneling and then painted it a sage green. It looks wonderful. I forgot to take a finished picture but do have this (iPhone) picture which portrays the wonder of having a 13 year old that is already 5′ 7″ tall. She did a great job rolling the top half of the walls. Made me jealous of her height.

Also got the valances and pleated window shades installed in the kitchen.

Another project that I tackled was painting the picket fence that runs along the front yard. (Yep, I felt like I belonged in a Mark Twain story.) It was in terrible shape. Most of the fence needed to be scraped paint and then primed and painted. This took up the better part of two afternoons but was well worth it. Here is a before picture.

And after:

It looks so clean and fresh. We did a relatively good job of not getting paint all over the little rock wall. See the little orange tulip peeking out? It is the only one in a sea of iris. Gorgeous though.

Photo credits to Julia for the three pictures shown above!

The best part of the weekend, and my gratitude focus for this week, was the new friends we met. You might remember that this is a tiny town. At it’s peak, during the California Gold Rush in the 1800’s, the population peaked at about 5,000 people. Now there are about 300 people that live there full time. From what I can tell, the school district there has about 50 students (grades K through 12). Pretty tiny. Spending the afternoons outside working on the fence gave me the opportunity to meet a few new people and everyone was kind and gracious. They seemed to truly appreciate that we were fixing up this little house.

The day after painting the fence, Julia and I checked out the library. It is adorable. Tiny but with a reasonable selection of books and because it is part of a larger library system, the patrons have access to a much larger selection. People can “order” books from the larger library and they are delivered to the local library. But best of all was chatting with the librarian (Cheryl) and guess what? She is a long arm quilter. What do you know! Immediate connection there as we talked all about quilting. The local guild, the Mountain Star Quilters, keep a library of quilting books in the public library which is a fairly impressive collection considering the size of the guild. As we talked quilting (and bored Julia) another woman (Linda) came in. I remembered meeting her briefly when I attended the quilt retreat in Downieville last October. (I posted about that here.) The three of us visited for a bit and and Linda showed me a book she had brought in. It was Tula Pink’s City Sampler book. We talked about it and she said she had decided she didn’t want to use it, and would I like to have it? I love Tula Pink and have looked at her beautiful book numerous times, wondering if I would ever really make the blocks in it. Seems like fate, right? There was the book falling into my hands. Clearly I am meant to make these blocks.

This adds another project to the list. I will use the 1/2 yard collection of Floriography, a Riley Blake fabric that I won from Doe Street Fabrics a few months ago.

I need to add a few solids to it but no problem there. I think making a block or two a week will be a fun way to use the book and the fabric.

Back to the kindness of these women. It never ceases to amaze me what a friendly group quilters make. Meet a quilter in the store, instant rapport. Run into a few in the library, new friends. Both women talked about the local quilt guild. They have about 30 members and meet one afternoon each month. I am going to attend the April meeting and see if I can start participating in their guild. I belong to our local guild as well and it is a challenge to get myself to the meetings, so we shall see. Luckily the schedules of each of the guilds seem to be opposite of each other (quilt show dates, challenge quilts, etc) so that will help. For sure, joining this second guild will be a great way to meet new friends and for that I am thankful.

Finally, just so you don’t think the weekend was all work and no play, here are some pictures from a hike along the river that Julia and I took. It was a gorgeous morning.

We are fortunate to have found our place on the river. It is a treasure for which we are so grateful.

Linking to Quilting Jetgirl’s Thankful Thursday and Needle and Thread Thursday and Let’s Bee Social (links to these are at the top of the page under Link Ups.)