Thursday, November 24, 2016

For You from Me and The Universe

I receive daily notes in my email from the universe (look for the red bar, top right). No, it's true (and yes, I'm okay!).

I received one such message earlier this week that made me think of the Thanksgiving holiday. Not the one depicted on a classic Norman Rockwell cover of the Saturday Evening Post, but a real one, with real people on various sides of heated conversations covering current issues. The message hit the nail on the head:

Know everyone by their good traits.

And it made me think, that’s a really good message to keep in my back pocket as friends and family gather this holiday season.

And more specifically, I am very, very grateful for your friendship and support throughout the year. We’ve come a long way, haven’t we? And so much more fun stuff to come.

Stay safe, and count your blessings on this Thanksgiving Day!

Happy Stitching!

Happy Thanksgiving! 

Joan Ford

Thursday, November 17, 2016

Keystone Corner

Last week, I traveled to Chambersburg, Pennsylvania and the Chambersburg Quilt Guild.

For mid November, the weather was remarkably warm and sunny, making for a lovely drive to and from the guild from my home in central New York.

Chambersburg is very close to Gettysburg, a place of historic significance from America's Civil War. While Chambersburg is well away from the Gettysburg battlefield, it did not escape the battle unscathed. With the exception of a few buildings, the entire town was burned during Lee's retreat.

No sign of any discord amongst the guild members! We got busy on our task. The first workshop was Bloomin Steps from the book ScrapTherapy, Cut the Scraps.



And the second workshop focused on the Warm Memories quilt project from When Bad Things Happen to Good Quilters. This project really takes everything you know about making a T-shirt quilt and turns it on its ear. These ladies are boldly slicing into their T-shirts for their quilts.




Chris arrived at the T-shirt workshop with her version of Scrappy Trails from ScrapTherapy, Cut the Scraps! Lovely!




It goes without saying, when quilting is involved it's just going to be a good time! I can't speak for everyone, but I can say that I had a great time spending some quality sewing time with some folks from a small corner of the Keystone State! And I certainly can't wrap up my conversation about my visit to Chambersburg without a shout-out to my hosts! Between the workshop and the guild meeting I was treated to a yummy ham sandwich from Jim's Farmers Market - oh my goodness! What a treat!

Upon my arrival back home, I got back to work on my Splendid Sampler quilt. My quilt top has been done for a while, and I'm now in the quilting phase. One block done, 99 to go!




Speaking of The Splendid Sampler, have you seen the cover yet? You can actually pre-order the book full of all 100 patterns here! My block will be released on December 1.
 

Happy Stitching!
Joan Ford

Thursday, November 10, 2016

I am SO Embarrassed!

Sometimes, you just know it's time (or long past) to do something!

My office. A tiny little corner in the back of my house. Trouble is that it's open space. Lots of natural light, windows everywhere, beautiful view of the back yard, and no door. I love this about my office space.

But it's also a curse. And an embarrassment.

Originally this was going to be a sitting room with a lovely view of the backyard. A big fluffy sofa took up most of the space in the room. And a little desk in the corner for quick correspondence or internet surfing. That's before I started writing quilt patterns and books.

Here's the 'before' picture. I'm showing this to you so you'll help to keep me accountable. Something must be done, plain and simple. I've got a few weeks without any travel, so I want to fix this up before the end of the year. (That sounded a lot like a deadline, yikes!)



The big empty floor space: Sofa gone. Hey, it's a start! Shelves to come.

The white cabinet on the left was never supposed to be filing space, and now it appears that one more folder may just send the whole thing a-tumble.

All the stuff on the small shelf on the right needs an empty recycle bin. And the black printer (under the stack of folders) died this week. I think it just couldn't take it anymore.

The tiny desk needs a facelift and a better filing system. The paper. There must be a forest worth of trees in this tiny space. Recycle, recycle, recycle!

Rolling up my sleeves! Do you have a space like this that you need to tackle? Whaddaya say? Shall we tackle it together? Stay tuned!

Happy Stitching!
Joan Ford

Thursday, November 3, 2016

Houston, We have a Quilt Show

By now, if you follow anyone who was in attendance at Quilt Market in Houston last weekend, you've probably already seen lots of beautiful photos of the displays. But everyone sees something a little different, so here's my quick tour of the show.

Quilt Market is where the industry comes to get inspired. Even though it's a wholesale show and only members of the industry with credentials as buyers (your favorite local quilt shop owner), designers (like me!) or manufactures (like the fabric companies) can attend. My publisher, The Taunton Press, hosted a book signing of the first two ScrapTherapy titles on Saturday afternoon. Even though the new book (ScrapTherapy, The Versatile Nine Patch) isn't ready until April, folks were anxious for their own personalized copy of one of the first two books, ScrapTherapy, Cut the Scraps, or Scrap Therapy, Scraps Plus One. Here I am at the booth book-signing.



Alexia Abegg's (Green Bee Sewing Patterns) new fabric line from Cotton + Steel is called Flower Shop. The big brown paper flowers in her booth were so creative and pretty.



It's always nice to see Carolyn Friedlander at the show. Love that quilt on the wall behind her. Carolyn also has a special exhibit in the quilt show in Houston (just next door to the vendor exhibits in the convention center).



A few of the displays featured elaborate apparel. This gown had butterflies that seemed to be escaping from the folds of the dress in an fantasy-like train. I'm sorry to say that I happened to snap this picture in a rush past the booth, and missed the name of the booth sponsor.



Camelot Fabrics converted bolts of fabric in shades of sea foam green into a woman's dress form for its display.



When you are an exhibitor at the show, it's so hard to steal away time to see the quilt show next door. When you're more of a 'free agent' like I was this time, it's a bit easier to carve out some quiet time to take in some quilty inspiration.

On a side note, Row By Row Experience™ revealed its theme for 2017 - Row by Row On the Go! Couldn't help make the connection to this quilt, Trixelated Transportation by Dionne Matthies-Buban and Martha Peterson, made entirely from equilateral triangles.



Here's a close up of some of the piecing.



Don't look now, but this quilt, A Long Way From Home by Amy Pabst, is made entirely from log cabin blocks. I wish I had something in the foreground to show the scale. The blocks are tiny, making the pieces (over 3,000 of them) within the blocks even tinier.



Take some old linens, save the best bits, and embellish. Just wow. Second Chances by Rhonda Dort



A closer look . . .



Speaking of hexagons, my room-mate for my stay in Houston was none other than Katja Marek. She's about to launch her next online hexagon sew-along using patterns from her recently released calendar. You can sign up for notifications at her shop site, if you're interested. I got tattoo-ed at the show, but didn't get to photograph it until I got home. Peaches from her perch above and behind (red arrow) was not impressed! The 2017 hexi sew-along quilt debuted at Market, and, unlike Peach, I was VERY impressed! Shall I start another project? We'll see!



It was a great trip! I made some great quilty connections and planted a few quilty seeds. We'll see what takes in the next few months, in the meantime, back to stitching!

Happy Stitching!
Joan Ford